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12 a look to the future It was midsummer and Mandy, Derek, Tyler, and I were in Harrisburg. I was so glad to be there. We’d spent the past three days camping at Assateague Island National Seashore with Greg, his wife, Jill, and their son, Jared. It had had its moments of fun—camping on the sand, waking up to see sika deer wandering past just outside the tent, getting out of the ocean to see wild ponies napping near the beach towels. The mosquitoes, though, had been relentless. Our last night in camp had been spent huddled around a picnic table under a screened canopy, counting down the hours until we could leave and dreading the thought of having to run the bug gauntlet from the tents to the vehicles the next morning. Staying in a hotel in Harrisburg had never felt so good. I was working through the day, covering a meeting of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, while Mandy and the kids hung out at the hotel pool. The evenings were ours to spend together. One night, before going to dinner, we stopped in a Gander Mountain store. We went back to the gun department so that Derek and Tyler could look at the youthsized rifles and shotguns, like the pint-sized .22 rifles with brand names like the Cricket and the Chipmunk. Derek, who was less than six months away from turning twelve and looking forward to being able to hunt for the first time that fall, tried shouldering a longbarreled , adult-sized bolt-action .30-06 rifle. He had to nearly bend over backward to be able to hold it level, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was too excited. “What kind of animals will I be able to hunt this year?” he asked, taking aim at one of the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. “Well, you’ll be able to hunt all kinds of small game, like squirrels, rabbits, pheasants, and grouse. You’ll be able to hunt turkey. And you’ll turn twelve just in time to hunt does in October,” I said. “Does? You mean I get to hunt deer? Ahh, cool!” he said. Derek didn’t realize it then, and still doesn’t now, but chances are that the hunters of his generation will grow up with more opportunities to hunt deer than their parents could have ever imagined. But those increased opportunities will be accompanied by equally dramatic changes in the backdrop against which hunting is enjoyed. One thing the hunters of tomorrow may have, for example, is the chance to hunt on Sundays. As of the fall of 2004, Pennsylvania was one of only six states— all in the Northeast—that still prohibit Sunday hunting. The ban, similar to one that forbade Sunday fishing in the state until 1937, is a remnant of the state’s “blue laws,” which also previously prohibited stores, movie theaters, and the like from being open on Sundays. The ban dates back to 1873. “When I was a kid, you couldn’t buy gasoline on a Sunday,” said the fifty-something Steve Mohr, a former game commissioner. “They weren’t allowed to be open. The department stores weren’t allowed to be open. When I was twelve and we were traveling to Clinton County to do some hunting or fishing, we carried two five-gallon cans of gasoline because we knew we wouldn’t be able to buy it. But times change.” Pennsylvania’s Sunday hunting prohibition is not a complete ban. Hunters can pursue crows, foxes, and coyotes on Sundays. Whether to allow Sunday hunting for more species has always been the question. Those who favor Sunday hunting believe it would have many benefits. Ray Smith is a professional hunting guide. He takes dozens of Pennsylvania hunters to Kansas and Texas each year to pursue turkeys and white-tailed deer. Getting sportsmen from elsewhere to hunt those same species in the woods around his Lycoming County home, where they are as plentiful as anywhere, is a lot tougher. There are a couple of reasons for this, Smith said, but the biggest is that it’s illegal to hunt on Sundays in Pennsylvania. Hunters who work through the week and might not be able to get off until Friday just don’t want to travel to Pennsylvania for one day’s hunting. “It would be much easier for me to sell a hunt, be it for deer or turkeys or...

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