YES WE SUPPORT HB1719 TO PROTECT PA GAME COMMISSION GAME FUND

 

Hunters United For Sunday Hunting    

huntersforsundayhunting@gmail.com

717-350-6741

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE AND DISTRIBUTION

Hunters United for Sunday Hunting supports the recent introduction of Pennsylvania House Bill 1719, Session 2023 which would clarify and stipulate the use of the PA Game Commission Game Fund and establish by law that it can only be used to support the mission of the PA Game Commission. HB1719 will keep the PA Game Fund intact and prevent any following attempts by the PA legislature to raid the PGC funds.

HB1719 would correct and resolve any ensuing actions such as those currently in PA HB1300  that immediately transfer $150 million from conservation and places a tax estimated at $10 million per year on the real property that the PGC holds.  Both of these violate the rules of the PA Game Fund as it relates to the Pittman and Robertson Act which allocates yearly federal dollars to every state.  The PGC would lose an estimated $40 million per year because of these actions.  Once Pittman and Robertson's funding is lost there is no solution or option for when it could return, if at all.

The PGC is funded primarily by hunting and furtaker license sales; State Game Lands timber, mineral, and oil/gas revenues; and a federal excise tax on sporting arms and ammunition; the PGC is almost entirely supported by hunters and trappers, or assets that have been procured with license dollars. The PGC does not receive state General Fund appropriations.

The PA Game Fund is designed to be used in support of the PGC mission to manage and protect wildlife and their habitats while promoting hunting and trapping

for current and future generations.  Citizens of the Commonwealth have the

expectation and understanding that the PGC will do as sanctioned and that these

funds are to support things such as habitat improvement, wildlife enhancement, and

all other conservation efforts for the 480 species of wildlife in the state

from the biggest bear or elk to the smallest pollinators.

HB1719 will enhance, protect, and provide a path for the successful use of the PA Game Fund “based on the needs and best interest of the sportsmen and sportswomen of this Commonwealth.”

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For more information about this topic, please contact

Hunters United for Sunday Hunting 

Executive Director Kevin Askew at 717-350-6741 or by email at

huntersforsundayhunting@gmail.com 

View our Blog - https://huntersforsundayhunting.blogspot.com/

HB1719 - This legislation is supported and endorsed by: 

Pennsylvania Cooperation Conservation Organizations

Hunters United for Sunday Hunting

Hunter Nation

  

WHAT IS GOING ON WITH SEVEN-DAY-A WEEK HUNTING? WHAT IS THE HOLD UP?

As the official start of Pennsylvania hunting season quickly approaches and as we prepare to go afield to enjoy our sport the question that is on many of our minds is; what is going on with seven-day-a-week hunting?  What is the holdup?  The answer is simple.  The politicians in Pennsylvania are sitting on the legislation for no specific or real reason.  PA Senate Bill 67 has been in the Senate Game and Fisheries Committee since February 23, 2023, without any action.  Senator Greg Rothman controls that committee.  He along with all committee members is well aware that hunter-conservationists want this bill passed. There are 30 conservation organizations that support SB67 and the Pennsylvania Game Commission having full regulatory authority to set seasons and bag limits all days of the week. 

Mr. Rothman and his staff have asked, requested, and have been provided with specific information for the distribution and education of colleagues.  The cohort working on this legislation has provided all the necessary resources, guidance, knowledge, and details as possible.  Barring any bizarre request there is nothing else to provide or do.  Mr. Rothman and his colleagues must do their part.  Without that time will only pass and hunters and conservation will lose out.  
 
It has been said that Senator Rothman as a Republican representing Cumberland, Dauphin, and Perry counties is an outdoorsman for the outdoorsman, is a hunter-conservationist, and has the future of our sport in mind.   Based on his leadership one might question this. 

So when you are asked; What is going on with seven-day-a-week hunting?  What is the holdup?   The only response that can be given is that the politicians of PA are once again wasting our time afield.  

Here's how to help.  Make the politicians understand this:

Changing and updating the law will save much-needed legislative time, effort, and money.  The legislative standard is to be Sunday-inclusive.  There is no bill that makes it through the legislative process of drafting, proposing, voting, and signing into law that excludes Sundays.  Hunting on Sunday deserves to have the same principle and standard applied.

Click here to find your legislator

PA GAME FUND & PITTMAN AND ROBERTSON FUNDING. WHO SHOULD WE TRUST? POLITICIANS OR USFWS?

 

      WHO KNOWS BETTER?  THE POLITICIANS OR THE PEOPLE WHO HANDLE AND DISTRIBUTE THE FUNDING? 

