{"id":175073,"date":"2026-04-24T17:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/175073\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T17:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:54:12","slug":"did-changes-to-pennsylvanias-deer-hunting-season-hurt-the-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/175073\/","title":{"rendered":"Did changes to Pennsylvania\u2019s deer hunting season hurt the industry?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">(WHTM)\u2013 The Pennsylvania Game Commission changed the start date for rifle deer season in 2019, but did those changes actually lead to more people hunting?<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a data-yga=\"{\" ylinkelement=\"\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/articles\/changes-proposed-pennsylvania-deer-hunting-144218209.html\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:Changes proposed to Pennsylvania\u2019s deer hunting season;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Changes proposed to Pennsylvania\u2019s deer hunting season <\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The goal was, in part, to attract more participants. But did it work?<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">However, the Pennsylvania Game Commission insists that the decline would\u2019ve been greater without the expanded and new dates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThe fact is there\u2019s not more participating, but the losses we\u2019ve 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\u2019ve only lost 22,000. So I don\u2019t know that anybody really thought that we could turn that curve around instantly,\u201d Deputy Executive Director of the PGC Dave Gustafson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">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\u2019t work because Pennsylvania doesn\u2019t have more hunters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">More than one million hunters prowled Pennsylvania\u2019s woods in 1982.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a data-yga=\"{\" ylinkelement=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.abc27.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27.;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \"> For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(WHTM)\u2013 The Pennsylvania Game Commission changed the start date for rifle deer season in 2019, but did those&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43696,28,9183,30,29,78454],"class_list":{"0":"post-175073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-deer-season","9":"tag-pennsylvania","10":"tag-pennsylvania-game-commission","11":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","12":"tag-pennsylvania-news","13":"tag-the-game-commission"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}