I still have yet to hear an argument for why this makes sense. Having to take a day off to go hunting is not a reason.
This has nothing to do with Sundays. Folding all these issues together is a unwise. If you want to hunt Monday, hunt Monday. Anything else is concession—it’s letting it all slip away. I’ve hunted this season for over thirty years. The commitment I’ve made to making it happen over the last twenty is considerable. It’s never been convenient.
Rescheduling opening day of rifle season out of convenience is a huge mistake. Like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the 4th of July, it’s perfectly inconvenient.
I agree completely on tradition.
That said, if they moved it 2 weeks earlier on a Monday so it coincided with the rut, would that be a problem? Or is it the 1st Monday after Thanksgiving or nothing?
The deer movement usually sucks the 1st Monday after Thanksgiving in Pa. I've hunted it enough to know it's not really worth jumping through hoops to make the trip unless I just want to spend time hunting with my pard that lives down there....hell he doesn't even hunt the opener in Pa. any more he drives to Ohio as it's the same day
PA's rifle season is on the margins now more than anytime since the Great War. PA has so many other seasons early, the deer are all on high alert and they've gone nocturnal. Typically, having hunters in the woods moves deer during daylight. There'll be the odd straggler doe getting chased late and still hunting is an always an option, but the dynamic has really changed. All it takes is a modest sanctuary, off limits to hunters and that's where they'll spend the daylight hours.
Massive amounts of private land have been posted. Some is hunted, but very little of it experiences the kind of pressure (activity) it did when there were more hunters who were roaming around and with fewer boundaries. Opening the rifle season on Saturday does nothing to challenge the forces straining PA's hunting traditions. Opening Sunday to hunting year round, might create an opportunity to bring in younger hunters, but we're talking about kids who've got busier schedules than many adults. It's a tough situation.
At least for now deer hunting is memorialized in the form of an, albeit inconveniently placed, unofficial holiday on the Monday after Thanksgiving. It might not be the best season to hunt trophy bucks, but most who've lived it would agree it's about so much more than that.