It's time that the politicians start providing proof of their narrative regarding HB1300 and the money grab from the Pennsylvania Game Fund.  Our proof has been provided by the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen and comes directly from the agency that manages, handles, and distributes Pittman and Robertson Funding; the United States Department of the Interior

"Income derived from a lease or fee to property acquired, constructed, managed, maintained or produced using license revenue is also considered license revenue (50 CFR § 80.20). License revenue must be controlled by the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) and used only for the administration of the PGC (50 CFR § 80.10(c)).  If PGC loses control of license revenue or license revenue is used for purposes other than the administration of the PGC, the Service may declare your agency to be in diversion and ineligible to receive PR-Wildlife Restoration Program funding (50 CFR § 80.21)."

PUBLIC AND EDUCATION SERVICE REMINDER.....

The PA Clean Streams Fund was formed to assist agriculture and has nothing to do with hunter-conservation.  Pennsylvania's Clean Streams Fund was created with $220 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, and funds conservation programs including ACAP, designed to share the costs to farmers for farm management practices that reduce sediment in waterways, keeping the nutrients out of waterways, and on the farm to build soil

THE GREAT RAID OF THE PENNSYLVANIA GAME COMMISSION GAME FUND

 

Hunters United For Sunday Hunting  

huntersforsundayhunting@gmail.com

717-350-6741

Click Here - Tell the Politicians DON’T DO IT!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE/DISTRIBUTION

Hunters United for Sunday Hunting opposes any further action and is highly disappointed with the provision in  Pennsylvania House Bill 1300, Session 2023 that would loot the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Game Fund of over $150 million and negate nearly $40 million of Pittman and Robertson yearly funding; as well as the taxation of PGC real property estimated at $10 million per year.   There is nothing to be gained and much to be lost with this unprecedented transfer of funds.

HB1300 immediately steals $150 million from conservation, loads over $10 million of taxes on the backs of PA’s hunters and fishermen in the form of a per acre tax on our public lands, and takes Pennsylvania’s eligibility of nearly $40 million for federal Pittman and Robertson funding away.

As currently written, HB1300 would transfer $150 million from the PA Game Fund to the Clean Streams Fund, a complete misnomer at best.  The PA Clean Streams Fund was formed to assist agriculture and has nothing to do with hunter-conservation.  Pennsylvania's Clean Streams Fund was created with $220 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, and funds conservation programs including ACAP, designed to share the costs to farmers for farm management practices that reduce sediment in waterways, keeping the nutrients out of waterways, and on the farm to build soil health.  This transfer of monies in HB1300 is substantial with long-standing detriment to hunter-conservation with less funding immediately available and putting Pittman and Robertson funding at risk and loss. All to provide another free money stream to an already heavily subsidized agriculture industry.

Pennsylvania received more than $38 million from federal Pittman and Robertson funding in 2022.  A state's Game Fund is the only designated account to receive the annual federal disbursement.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has set a rule that does not allow any diversion of license funds.  The $150 million transfer to the Clean Streams Fund will violate the USFW rules and immediately exempt PA from receiving the annual allocation from P&R.

HB1300 also dictates that the PGC pay taxes on real property to counties, townships, and school districts.  That tax assessment is over $10 million per year.  The PGC is exempt from paying taxes on this type of property.

As stated earlier, there is nothing to be gained and much to be lost with this unprecedented transfer of funds.  The hunter-conservation community will not be able to absorb or compensate for this immediate loss of $200 million and any future deficit created by this legislation.

The PGC is funded primarily by hunting and furtaker license sales; State Game Lands timber, mineral, and oil/gas revenues; and a federal excise tax on sporting arms and ammunition; the PGC is almost entirely supported by hunters and trappers, or assets that have been procured with license dollars. The PGC does not receive state General Fund appropriations.

The PA Game Fund is designed to be used in support of the PGC mission to manage and protect wildlife and their habitats while promoting hunting and trapping for current and future generations. Citizens of the Commonwealth have the expectation and understanding that the PGC will do as sanctioned and that these funds are to support things such as habitat improvement, wildlife enhancement, and all other conservation efforts for the 480 species of wildlife in the state from the biggest bear or elk to the smallest pollinators.

To the entire Pennsylvania Legislature:  It has been reported that Pennsylvania has a surplus of $13 billion in its budget.  With that amount of money immediately available; why set the PGC on a path for which they may not recover?  Why place an unneeded and unnecessary tax burden on the PGC and hunter-conservationists? Why make the calculated and conscience decision to exclude Pennsylvania from future federal Pittman and Robertson funding?

