Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting PA Deer Season To Open On Saturday

I just wanted a longer Rifle season. I would've preferred an extra week tacked on to the end but I'll gladly take a Saturday up front. Yeah it screws with my tradition too. They did the same thing to Bear season a few years ago and I adapted to the Saturday opener and I figure this will be no different.

Habitat being what it is, subdivisions have made for a thriving Hunter’s Campfire forum.

Can't you hunt squirrel after deer season? How about the day after Christmas? Damn, millions of kids will never get to hunt now.

You're so funny.

Winter Rabbit and Squirrel season:

Dec 26 till Feb 28

All those great days to be together with family, sons and daughters. All ruined because of losing a Saturday to Deer. 😢😢😢😢 Damn that GC, they have no sympathy for family and friends.

Am I missing something here? If the extra Saturday for deer is to be the Saturday after Thanksgiving, how is that going to make small game hunters loose a day if the small game season is Dec 26 to Feb 28.....or is the sarcasm emoji still not present?

Hell, I can't count the number of rabbits, grouse and other small game I have killed while out deer hunting. Is multi-tasking that lost of an art?

Small game and deer (rifle) season are separate out here. It’s not like out west.

Mentioned previously a friends brother has top shelf Beagles and they kill at least 100 a year. Of course he works at keeping 4-5 Dogs all year.

Another guy has a Squirrel Dog that finds Squirrels you had no clue were there. Again, some effort involved.

Buds and I with Bird Dogs shoot bunches of GC Pheasants. Enough that it amount to 3-4K at a preserve. All for the cost of a $26.90 Pheasant stamp. I think I get my monies worth, but perhaps if I advocated tearing the GC apart I could do better.

Past year was perhaps the 3rd or 4th out of 20 or so i didn’t kill a nice Buck. And I could have shot a legal Buck, but passed. Could have shot Does also, but didn’t. Of course I hunted more than a little. I think every day but one. I sucked this year. I don’t think I can blame the GC.

If they don’t get their act together soon, I may have to start a protest.

I figured that was the case, but the dates we making me scratch my head....so I think battue had a sarcastic streak going on there....correct?

Correct.
That is an additional season that starts after Deer.

Some think that hunting then with family has less significance than the day after Thanksgiving. They must feel more like Pilgrims around Thanksgiving. As you know we are a traditional State to the extreme.

For clarity

Early small game used to end the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Now it will end on Black Friday.

Rifle season was traditionally separate from everything else. It was explained to me as a kid that this was to prevent deer poaching.. The logic being that if you were in the woods with a gun during deer season, you had to have a deer tag. It’s difficult to fathom, but PA’s deer herd (and many other species) was nearly wiped out in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It’s always been my understanding that the architecture and culture of game regulation in PA was shaped by recovering from this period.

Oh, I see now. There's actual "early" and "late" small game seasons....not just "early in" or "late in" THE small game season.

That makes sense.


Well that doesn't really make sense, but I see where my confusion was now.

End on Black Friday? The State is going to lose millions on sales tax from families out hunting. I bet the GC fools never gave it a thought. Break them up!!!!

Yea, they used to want everything to stop during rifle deer season. One exception was waterfowl (Fedeally Regulated migratory species). In recent years, the GC has deviated from this a bit, particularly with the blending of the late bear season with rifle season (in some units) and the open season on coyotes. When I was a kid, we didn’t have any coyotes, not in the western part of the state anyway. Now they’re abundant everywhere.

Never personally hunted turkey or small game Saturday after Thanksgiving.Squirrel phuggin stinks... grouse are pretty thin. Lost late season after Christmas and didnt bitch this much. Try again. Turkey hunting is for spring

I would have preferred if they kept the opening day for deer on the Monday following Thanksgiving. While I never took part in the events, it was nice to see everyone out on the weekend before, buying new socks, boots, etc. Even hitting the range to get that final sight in on their rifles. I always had my gear and guns ready long before the first day.

I don't really care one way or the other when the opening day is. I take 3 weeks of vacation starting the Friday before gun bear season opener and I'm off until the last day of gun deer season. What it this year's opening day doing to be like?? Well, I guess it will be more crowded in the woods, which I guess is what the PGC wants. More people moving around should mean more game being moved. We'll see.

But, based on the lack of deer I saw last year, I don't know if there are that many to move around!!

I was born and raised in PA and Deer season was the family heading to camp after Thanksgiving and spending 3 days getting ready for the opener. As a kid those 3 days were more exciting than the week before Christmas. It feels like another tradition has been lost.

Old-Willys,

I see you are in California these days. How many years out of the last 10 have you taken the 3 days before Deer season and went to camp? How many days did you stay in camp and hunt Deer?

For years on this forum, posters have been commenting about camps sitting empty on opening Day. Yet, we have more than a few against the Saturday change because of lost tradition.

I’ve been in the North country when the place went vacant of Deer hunters on Tuesday afternoon. The tradition seems to have died long before the GC decided to go with Saturday.

I get what old willys is saying. Understand totally. Like another poster said,I'll take the whole season off work anyway,so the opener isn't that big a deal to me. I do think it's silly without the addition of Sunday hunting. Would have seemed a better fit. At any rate. A mouth piece for the PGC at the Harrisburg show said they caught so much crap over Sunday hunting,and the semi auto debate, both are off the table indefinitely.

I think folks my age are just remembering all the good times they had over the last 40 or 50 years. Traditions. Camps. Ho!idays. All of it. There is a pretty strong "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" sentiment among people my age. I hunt Sat and Sunday in Colorado. Season opens and runs the requisite number of days. I really don't even think about it. It just the way they do it. I'll do what ever the law allows here as well. I do however, think sportsmen should have a vote. No a poll. A vote. Let the majority rule. I'm going to hunt. Here or somewhere else. Ain't America great?

Perfect example of the Pa problem: “I want to do it my way.”

“I don’t hunt small game on Saturday after Thanksgiving”. Some do. “Squirrel phuggin stinks.” “I don’t know what that means. But Pa has Squirrels pretty much everywhere and with a .22LR are great shooting practice for Deer. “Grouse are thin.” Well they are in most places. “Turkey hunting is for spring.” Well, some would just as soon hunt them in the fall.