A Pennsylvania law that has prohibited hunting on Sundays for more than 150 years could soon be eliminated, as legislation overturning the state’s Sunday hunting ban awaits the governor’s final signature. Gov. Josh Shapiro plans to sign the bill into law during a ceremony on Wednesday, according to the bill’s lead sponsor, House Rep. Mandy Steele (D-Cheswick).
“I did get a call from his team that we’re going to do the signing,” Steele tells Outdoor Life. “The details have not been confirmed, but we’re ready to roll on Wednesday, and that’s the plan as of now.”
If it does become official later this week, the legislation will remove the Sunday hunting prohibition from state law and allow the Pennsylvania Game Commission to decide which Sundays could be added to the hunting calendar. The state already allows hunting on three consecutive Sundays each year, thanks to a law passed in 2019, while the original hunting restriction law enacted in 1873 allows the hunting of just coyotes, foxes, and crows on all days including Sunday.
“These restrictions will hinder our residents no longer,” Sen. Dan Laughlin (R-Erie) said in a statement his office shared with OL. “Pennsylvania hunters, young and old, will now have the chance to fully participate in a cherished outdoor tradition while also continuously building family bonds and enjoying our commonwealth’s great outdoors. This is a change I am truly proud to have fought for.”
But the larger debate around hunting on Sundays in Pennsylvania has been a political flashpoint in recent years, and previous attempts at overturning the age-old law have failed repeatedly. This session was different, says Steele, whose bill passed both chambers of the state legislature in June.
An environmentalist-turned-hunting-advocate, Steele tells OL that as a mother and now a hunter, she’s come to see the benefits of hunting and fishing — and how these outdoor activities can be an “incredible grounding force” in a young person’s life. They can also bridge partisan divides. Steele says the push to repeal Sunday hunting has been an opportunity to rewrite a traditional political narrative, in which conservatives support hunting and liberals oppose it.
“I’ve been fighting this [narrative] for a couple of years,” Steele says. “And with this [bill], I was able to speak to my progressive Democrat members in Philadelphia in a way that resonated with them — that hunting is a way to connect people to the land and make them care about the Earth. So a lot of people who are not typical hunting advocates, I’ve been able to get them on board.”
A companion bill authored by Sen. Laughlin failed to gain traction, however, and most of the opposition to the law change has come from right-wing lawmakers, with roughly a third of Republican state senators and more than half of Republican state representatives voting “no” on the bill. (Click here to see the full breakdown in the House and Senate.)
Voting ‘No’ for Key Constituents
It’s unclear exactly why each of those Republican lawmakers voted against the bill. A total of 11 Democrats in both chambers also voted “no.” The most common refrain from the opposition in past years has been tied to religion, with traditional lawmakers pointing to the Sabbath as sacred.
“A lot of the sticking points that we’ve run into are on the religious side. There’s a lot of Republicans [in particular] who feel that Sunday is a day of rest,” says Sen. Laughlin’s communications director Chris Carroll. “Sen. Laughlin’s view is that you don’t have to hunt on Sunday, but your freedom shouldn’t be restricted either. You should have the ability to choose.”
Rep. Dave Zimmerman (R-Reinholds) says he’s a hunter himself, but that he voted against Steele’s bill because his rural district includes a number of small farms owned by Amish people, many of whom vehemently oppose the idea of hunting on a Sunday. Zimmerman says some of these same farmers have traditionally allowed public hunters to access their private lands during the other six days of the week.
“My vote was really just honoring and protecting my Amish farmers, who don’t want people on their farms hunting on Sunday,” Zimmerman tells OL. “Now, a lot of these folks are saying that if this actually passes, they’ll most likely post their properties. That just takes away places that have been available to all hunters.”
Carroll says the repeal of the Sunday hunting ban has been a key piece of Laughlin’s agenda since his election in 2016, when he joined forces with Sen. Jim Brewster, a Democrat who retired in 2024 after trying for years to repeal the 152-year-old “blue law.” In 2019, Laughlin spearheaded legislation to add three consecutive Sundays to PGC’s hunting calendar each year.
That 2019 rule change also moved up the opening day of Pennsylvania’s deer season from the first Monday after Thanksgiving to the first Saturday after the holiday. Carroll says this calendar shift upset some Republican lawmakers and their constituents, especially those in rural counties, who’ve complained that the few days’ gap between Thanksgiving and the Monday deer opener were key to both their holiday traditions and the economic livelihoods of their small towns. He expects that some of the lawmakers who voted “no” this session did so to protest that 2019 rule change.
“The [Monday opener] was an important tradition going back many generations, [and] we’ve already moved away from that,” Zimmerman says. “And depending on who you talk to in the House chamber, [that resentment] is absolutely still there.”
Support for Hunters’ Freedom to Choose
Steele says this pushback from some Republicans has been “mind boggling,” especially considering the support the bill received from the state’s Farm Bureau and the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The Pennsylvania Farm Bureau had opposed the law change in past years, but supported both Laughlin’s and Steele’s more recent bills, which were amended to include tougher trespassing penalties and the addition of a new agriculture representative for the state Game Commission, according to WESA News.
The PGG, meanwhile, has cheered the bill every step of the way. In a statement after the bill’s initial passage through the House on June 11, the agency noted that the repeal of the Sunday hunting ban “would benefit hunters and help ensure the future of wildlife management” by keeping hunters engaged and contributing their conservation dollars. And in a separate statement issued June 30, the Game Commission’s executive director Steve Smith said clearing the final legislative hurdle showed “the broad support for the bill” among sportsmen’s groups and other Pennsylvanians.
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This aligns with a statewide poll conducted in 2024, where nearly half (49 percent) of respondents said they were in favor of Sunday hunting, compared to roughly a third of respondents who opposed it. Around 16 percent of respondents said they were undecided regarding the longtime ban on Sunday hunting.
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