If the answer is to support the Clean Streams Fund, which as stated and published is to assist in farm productivity with such things as ‘concrete barnyards, heavy use area protection, manure storage, agronomic or ecological practices like cover crops, planted streamside buffers, stream-bank fencing, and grazing systems to conserve water and soil resources and farm productivity.  That answer is not good enough.  We as hunter-conservationists pay our way.  We expect our hunting monies to be used for the specified purposes, not to build concrete barnyards or purchase cover crops for a farmer to plant.

If the goal of HB1300 and the transfer of this money is to change hunter-conservation in PA, it will definitely do that. Just not for the better. 

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For more information about this topic, please contact Hunters United for Sunday Hunting 

Executive Director Kevin Askew at 717-350-6741 or email at huntersforsundayhunting@gmail.com 

View our Blog - https://huntersforsundayhunting.blogspot.com/

SB67 LETTER TO SENATORS OF THE PENNSYLVANIA GAME AND FISHERIES COMMITTEE

 

Hunters United For Sunday Hunting  

huntersforsundayhunting@gmail.com

717-350-6741

Senators of the Pennsylvania Game and Fisheries Committee as the lead organization along with the 26-group cohort advocating for Repealing Sunday Hunting Prohibition in Pennsylvania, Senate Bill 67 please take a moment to read this correspondence.  As you discuss, consider, and vote take a moment to understand the coherence of this bill.  SB67 simply removes the 341-year-old blue law that prohibits hunting on Sunday.  SB67 plainly provides full regulatory authority to the Pennsylvania Game Commission to set seasons and bag limits seven days a week.

The legislative standard is to be Sunday-inclusive.  There is no bill that makes it through the legislative process of drafting, proposing, voting, and signing into law that excludes Sundays.  Hunting on Sunday deserves to have the same principle and standard applied.

Hunter-citizens of Pennsylvania have been asking for an update to the blue law for over 50 years.  They want the ability, opportunity, and choice to be able to hunt on Sunday.  The past stumbling block of religion is merely a moot point.  All forms of recreation are allowed on Sunday; fishing, ATV, horseback riding, canoeing, hiking, baseball, football, basketball, and all other organized sports without concern of creed.  Businesses are no longer closed on Sunday as they once were under the blue law.  So why shouldn’t the law be changed accordingly to authorize hunting on Sunday? 

The fact is hunting is occurring on Sundays.  Hunting occurs on the three designated Sundays by exemption to the law along with foxes, coyotes, crows, and non-regulated hunting grounds.  The Pennsylvania Game Commission manages and sets the criteria for this.  There is no reason they shouldn’t be provided with full regulatory authority to set seasons and bag limits for all huntable species regardless of the day of the week to coincide with the Agriculture Code set in 2007 which allows for agriculturists and farmers to hunt and harvest animals all days of the week including Sunday.

The time has come to trust the Pennsylvania Game Commission to do as they are charged and manage the wildlife resources for generations now and future.  You as legislators are in a position to provide that path of additional options and opportunities for current and future hunters.  In order to do this it takes the courage to change and remove the archaic blue law that prohibits hunting on Sunday.

There will be nothing lost but much gained with a YEA vote on SB67.  Landowners will still have liability protection under 2007 Act 11.  Sunday only written permission requirement remains.  The purple paint law is unchanged.  The only change is the ability, choice, and opportunity to hunt on Sunday as a person so chooses as set by the limits of the PGC. 

It is truly time to end this 50-year quest and listen to the words of Senator James Brewster from the previous SB147 vote on this very subject; “When we passed the bill and ran the bill my comment was this will be a complete non-event to folks.”  Those words held true then and they will hold true now.  You have an opportunity to effect much-needed, much-asked, and well-deserved change.  It’s time to look to the future and let go of the biases of the past, “If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future,” Winton Churchill.

Thank you for your time and hope you vote favorably on SB67.  

Kevin B. Askew, Executive Director, Hunters United for Sunday Hunting

Senate Bill 67  Repealing Sunday Hunting Prohibition in Pennsylvania 

Supported and endorsed by: Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners, Hunters United for Sunday Hunting, Hunter Nation, Pennsylvania Governor's Youth Council for Hunting Fishing and Conservation, United Bowhunters of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Hunters Sharing the Harvest, Hunting Works for PA, Delta Waterfowl, Safari Club International, Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, National Deer Association, National Shooting Sports Foundation, Cervicide, Meat Eater, HOWL for Wildlife, Sportsmen’s Alliance, Hunt Quietly, Camps4Vets, Hunt Of A Lifetime Foundation, Ruffed Grouse Society/American Woodcock Society, Steel City Bowhunters, Wild Sheep Foundation, Hunters of Color, Harvesting Nature

HUSH STATEMENT TO PA GAME COMMISSION APRIL 2023

Hunters United For Sunday Hunting    

huntersforsundayhunting@gmail.com

717-350-6741

            

Statement to Pennsylvania Game Commissioners, April 15, 2023, Public Meeting

Executive Director Burhans, Commission President Mitrick, Vice President Schnepp-Giger, District Commissioners, and Staff:

As the executive director of Hunters United for Sunday Hunting thanks for the opportunity to submit this letter as part of the Pennsylvania Game Commission April 2023 public meeting.  

