The Pennsylvania Game Commission changed the most popular deer hunting weekend in 2019, moving the more than 60-year tradition of a Monday opener after Thanksgiving to Saturday.

As Thanksgiving is the most travelled family holiday of the year, you can understand how that created problems for hunters with family conflicts. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of hunters travel considerable distances to go to camps and hotels. This rushed time frame, losing two days, breeds further contempt for the Saturday start.

Businesses en route to hunters’ final destinations were no longer patronized due to time constraints, and these small shops in rural northern Pennsylvania lost their Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, for some their most profitable sales weekend of the year.

There was a compromise to put one of the newly approved Sundays in the following weekend, creating 13 continuous hunting days starting with the Monday opener. If you couldn’t hunt the Monday, you had a two-day weekend, just a few days away, but the PGC commissioners chose the quantum leap that divided hunters, rather than this more sensible balanced approach. There was no deer management or biological basis for this change.

Initially, changing the Monday deer opener was opposed by a strong majority of hunters. From an overwhelming 89% of opposition contacts directly to the PGC during the public comment period, to an earlier hunter survey revealing 65% opposed. A myriad of other metrics was brought forth that historically guided decision-making of the PGC board, yet five of eight commissioners ignored them all. There was obviously more driving this decision than sound assessment of data.

After passage, due to strong opposition, a three-year evaluation was promised by PGC commissioners to then-House Game and Fisheries Committee chairmen Bill Kortz, an Allegheny County Democrat, and Keith Gillespie, a York County Republican. This promise was made when the PGC board was summoned back to Harrisburg by the committee to reconsider their vote.

The three-year evaluation never happened.

Kortz retired and the PGC board did not have a seated quorum at the three-year review date, so the seasons and bag limits were just passed through to 2022, as protocol requires. Gillespie, seemingly too engrossed in his re-election campaign at the time, did not request another PGC board meeting after a seated board quorum was achieved just a few weeks later. Gillespie is now in a lame-duck situation, losing his bid for re-election.

The evidence was clear before changing the opener: Strong opposition was voiced to the agency and validated by PGC staff surveys.

The Saturday opener hurt hunters in terms of travel, scouting time, traditions, youth involvement and opening of camps. It also hurt business patronage as well as nonprofit and first-responder fundraising events — organizers utilized that weekend in small northern towns for some of their most important fundraisers. These activities were as much a part of deer hunting as the hunt itself.

What previously was the “Super Bowl” weekend of Pennsylvania deer hunting now feels like a pre-season game for far too many, if they can make the game at all.

Assessment of almost all factors the PGC commissioners claimed would benefit our sport didn’t unfold. Even resident youth license sales continued their decline each year of the Saturday opener. Some like the Saturday, but the damage to peripheral issues have been far-reaching. This has divided hunters, and that one aspect alone shows all the opposition was indeed valid.

Recent movements, The Coalition to Reinstate the Monday Deer Opener and a Facebook group called Pennsylvania Hunters Against the Saturday Deer Opener, are steadily growing. Podcasts for these two groups explain the Saturday opener story for Pennsylvania hunters and legislators alike. Go to YouTube and search “Opening Day Sportsman” and watch these three podcasts. One podcast includes former PGC Commissioner Jim Daley. He validates the mistake of the Saturday change and exposes the “big lie” (his words) by the PGC for the recent elimination of rifle use for fall turkey hunting as well.

When contrasting all the pros vs. cons of the Saturday opener experiment, it was a relative failure.

(Randy Santucci, rsantucci2022@gmail.com, of McKees Rocks is a past president of Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania and was a member of former Gov. Tom Corbett’s advisory council for hunting, fishing and conservation. Dan Davila, ddavila2112@gmail.com, of Boardman, Ohio, is a longtime Pennsylvania hunter and camp owner.)