Starting this weekend, hunters will have more opportunities to catch seasonal game.

Sunday hunting is normally illegal in Pennsylvania. But thanks to state legislation passed in 2019, Sunday hunting is allowed for three consecutive weekends in mid-November and early December. The Pennsylvania Game Commission hopes a state ban on Sunday hunting will be completely lifted next year.

Travis Lau, communications director for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, said it is only a matter of time before restrictions on Sunday hunting are lifted.

“The bill that was moving through the Legislature here and up until the last few weeks, when the session ended this week, had traction. It was moving,” Lau said. “But we ran out of time before the end of the session.”

The bill passed the House in June with a yes vote from every representative, and has been in the Senate ever since. It will have to be reintroduced in the next session, which doesn’t start until the new year.

Lau said expanding hunting opportunities will help bring in more hunters.

“If they don’t have enough time to go into the forest, they are less likely to buy a permit,” Lau said. hunters that we see, not just here in Pennsylvania, but across the country.

Even though Thanksgiving is coming, hunters won’t be able to hunt turkeys or migratory birds for the next three Sundays.

“It’s a matter of population management,” Lau said. “If you want to provide more opportunities on a day of the week like Sunday, that season would have to be shortened somewhere else. So it would be a trade-off that hunters probably wouldn’t want to see.”

More details about Sunday’s extended hunt can be found in the Hunting & Trapping Digest.