Must have been Brett's sig line......Sunday Hunting in PA?

I never understood the "deer need a day to rest" argument. Do you really think they say, "Oh, sweet, its Sunday. He guys, c'mon out, relax and have a good time!" Do you think they are refreshed come Monday? And if there should ever be a time the deer need rest during the hunting season, its during the rut. They are already stressed out and tired. Let them breed in peace.

Most of the time deer never know they encountered a hunter, or they don't encounter one at all. The only reason for not having hunting on Sunday is for religious beliefs. Every other reason is a cop out. The only hunters that are against it are the ones that don't have the option to hunt Sunday, or would choose not because of their religious beliefs. Therefor, they don't want other hunters out there if they can't be, or choose not to be.

You can't convince me otherwise. The law is absurd.

 

I'm sorry, not to sound like a d-bag, but f--- the deer and their rest. The vast majority of hunters only have weekends to hunt so the deer get to rest when our butts are at work. The whole sabbath thing is garbage too. As Gary said, not everyone celebrates the sabbath or celebrates it on Sunday. Besides, we are talking about laws here. What happened to the separation between church and state?

BTW, I'm having a bad day at work.

 

Bry, I don't mean to get a chuckle at your post/bad day, but it cracked me up. Brutal honesty followed by an excuse. One of the best post I've seen on this forum in a while...seriously, as my daughter would say.

 

This is kind of how I feel. I hope beyond all hope that it passes. But until I find myself sitting in a tree, legally hunting PA on a sunday morning, I'm not going to care much. Until then I'll be ohio bound on sundays.

 

I think that's how you guys win this one IMO. Tell Fran to get off his dead ass, stop posting goofie stuff and file a motion that the hunting ban on Sunday's is Unconstitutional.

Come Fran use your evil lawyer powers for good instead of for dueshe bag cases you take. It's time to sack-up Francis

 

My .02 cents on Sunday hunting is as follows:

My OPINION is that many areas of Pennsylvania have become over-saturated with hunters. In some areas, it's progressed to the point of being borderline unsafe at times. Particularly on Monday, Saturday and Saturday of deer gun season, which are the "National Holidays" of deer season. Sundays would add two more huge days to gun season.

Historically, Pennsylvania's harvest numbers have spiked every Saturday, due largely to the fact that most hunters are off on weekends, thus, there are more hunters afield on Saturdays. During the week, the harvest slows, then spikes again every Saturday. Opening the deer hunt on Sundays would essentially double the number of huntable days for our massive population of weekend warriors. A logical deduction would be to presume that those same weekend warriors, equipped with double the amount of huntable days, would enjoy some increase in their success rate. Would it double? Probably not, but I'd realistically expect a 25% jump or so for the Average Joes.

In sum, my biggest worry is that opening Sunday hunting will double the number of high-harvest days, and put our wildlife at risk of possible over-harvest, eventually either damaging the herd, or forcing the Commission to have to respond by rolling back tag allotments, raising license prices, or shortening the seasons to compensate for the spike in harvest numbers on every open Sunday.

I think, at the end of the day, it'll be six of one, half-dozen of the other.

From my egocentric point of view, I couldn't care less anymore. The deer management in this state is so poor that I barely hunt here anymore.

Pennsylvania is notorious for going halfway to a good management system. They implemented antler restrictions, but after you understand the mechanics of the rules and see what's laying around at the local butcher shops, it's clear that a large portion of "legal" bucks harvested are still yearling bucks. Since our legislators are afraid to further tighten the antler restriction or ramp up the penalties, violators are slapped on the wrist, and the yearling slaughter continues. The age structure of our buck herd is abyssmally young, and that trend will continue until/unless something changes dramatically, which will never happen.

IMO, if we open the Sunday hunt, PGC will be forced to develop some type of tag rollback or lottery system to offset the projected increase in hunter success rate. Alternatively, they'll have to find a way to open sundays, while keeping the seasons long, repairing our buck age structure and maintaining the herd numbers at abundant levels. I'm confident that this will never happen in my lifetime, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

I really don't think Pennsylvania's ongoing Sunday hunting ban is a religious thing. I think they understand the real world ramifications of opening the Sunday hunt, which is why they've been so reluctant to do so for such a long time. We've had open Sunday hunting for ages on Coyote and Crow, and religion has never entered into the equation.

Maybe this is the first step to my dream - a resident buck tag lottery.

 

Ok Fran is off this case he sucks

You only give out x number of tags, LOL Michigan has had Sunday hunting for a long time and we give out 2 buck tags. So your argument does not fly in the court of Germ

 

Do you know what the harvest rate has been in recent years? Are there a lot of unused tags?

