Some ruminations: As a kid I waited all year for one thing- deer season. Living on a farm, the way it worked was I hunted with my grandfather, as my dad could handle the work alone for a few days for us to go away. The four hour drive from south-central PA to the hunting camp in Potter County was almost an adventure in and of itself and made me even more eager for my 16th birthday and a driver's license. At that time buck season was 2 weeks, doe the 3rd week for usually 2 days. Bear season was Thanksgiving week. Gramps alternated schedules from one year to the next: go for bear and stay for Buck opener, the next year go for second week of buck and stay for doe. It made for a nice tradition. The time spent with that man, and the other mostly older gents in camp are some of my dearest memories. Those guys won WW2! a few younger fellows were in Korea. Vietnam had just ended when I started hunting and we only had a few guys in that age bracket. I learned absolutely inflexible gun safety rules from men who'd been there and done that. There were also strict rules about alcohol. If you were in camp Saturday night, you could have a few. No hunting on Sunday, and no drinking after dinner that night- no impairment on Monday morning. No one was allowed to touch a gun after bottles were opened! Once a new member thought that rule was just for show, and found himself expelled from camp. Permanently. Time passes, my family got out of farming and I could hunt with my Dad for the first time. We lived about an hour closer to Deer Camp, but the trip was still something special. After the season allowed both sexes at the same time, we didn't have to choose which week to schedule vacation time, we could just go hunt. That was okay. I never really appreciated that PA was unique in prohibiting Sunday hunting until I started chasing elk out west. My personal religious beliefs include sabbath-keeping, but growing up on the farm we had to be practical about it. We still had to do work on Sunday (it was a dairy farm, you gotta milk the ladies every day, and you gotta feed all the critters every day, no matter what day it is), but we only did what had to be done and not a full day's worth. I don't feel guilty hunting on Sunday when I'm in Montana, as my time out there is precious. With all the other changes in society that have stopped respecting sabbath-keeping, I don't know that hunting should be the one special exception. If PA does change the rule I'm okay with it. If they also approve semi-autos I'll probably buy an upper in 6.5 Grendel for my AR. Why? Why not? When it comes to guns I'm one of those fanatics who declares "I don't NEED A REASON, I just CAN because I want to." I do hope that anyone else who decides to go that route is mature enough to remember that just because you can shoot fast and a lot does not mean you should. My "hunting mags" will not be 30 rounders. After the novelty wears off, I may just keep using my bolt guns. After all, I put a lot of time into building, load development, and practicing my LR marksmanship. Who knows how we'll look back on this time in a few decades? No one can predict that, and it has always been that way throughout history. Reading history has the advantage of knowing how the story ended. Being in the story keeps us guessing...
Here's hoping for a good ending.
