(WHTM)– The Pennsylvania Game Commission changed the start date for rifle deer season in 2019, but did those changes actually lead to more people hunting?
Deer hunting has deep roots in Pennsylvania culture, causing many traditionalists to push back against the changes to hunting dates. The season originally started the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Changes proposed to Pennsylvania’s deer hunting season
The Game Commission said times have changed, with families busier and kids having more structured, scheduled events. More weekend days would give more opportunities to hunt. So, the date was changed to the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2019.
The goal was, in part, to attract more participants. But did it work?
The short answer is no. There were 855,000 hunters in 2019. abc27 News received the full numbers from 2024, which showed 844,000 hunters.
However, the Pennsylvania Game Commission insists that the decline would’ve been greater without the expanded and new dates.
“The fact is there’s not more participating, but the losses we’ve seen have slowed tremendously in the seven years leading up to the change in 2019, the seven years leading up to that, we lost over 80,000 general license fighters In the seven years since, we’ve only lost 22,000. So I don’t know that anybody really thought that we could turn that curve around instantly,” Deputy Executive Director of the PGC Dave Gustafson said.
Some Pennsylvania lawmakers want to go back to the old way, starting the season on the Monday after Thanksgiving. They said the experiment with changing dates didn’t work because Pennsylvania doesn’t have more hunters.
More than one million hunters prowled Pennsylvania’s woods in 1982.
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