This story comes from our partner, 90.5 WESA.
By Tom Riese
For more than 150 years, hunting in Pennsylvania has been widely limited on Sundays, due to “blue laws” designed to protect the day’s religious significance. But this month, a bill from Fox Chapel Democrat Mandy Steele will change that, after passing both legislative chambers. This week, Governor Josh Shapiro is expected to sign the legislation, which will expand opportunities for hunters of deer, turkey and bear.
The new law will give authority to the state Game Commission to open up additional Sundays and follows a 2019 law signed by former Gov. Tom Wolf that expanded hunting to three Sundays set by the commission. (Those who hunt crow, coyote and fox could already set out on Sundays.)
Steele might seem an unlikely sponsor for the bill: She’s known as an environmentalist and is not a lifelong enthusiast.
“I came to hunting on my own as an adult woman [in my 40s] — I’m not from a hunting family, my husband does not hunt,” said Steele.
But after traveling and learning more about the activity, she said it’s become “a real passion.”
“I have spent a lot of time in remote, wild places — the Mongolian steppe, the West African bush,” Steele told colleagues on the House floor last month. “Working with people who are living close to the land, I saw how hunting not only provides sustenance, but it enriches people’s lives, a valued and core part of families and cultures around the world.”
These days Steele hunts small game and turkey. She has also gotten her children into the sport: The family went spring turkey hunting earlier this year, she said.
“I see clearly that hunting has a grounding effect,” Steele said. “It awakens an ancient part of the brain when you’re out in the woods studying animals and observing plants and patterns, you develop a connection to the land that really inspires in you a desire to protect and conserve.”
Hunting also protects farmers’ crops and important forest ecology, Steele added, by thinning out deer herds and Canadian geese gaggles, considered “nuisance wildlife” by the Game Commission.
And the values of hunting, Steele said, are on par with the green policies she ran on when she was elected in 2022: “Hunters are responsible for some of the largest land acquisitions and conservation efforts we have ever seen in this country.”
Now in her second term, Steele has pushed for banning “forever chemicals” in products, giving tax credits for homes with green roofs, adding decommission requirements for solar panels, and exploring options to use environmentally-friendly concrete and asphalt sealant. Some of these ideas have stalled in the House or have yet to be introduced, but the sealant proposal has passed the chamber and now sits in the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.
But Sunday hunting appears to have a broader appeal. When the House approved the measure by a vote of 142-61 last week, dozens of Republicans broke with their party to support the bill, including Allegheny County’s Natalie Mihalek and Andrew Kuzma.
Just before the vote, Steele gave nods to Republican state Sen. Dan Laughlin of Erie, who ran a similar measure this session, and former McKeesport Sen. Jim Brewster, a Democrat, who she said also fought for a similar law before he retired. Steele noted the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen and Conservationists and Hunter Nation supported the legislation, along with (not surprisingly) Hunters United for Sunday Hunting.
The Senate approved the measure by a 34-16 vote. Pittsburgh Democrat Lindsey Williams opposed the bill, while ‘yes’ votes came from Republicans Camera Bartolotta and Devlin Robinson, as well as Democrats Jay Costa and Wayne Fontana and Nick Pisciottano.
Debate on the bill ranged from how hunting could disrupt peaceful Sundays for hikers — a reason Williams said she voted ‘no’ — to how to regulate the sport on private land when landowners give permission (a written note must be carried on Sundays). Lawmakers even disagreed on a provision to test deer urine, used to attract bucks, for chronic wasting disease (no such tests will be needed).
The Pennsylvania Game Commission applauded the legislation. In a statement, executive director Steve Smith said the agency “worked hard on behalf of Pennsylvania’s hunters to help get this bill across the finish line.”
The law takes effect 60 days after Shapiro signs it. But a game commission spokesperson said the agency would also need to take the initiative to schedule the additional Sundays, so “It’s not yet known when the earliest new opportunities will be available, but we intend to implement this year.”
“Wildlife biologists, land conservationists, all of these people together arguing that we’ve got to get more to the woods, and the best way to do that is Sunday hunting,” Steele said. “I am just so excited and honored to be the legislator that is gonna finally get this win for Pennsylvania hunters.”
Steele has another hunting-focused bill, which passed the House last week. It would lower the price of a hunting license for out-of-state college students from $102 to $21, setting it on par with state resident rates.
