Opponents of Saturday deer opener cite negative economic, social impacts

A few years ago, Randy Santucci’s deer hunting season would begin at a leisurely pace once Thanksgiving was over.

“People would start trickling into camp on Saturday, we’d do a campfire Saturday night, my brother would fly in from South Carolina with a bunch of dove breasts from hunting, and I’d bring walleye,” said Santucci, 63, of McKees Rocks. “That’s the experience that brings kids and young hunters into the fold.”

When the Pennsylvania Game Commission shifted the opening day of deer rifle season in 2019 to the Saturday after Thanksgiving, one of the main reasons officials cited was more hunting opportunities for adults who had to return to work and children who had to return to school the Monday after the holiday.

If hunting license sales are any indication, however, things have not gone as planned. Now, state Rep. Brian Smith, R-Brookville, is seeking support to return the start of the season to Monday.

Resident adult and resident junior hunting licenses, the two primary sales categories, have been on a steady downward trend since 2014. The exception was 2020, when outdoor activities statewide increased during the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic.

The Game Commission is not the only group that has seen hunting-related revenue shrink the past few years.

Nonprofit organizations and small-business owners who live and work along the corridors leading from Pittsburgh to Pennsylvania’s northern tier have taken a sizable economic hit since the change.

“A year ago, I’d estimate we lost between $12,000 and $15,000 in business that weekend,” said Eric Vandyke, owner of Arrowhead Outdoors & Hardware in Tionesta, Forest County. “When the opener was on Monday, people would come up to camp, do projects and be around more often. Friday and Saturday were very busy days, and we’d even put extra staff in the store.”

The past couple of years, Vandyke said, most hunters were headed back home after hunting opening day Saturday.

Tradition change

That’s not the type of hunting tradition that Santucci wants to see after decades of camaraderie and fellowship at his hunting camp. Santucci, along with fellow hunter and Ohio resident Dan Davila, founded Facebook groups that tout a return to the Monday opener and that register opposition to the change to Saturday.

One of the groups, “Pennsylvania Hunters Against the Saturday Deer Opener,” has nearly 5,000 members. As an illustration of how stark the divide is between supporters and opponents, another group, “Pennsylvania Hunters Who Love the Saturday Opener,” has about 6,000 members.

In addition to the intrusion on tradition, Santucci said there are the stops he and other hunters make along the way to camp, spending money in small towns up and down the Route 66 and Route 28 corridors in places such as New Bethlehem and Brookville.

“We’d stop at the hardware store, the grocery store,” he said. “And when you go into the sporting goods store, it’s almost like being on vacation — money seems to flow out of your wallet a little more quickly than usual.”

Nonprofit organizations also typically scheduled fundraisers and events around the Monday opener, with some counting on them to fund their budgets.

At the Tidioute Area Volunteer Fire Department in Warren County, ambulance coordinator Shawn Silvis said that with the exception of 2022, the department’s past four gun raffles have seen attendance dip from between 300 and 400 to about 60 people.

“It’s hurt us, and it’s hurt the economic situation in general,” Silvis said. “Hunters in the past would come up to open their camps, they go to the local restaurant for lunch, they come to our Saturday night gun bash. That weekend is kind of the last hurrah for a lot of local businesses before the dead of winter.”

Smith, who was elected to the state House in 2021, has seen it firsthand. Several major corridors to northern-tier hunting camps run directly through his district that covers Jefferson and part of Indiana counties.

“We’ve totally lost the family side of hunting,” Smith said. “I don’t have a camp, but we hunted on a family farm. After Thanksgiving, Friday and Saturday were spent cleaning things out, talking with friends I see once a year.”

Smith also has heard from constituents about the economic impact.

“I spoke with a local Lions Club that used to have a big breakfast on Saturday morning, and they stopped doing it because people just weren’t showing up anymore,” he said. “Our gun shops and outdoors shops made money that weekend, and it got them through the cold months until fishing season starts.”

Smith is seeking co-sponsorship for a House bill that he says would consist of one sentence: “The season will start the Monday after Thanksgiving.”

Smith said state Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Lehigh/Northampton, reached out to him to coordinate a companion bill in the Senate.

“Many of these businesses are still trying to recover from the covid shutdowns, and, if moving opening day back to Monday will help them thrive, it is something we in the Legislature should consider,” Boscola said. “Even if the bill does not move, introducing it will start a conversation about what is in everyone’s best interest.

Smith said he is thrilled by Boscola’s interest.

“It shows there’s a lot more support than even I originally thought,” Smith said. “I don’t care which bill gets through. I just want to fix it.”

Limited effect

For Jack Gress, president of the White Oak Rod & Gun Club in North Huntingdon, the Saturday opener hasn’t appeared to have the intended effect.

“We have not noticed any increase in young people’s interest in hunting, Saturday opener or no,” Gress said. “For us older hunters, it’s tradition to go to your camp, take care of the facilities, be with friends. Each group of hunters has their own idiosyncrasies, and that’s a very important part of it, especially for younger people. You have a younger teen going to camp maybe for the first time, and they’re really enamored with the traditions and things that go on.”

For Becca Latini, 26, of West View, the Saturday opener has been nothing but detrimental to hunting in Pennsylvania.

“When I took an interest in hunting, I was taught about tradition and camaraderie,” she said. “With this change, we are teaching youth that it is only about the kill — you rush to get to camp, to get into the woods. That’s not what hunting is about. We are failing the future of hunting.”

Latini’s father, Fred, a Harrison native, agreed.

“I’ve been going to our camp in Benezette for the last 56 years,” he said. “I spent the whole opening weekend with my family, hearing World War II stories from my great uncles, playing cards and learning the true tradition of hunting from my father and grandfather. We cherished that weekend more than killing a trophy buck. Those memories are more important than any deer I’ve killed in my entire life.”

Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman Travis Lau said commission officials have received feedback from opponents of the Saturday opener about the social and economic impact it is having.

For Klint Macro of Plum, president of the Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League, his initial fears about the opening-day change have come to fruition.

“Less people are going out into the woods,” he said. “You have to negotiate Thanksgiving, and, in Plum, they’ve stopped giving Monday off for deer season. I think it’s done the opposite of what the commission wanted, and it’s unlikely they’re going to change their policy. But with some legislation out there, maybe they can move the opener back to Monday.”

Santucci said he is happy to see that opponents’ pleas seem to have reached the ears of legislators.

“I can understand if a hunter wants to stay local,” he said. “Maybe they don’t have a big family get-together on Thanksgiving, or they hunt on a game land near their house. But they don’t understand how big an impact that weekend can have. It’s been going on for 60-plus years, and, thankfully, legislators are now seeing it.”

The Game Commission will take a final vote on the upcoming season and bag limits in April.