Committee advances bill to allow Sunday hunting, change trespass rules and other Game Commission provisions after multiple failed amendments

House Bill 1431, a broad amendment to Title 34 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes addressing Sunday hunting, trespass penalties, Game Commission board composition, deer urine use, and a self-reporting system for deer removed for crop damage, was reported out of the House Game and Fishery Committee after a contentious debate and several failed amendment votes.

Paul read the bill summary to the committee: the legislation “would amend Title 34… to provide for Sunday hunting and would change provisions and penalties related to trespassing on private property while hunting. It would require at least one member of the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Board of Commissioners to have agricultural background. It would allow for the use of deer urine while hunting and would establish a self reporting system that allows a person assigned to remove deer for crop damage purposes to report each harvest to an officer of the commission via toll free phone number, online application, or publicly accessible Internet website.”

The committee considered four named amendments. Representative Maloney offered an amendment to let sportsmen and sportsmen’s groups nominate and select Game Commission commissioners; Griffin (committee staff) summarized that amendment as providing for “the nomination and selection of game commission commissioners by a vote of the sportsmen and sportsmen’s groups.” That amendment failed on roll call.

Representative Smith offered an amendment to restore the traditional Monday deer opener and argued the Saturday opener change had hurt hunters and businesses; Smith asserted the Game Commission had not studied economic impacts of its prior change and repeated that the Commission’s executive director had said the opener change did not affect license sales. Smith’s amendment also failed on roll call.

Chairman Maloney offered two amendments to restrict agency practices: one to ban the use of high-polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) sealants (essentially asphalt) on Game Commission properties and another to ban glyphosate herbicides on Game Commission properties; both amendments were summarized by committee staff and both failed on roll call. Maloney described concerns about glyphosate and said the agency should “lead by example” on wildlife management practices.

Representative Steele, the bill sponsor, urged passage and described a coalition supporting the bill, saying it had the full support of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen, and Hunter Nation. Steele said Sunday hunting would provide additional opportunities for busy families, help farmers facing crop damage, and assist wildlife managers with herd management.

Chairman Maloney spoke at length against portions of the bill, raising several concerns: he warned that changes to trespass rules could increase penalties for people who mistakenly believed they could retrieve dogs and recounted a recent prosecution of a hunter in Lancaster County; he said waterfowl compensatory days could be reduced if Sundays were added to other hunting calendars; he questioned deer population estimates and allocations, citing testimony that antlerless doe allocations had been increased to 1,300,000 with an estimated 1,500,000 deer on the landscape; and he called for more detail on unintended consequences.

After debate and the four failed amendment votes, the committee voted to report House Bill 1431. The transcript includes a roll-call sequence for the report vote in which many members voted yes and some no; the chair announced the bill “passes” the committee and it was reported to the full House for further consideration.