As Pa. Game Commissioners you and your agency have a very tough job.  The mission of managing and protecting wildlife and their habitats while promoting hunting and trapping for current and future generations. You have to balance as much opportunity as the wildlife resource can support while also looking to the future of the species and the sport of hunting. 

Hunters United for Sunday Hunting would like to recognize the nine of you for what you and the agency have and are doing for the future of hunters and the Commonwealth as a whole.   It is because of the decisions, dedication, commitment, and fortitude you have as commissioners that the outdoor industry including hunting, shooting, and trapping added more value to our commonwealth’s gross domestic product than all of Pennsylvania’s farms, all of Pennsylvania’s oil and gas wells, and even all of Pennsylvania’s lawyers as recently reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, United States Department of Commerce. 

As commissioners, your support and efforts to bring more hunting opportunities not only on Sunday but all days of the week are positively affecting the state economically and with hunter participation.   The 21st-century lifestyle is very busy.  Businesses are no longer closed on Sunday as they once were under the blue law.  All forms of recreation are allowed on Sunday; camping, fishing, all-terrain vehicle riding, horseback riding, canoeing, hiking, etc. There has been nothing lost by having Saturdays and Sundays available for hunting.  Just as with any other activity or daily function in people's lives, if they don't like it, they don't have to participate regardless of the day of the week.

As Abraham Lincoln said; “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”

Please stand firm to the agency's mission as the work continues to get Senate Bill 67 through the legislative process and into law for the full regulatory authority to set seasons and bag limits that include Sunday.

Sincerely;

 

Kevin B. Askew

Executive Director, Hunters United for Sunday Hunting

HUSH STATEMENT TO PA GAME COMMISSION JAN 2023

    

    Hunters United For Sunday Hunting

    huntersforsundayhunting@gmail.com

    717-350-6741

      

    

    

Statement to PA Game Commissioners, January 28, 2023, Public Meeting

Executive Director Burhans, Commission President Mitrick, Vice President Schnepp-Giger, District Commissioners, and Staff:

As the executive director of Hunters United for Sunday Hunting thanks for the opportunity to submit this letter as part of the PA Game Commission January 2023 public meeting.  

As you well know the mission to bring full regulatory authority to the Pennsylvania Game Commission to decide seasons and bag limits all days of the week including Sunday is alive and well.  Senate Bill 67 has been drafted, prepared, and placed in the legislative process for the 2023-2024 session.  With your continued support of having full regulatory authority to set seasons and bag limits that include Sunday, there is no doubt that Senate Bill 67 will make progress during this legislative session. 

Though mentioned often it deserves repeating.  The fight to bring hunting on Sunday has never been about a particular species or season. It is not about deer, it is not about specific seasons, it is not about this firearm or the other. It is about the increased opportunity based on your agency's resource first model and the North American Model of Wildlife Management.

As commissioners, your support and efforts to bring more hunting opportunities not only on Sunday but all days of the week are not going unnoticed.  It is having a positive effect across the state.  Just take a look on any forum for the 2021-22 hunting season it doesn’t take long to find, see or hear about someone being able to mentor, or a new hunter being afield,  re-engaged hunters able to participate once again, along with the majority of hunters thankful for more species being available to hunt on the three given Sundays.  Please continue doing what you're doing.  Your work is helping. 

Take comfort knowing Hunters United for Sunday Hunting will remain steadfast in our mission now and in the future.  As a grassroots organization representing hunter-conservationists throughout the state that advocates for less political interference in wildlife management and more opportunities and choice allowing for more participation of all hunters.  Hunters United for Sunday Hunting will oppose any legislation that is drafted that removes wildlife management decisions or the ability to set seasons, dates, and bag limits from your control.   

In closing please continue to support and educate people, legislators, and organizations on Senate Bill 67 and what it specifically means and does for the Pennsylvania Game Commission and for conservation in the Commonwealth.  Carry on with being as inclusive as possible for all huntable-game on the three Sundays. Most importantly have faith that hunter-conservationists and conservation organizations understand that as commissioners when faced with a decision, be it an easy right one, or a hard-correct one.  That decision will always be based on the PGC mission and what is best for the wildlife resources of PA.

Sincerely;

Executive Director, Hunters United for Sunday Hunting