 

Logic dictates X number of deer are going to be killed in a season. Some hunters are just not going to kill a deer. Fran's argument is now these hunters who cannot kill a deer the other 6 days are some how going to magically figure out how to kill one on Sunday

A good hunter my kill his buck on a Sunday, but he only gets one in PA. Doe tags can be controlled.

 

Vito: I think PA's reported hunter success rate for antlerless deer is around 25%, and antlered deer is around 10-15%. Don't quote me on that, though. But, yeah, we have a lot of unused tags floating around.

Gary: The hunting in Michigan sucks, so I don't wanna hear about what happens in Michigan! That's like taking NCAA compliance lessons from Jim Tressel. And just to be clear, I SUPPORT Sunday hunting - always have. I'm just saying that if/when you see a spike in hunter success rates, you have to be ready to make some kind of adjustment to offset the increased harvest.

Given our long-standing history of half-assing every good deer hunting program, Pennsylvania will make no such adjustment, and ruin the whole thing.

It's just not so simple as "this is a dumb, religious rule, and I wanna hunt more often, so we need to eliminate it." There's a much, much bigger issue in play here.

 

Oh I'm with you Germ-o. You know us Michiganders are used to Chicken Little Syndrome (not saying that Quik is exhibiting such behavoir, but it was my first thought dealing with Michigan hunter opinions) when it comes to changing whitetail regulations. I don't believe the harvest rates would change much.

 

I still wonder if it would change much, mostly for the reasons Germ mentioned.

Sounds a lot like Michigan.

 

Fran this is the same argument MI had when we legalize cross bows. I heard the exact same line from hunters.

Guess what, the success rate did not go up this year in MI. Here I will say it, we have X numbers of hunters who just plain suck in our ranks. They could not kill any whitetail in a petting zoo.

Give Gun hunters two more days is not going to spike diddle I am suprise the King does not relish the challenge of hunting fewer bigger bucks, when you're the King, well you're the King.

 

Gary - I hear ya on the crossbows. We just did the same thing, with similar results. Thing is, not everybody has $700 laying around to blow on a crossbow, but EVERYBODY will be welcome to roll on out to the deerwoods every Sunday.

It will definitely be interesting to see what happens if this passes, although I'm confident that it will not. After the way people sang the blues and went on witch hunts over antler restrictions, I doubt that any legislator will want to do anything that rocks the boat.

Imagine the financial possibilities of a $100 Sunday Hunting Permit.

The PGC cries the blues about never having any money . . . well . . . here's your chance.

 

Curious Fran, why do you think a "buck lottery" is a good thing or a good answer?

 

And those that can/do kill deer, do so without extra time. It could also displace hunter numbers a little more. Just because you can hunt Sunday doesn't mean you will, or it might mean you hunt Sunday instead of Saturday. Hunters that always fill there tags, might fill them earlier with extra time afield. That could mean they won't be out after that. Or, a hunter might pass a deer on Saturday knowing he/she will be back out the next day. If he/she couldn't hunt the following day, they might have killed that deer on Saturday.

There are a number of reasons I don't think the numbers would change much. Like Germ mentioned, we have been dealing with a lot of talk about success rates in Michigan the last few years. These discussions have come up frequently.

 

Crossbow sales skyrocketed in Michigan after the law passed. Local stores couldn't keep them in stock. The increase in crossbow sales certainly did not mirror hunter success rates.

 

Look at it this way Fran, it's really now about season length.

it's about number of doe tags and habitat. Michigan has longer archery season, longer Muzzle loader season then we did in the 60,70,80, 90's.

We also have more deer now and the success rates have not changed that much at all. We have more deer than we did the past thirty years in the state. We have longer seasons also, by your logic we should have less deer correct?

Now deer numbers have fallen in the NLP and UP, but anyone from Michigan will tell you it's about 1 thing. Good deer habitat has shrunk in these zones and the DNR has done diddle to fix it.

Giving hunters more access WILL increase revenues for PA, increase $ coming in can be used to increase and better habitat. Which will increase deer numbers

 

If Sunday hunting is passed, I do not see this changing my situation. I hunt on Federal Land and they can do whatever they want in managing the deer herd. They may allow us to hunt on Sundays if the law passes here in VA, but I am not expecting them to allow us to hunt. BUT, I could branch out and hunt some of the other big public land tracts on Sundays which may be a lot of fun.

 

Vito hit the nail on the head about sales. Some were new hunters coming to archey, but the majority were guys thinking if I buy a cross bow it will be easier to kill a deer.

Guess what

Crappy hunter with Cross Bow = no deer.
Crappy hunter hunting on Sunday = no deer.

Both my uncles hunted with a x-bow this year, both got no deer, I was not shocked.