Debate Over Sunday Hunting is Heating Up. Hunters Have Been Quiet.

By Bob Frye, TRIBUNE-REVIEWSunday, August 28, 2011

Sportsmen aren't being outplayed in the contest over whether to legalize hunting on Sundays in Pennsylvania. They're not yet in the game.

Pennsylvania is one of 11 states — most of them in the Northeast — to ban Sunday hunting. There's an effort underway to change that, though.
State Rep. John Evans, a Crawford County Republican, has sponsored legislation that would remove the ban and allow the Pennsylvania Game Commission to include Sundays in hunting seasons, where and when it might see fit.


Right now, though, lawmakers are hearing almost exclusively from groups — farmers, hikers and bird watchers and animal rights activists — who support keeping the ban in place, said Rep. Ed Staback, a Lackawanna County Democrat who's supporting Evans' bill. They're not hearing from rank-and-file hunters who support Sunday hunting.


"The sporting community, at least on my end of it, is pretty dormant," Staback said.
That's not totally unusual, he said. Potential changes initially often attract responses from those opposed to them, he added.


But if hunters want to be able to hunt Sundays — and he suspects the majority do — they need to say so, and soon, he said.


"They need to contact their legislators and make themselves heard. Pennsylvania's sporting community has to get vocally involved," Staback said.


There are two reasons why they should, say supporters. First, some sportsmen's groups see the addition of Sundays as an opportunity get more children and adults, who are otherwise busy with competing activities and work, involved. Secondly, lawmakers see Sunday hunting as a potential economic bonanza.


A 2005 study done by Southwick Associates determined that allowing hunting on Sundays would generate $629 million in economic impact each year, with 1,627 new jobs created and $18 million in new state sales tax collected.


Evans has said he suspects those numbers would be higher now. The Legislative Budget and Finance Committee has asked Southwick to redo a portion of that study to see if he's right.
"Basically, we want to update the main economic table, which looks at the direct economic impact of Sunday hunting, the indirect economic impact, how many jobs it would create," said Phil Durgin, executive director of the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee. "I'd like to get that report released this fall, hopefully, by October."


That timing is critical, Staback said. Lawmakers who support Evans bill want to get it to Gov. Tom Corbett for his signature when they reconvene this fall, he said. If that effort fails, the bill might be hard to resurrect, he said.


National support for the bill might move elsewhere, too.


A group known as the Sunday Hunting Coalition - made up of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Safari Club International, National Rifle Association, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Pheasants Forever and others — has set a goal of eliminating the bans on Sunday hunting wherever they exist. It's focusing its money and attention on two states right now: Pennsylvania and Virginia.


If the Pennsylvania effort fails, it's possible the group will turn its attention elsewhere, said Chris Dolnack, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of the Shooting Sports Foundation.
"You have legislative cycles, so I think we'd have to assess that down the road," he said.
Staback doesn't want to see Pennsylvania miss out, but if that's to be avoided, sportsmen must speak up, he said.


"This is all dependent on Pennsylvania's sporting community getting vocally involved," Staback said. "Hunters cannot sit back and assume that this going to happen on its own. It's not going to happen that way."

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