Well considering I started hunting in 2004 when I was 12 I guess I could consider myself as one of the new generation of hunters. In that time the biggest change to rifle season was the removal of doe from the first week of the season. That honestly negatively effected rifle season in our camp to the point it is near unrecognizable from what it was just a few short years ago. We used to go up Friday after Thanksgiving and stay at camp till Wednesday, the opening two days our group of 12 would get 6 to 10 deer and spend Wednesday butchering. Those were honestly some of the best vacations I've ever had.
After they removed doe from the first week our opening day harvest numbers plummeted. We only managed to get 1 buck total the first three years after the change when we should have gotten 18 to 30 deer. Part of this is because 2/3rds of our harvests are does and partially because no one was shooting the deer simply stayed put. At that point we stopped staying up till Wednesday as watching nothing but does, spikes and fork horns run by for two straight days didn't do much for camp morale. Without anybody harvesting deer my two cousins started only coming up for the weekend and leaving Sunday night before stopping coming up all together, our other friend decided to use his vacation time elsewhere and the old guy hung it up entirely. Our group of 12 dropped to 6 or 7 in the matter of a couple years with the new rules.
So what does this have to do with the opener moving to Saturday? I fully expect it to fragment our group even more. My uncle and our friend frequently have to work Saturday so they may elect to skip the opening weekend entirely since they would miss the opening day. If people can't hunt the opener then why head up Sunday to only hunt bucks on Monday and Tuesday, they might as well wait till the following weekend when they can also shoot does.
Next thing you know the once special opening day of deer season is now just like any other weekend, traveling up Friday night, hunting Saturday and going home Sunday. Gone would be the five day trip to hunting camp, the three days of hanging out, getting hyped up and ready for the opener on Monday, the campfires the camaraderie and toasts to the good times passed and those ahead. To me it removes what makes the opening day of rifle season so special and cheapens the experience.
So forgive me if I'm not sold on this "change", the changes that would provide a positive benefit with no downside such as Sunday Hunting and allowing semi autos for deer hunting have been shelved while the only change we seem to get is ones that screws over us and many other hunters for my favorite weekend of the year.
Well your story ties in exactly to what Ive said. That being that hunting in PA, especially deer hunting, was at one time a (tradition). All, and I said (all) the schools statewide were closed for the first 3 days of the (bucks only) season when I was in school, and still in some areas when my kids were in school.
But it has slowly changed over the years to being something else. Im now 83 years old, so I definatly qualify as being a fudd. My first season was 1947, 2 years after ww2, and during those war years very little hunting took place as a result of a thing called gas rationing, which placed severe limitations on travel for other than absolute necessities.
Like getting to a defence factory job if you weren't serving in the military. Tires were rationed also, which meant that even if you squirled away some gas stamps, your tires probably wouldn't make the trip anyway. It also took an entire day to travel the roughly 225 or so miles from SE PA to NC PA where a few of us traveled to hunt, mostly in cars having no heat.
As for doe seasons, there weren't any, and when they did start, it was by doe permit only for 2 days after the 2 week buck season was over.
But thats where the first noticeable change in hunter habits began to take place.
More and more hunters gave up on the first days of buck in favor of just the last day or maybe 2, and then staying on till the Monday following which allowed for a sure thing with a doe kill. Thats also when the yelling started seriously over Sunday hunting. I knew a few guys who never killed a deer after many years of hunting, but they always went back, because it was in their blood to do so.
Take a look at where we are today with the country as a whole, and it should come as no surprise as to where we are as for hunting. An average season for our group of 6 to 8 hunters would see 2 bucks killed in a week. A very good season would see 4 at most, and that was by hard hunting by way of organized drives.
So im sorry for my old fudd attitude, but I just cant grasp the need for killing 8 to 10 deer in 2 days of hunting, in order for it to be a worthwhile event.
But thats exactly why so many of those nice old camps are no longer being used.