ROBERT F. BUKATY/Associated Press A hunter examines ground scratched by deer while hunting in this photo from 2023. The Pennsylvania Game Commission is allowing hunting on Sundays.

There is no doubt that hunting is less popular than in past years. While there are many reasons for the decline, one of the main reasons given by those who no longer hunt is time. With 40-plus-hour work weeks, other obligations and, if they have children, sporting events, there is little time left to hit the woods.

Equally at fault is that these adults who no longer hunt are also not introducing their children to hunting. The future generation of hunters is never getting a chance. But many observers — including the Pennsylvania Game Commission — are banking on Sunday hunting to help reverse that trend. If so, there is hope that the hunting tradition will continue to be strong for many years to come.

Anyone who has grown up in Pennsylvania knows that hunting, especially deer hunting, is a deeply rooted tradition. Prior to the Saturday opener, rural schools would be closed on the first day of the season. Workers save their leave to be off during hunting season, which often leads to small businesses closing for peak hunting days. Some communities, rural fire companies and community centers count hunting season as peak revenue periods thanks to traveling hunters and fundraisers such as pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners.

A drop in the number of hunters means a significant change to more than just the Game Commission’s bottom line.

License sales hit an all-time high in 1982 with a record 1.3 million licenses sold. Since then, there has been a steady decline of approximately 3% per year. By 2017, the number of licenses sold had dropped to approximately 845,000.

Although Pennsylvania still ranks second in total licenses sold — behind only Texas — the downward trend does not look good, especially when the Game Commission does not receive any general fund monies.

But what can be done?

As license sales started to drop, fish and game departments across the nation started looking at the three Rs — recruitment, retention and reactivation, bringing new people into the sport, keeping those you already have and getting previous participants to rejoin.

Part of this effort was determining why people were not hunting, and almost every survey listed time constraints as a top reason. People are just too busy. With full-time jobs and short winter days, many potential hunters only have Saturday available to hunt.

Add potential overtime, kids’ sports and other family obligations, and even Saturdays become a maybe.

But will adding Sundays turn this trend around? We will not know until at least next summer when the 2025-26 season ends and the last license is sold. Even then, the numbers will not be a solid indication of the future, which will take several years of data to determine.

What we do know is that adding Sunday hunting will provide additional opportunities, almost two weeks of extra days across the various deer seasons, and it has helped in the past.

In the 2019-20 season, Pennsylvania hunters saw the opening day move from Monday to Saturday. License sales increased by 0.4% before opening day, while there had been a 3.4% decrease during the previous season. While 0.4% may not seem significant, it is a lot more impressive when you consider not only the increase but the avoided decrease that has become customary over the past two decades.

During the 2020-21 season when the first Sundays were added to the season, the Commission sold a total of 860,743 licenses, once again showing an upward trend. By the 2024-25 season, the upward trend continued with a 0.75% increase. The hope is that adding additional Sundays, increasing doe tag allotments, and guaranteeing residents a first-round doe tag will drive that number even higher.

Of course, to see long-term sustainability, there needs to be increases in the number of younger hunters and the number of hunting parents who return to the sport.

We will need to wait and see.