Sunday hunting could produce no hunting at all

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

State Rep. John Evans of Erie appears to be unbespectacled in his Web page portrait. He might wear contact lenses. If he does, surely they are rose-colored.
How else to explain this impossibly Pollyannaish quote from Sunday's Patriot-News in Harrisburg, in a Don Gilliland story about the state-level debate over allowing hunting on Sundays?
"If you don't want Sunday hunting on your land," Evans said, "all you have to do is post your land 'No Sunday Hunting.' It's that simple."
And just who, pray tell, is going to enforce those postings?
State police? Hah. They'll say it's a Game Commission matter.
The Game Commission? Double Hah. Dead deer lie around for days, for weeks sometimes, before the Game Commission or PennDOT do anything about them.
The reality is that farmers and others who now open their lands to Monday-Saturday hunting are vehemently opposed to Sunday hunting for reasons ranging from religious principles to the simple desire to have one day a week free from "Bam!" and pickup trucks blocking driveways, strangers flouting the get-permission principle, etc.
They won't post "No Sunday Hunting," because getting it enforced is next to impossible. If enforcement does occur, the penalties are wrist-slaps. And let's remember, the trespassers who brazenly ignore "Posted against hunting" signs are all carrying deadly weapons. Confrontation and demands that the intruders leave do carry a real risk of escalation, and it only takes one shot to leave someone eternally dead.
Those among us who object will simply post our land against all hunting. That prohibition does get enforced, because there are seven days a week in which to enforce it.
Rep. Evans cites the overly optimistic forecasts of the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. To listen to them, we might be gulled into thinking that our taxes would actually go down as out-of-state hunters shower billions in bullion upon our touristy marketers.
Won't happen.
Instead, want-to-hunt visitors will have the disagreeable experiences of having no land on which to hunt.
The Legislature should reject the idea of Sunday hunting or restrict it to state-owned lands.