Lawmaker, PA commission, Sunday Hunting!


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Lawmaker wants commission to decide if Sunday hunting is OK

By Reid Coploff , Staff Writer

State Rep. Ed Staback, D-Archbald, wants to keep politicians from deciding the issue of whether to allow more hunting on Sundays.

On Thursday, he introduced a bill in the state legislature that would remove the prohibition on Sunday hunting and place the decision to legalize it in the hands of the state Game Commission.

"It would put them in the position to decide whether Sunday hunting could be used as a game management tool," said Staback, minority chair of the house game and fisheries committee. "It would take the political people like me out of the process."

It is legal to hunt only foxes, coyotes and crows on Sundays in Pennsylvania. Thirty-five states allow full Sunday hunting.

Staback said House Bill 904 is identical to one he proposed last year, which he said was submitted too late in the year to pass. However, it led to House Resolution 927, passed in November, said state Rep. Bruce Smith, R-Lewisberry, chairman of the House Game and Fisheries Committee.

The resolution calls for the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to study the effect Sunday hunting would have on hunters, landowners and the economy.

Smith said he hopes to have a report on the study by June. After that, he said the committee will act on Staback's bill.

If the prohibition on Sunday hunting is lifted, the commission would look to institute it only where appropriate, according to Pennsylvania Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser.

A 2002 study found that 58 percent of landowners who do not prohibit hunting on their land would be more likely to post against hunting if Sunday hunting were legalized, he said.

Ed Grasavage, former state president of Quality Deer Management Association and a member of the Governor's Advisory Council on Hunting, Fishing and Conservation, has been surveying hunters at recent sportsmen shows. Ninety percent of the people he talks to favor Sunday hunting, said Grasavage, of Pittston.

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