Feb 19, 2019 2 min read

Here we go again. A bunch of shirt-and-tie political know-it-alls are going to fix our deer season. They are going to change our starting day of Monday to the prior weekend. Even though Monday has worked for decades. This is why there is a decrease in hunters?

Hey, know-it-alls: How about the people traveling to the mountains? Now they will have to call off Friday to get there to hunt Saturday. 

Six days a week is plenty enough of hunting days without contaminating Sunday, God’s day of worship and rest. The decrease in hunters and deer was created by these know-it-alls who are using deer hunting as a pawn. They allow pen-raised deer and issue permits for private owners to raise one or two trophy bucks, but yet can create diseases that could wipe out a whole herd. They have allowed eastern counties to use feeders to harvest deer. They have increased deer permits to 800,000, the total number of deer in the state of Pennsylvania. They have allowed the release and growth of coyotes that kill off our fawns year to year. This pawn is to please our insurance companies and big business, oil and gas. 

They have allowed cross bows that shoot 100 yards. This increases poaching and crippling of bucks, and you can’t hear them going off. They have implemented a point system for 20 years that does not work. Show me “one” 8-year-old buck harvested in this state. There are none.  Because of poaching, increases in deer permits and coyotes, hunting has become a political pawn to benefit no hunters but to satisfy big companies to legalize semi- and automatic weapons. 

Let’s be hunters first, as our ancestors were, and let the permits, pawning, money, greed, self-righteousness and politics be taken care of Sunday at worship. You can’t beat nature, and you surely can’t control it. 

John T. Thomas

Washington