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The Case for Sunday Hunting

            The need to compete with hunting opportunities offered in other states, including our neighboring states of New Hampshire, Vermont and New York, may finally tip the political balance toward Maine sportsmen who have always harbored the desire to enjoy their favorite outdoor activity on Sundays.

            Governor John Baldacci’s bold move to authorize Sunday hunting in his proposed new state budget is unprecedented, and sportsmen will have to step up and speak out to win the legislature’s endorsement of the governor’s proposal.

            SAM will alert its Rapid Response Team and encourage allied organizations to support us in this major effort to achieve a long-standing goal.

            The governor’s budget includes authorization for Sunday hunting for all species in all seasons except the regular firearms season on deer.

            That deer season includes substantial problems between landowners and hunters and evokes the greatest threat that more land will be posted if hunters are able to hunt on Sundays.  So the governor – as well as SAM and DIF&W – has chosen to set aside that issue as we work together to fix the department’s financial problems.

            SAM has proposed legislation, sponsored by Senator Bruce Bryant, Senate chair of the Fish and Wildlife Committee, to establish a special Sunday hunting opportunity for landowners during the firearms season on deer.  We are pursuing that legislation and goal vigorously.

41 States

            Sportsmen in 41 states are allowed to hunt on Sundays, including in New Hampshire and Vermont – perhaps the most conservative and most liberal states in the country.  In those states and elsewhere, sportsmen must wonder what is so wrong with the sportsmen of Maine that we cannot be allowed to enjoy our favorite activity on a day when every other human activity flourishes, from bingo to bar hopping.

            An article from the November, 1999 issue of Outdoors Unlimited, a publication of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, put the Sunday hunting prohibition this way:  “In these 10 states, it’s perfectly legal on Sunday to attend a sporting event and cheer as opposing teams comprised of 300-pound millionaires attempt to inflict bodily injury upon each other, go to a bar and get cross-eyed snickered, then stop by the video store on the way home and rent a XXX-rated movie.  But do deer hunting?  No way, Jose!”

            After that article was published, West Virginia authorized Sunday hunting, leaving Maine as one of only nine on the “Never On Sunday” list.

            Sports Afield magazine, in June of 2002, put it this way:  “For hunters in nine states across the country, there is no opportunity to hunt on Sunday.  For those of us who have always enjoyed the opportunity to hunt all weekend, the notion of outlawing hunting any day of the week seems like a hangover of Prohibition and, in fact, it is.  These blue laws continue to rob millions of hunters of the opportunity to enjoy their favorite pastimes on one of the two days a week most don’t have to earn a paycheck.”

            Articles like this – in major publications – put the state of Maine in a very negative light and hinder the opportunity to expand our hunting economy.  In fact, the sale of hunting licenses in Maine has been flat for the last three decades, as the revival and explosive growth of the nation’s hunting economy passes us by.

            Hunters are the last victims of blue laws in Maine.  Prohibition didn’t work – except against us!  The prohibition is both unfair and embarrassing.  Maine hunters should not have to apologize for wanting to enjoy their hunting heritage every day of the week.  They should not be treated like scurrilous second class citizens who have to put their guns in the cabinets and their dogs in the kennels on Sunday.

Sportsmen Speak Out

            SAM receives many letters each year from sportsmen who resent the Sunday hunting prohibition.  Many are poignant, like the following from Bill Laflamme of Oakland.

            “As a child growing up in Maine and interested in the sport of hunting, it was difficult to be able to get to go hunting with my Dad since, as with many fathers, he had to work on Saturdays.  To be able to take my brother and I hunting, he was faced with the difficult decision of whether to take us out of school on his day off.  Needless to say, this was not something he did too often. 

“All during high school and college the same held true.  I hunted Saturdays while my Dad worked.  Hunting is a sport passed on from generation to generation.  If Sunday hunting had been available at that time we would have surely spent more time pursuing game together.  This is probably true for a lot of Maine kids,” concluded Laflamme.

Laflamme’s Dad died before Maine families got to hunt together on Sundays.  Bill and his Dad never shared a hunt on Sunday.  That is a shame that we must rectify for future generations of hunting families.

Here’s a letter that relates directly to the economic concerns of this unfair prohibition, from Maine resident Bob Carter.

“I am the owner of two field springers who, due to my business, never achieve their potential in the state of Maine due to Sunday blue laws.  I am consequently obliged to cross the border to New Hampshire, along with other of my shooting friends, to give our bird dogs what they need most – honest to God field work on wild birds!  I must therefore totally endorse the proposed Sunday law on small game from both a sportsman’s perspective as well as a businessman’s who appreciates the revenue a day in the field can bring to our state.”

The outrage that Maine hunters feel over this issue is brought home by the following letter from Joe Ferguson of Windham.

“Look, I’m a 52-year-old mechanical contractor who works about 70 hours a week.  I don’t play golf, tennis, or watch football, etc.  I fish and hunt.  Let me hunt on Sundays if I choose to, instead of just wishing I could spend just one more day hunting with family members and bird dogs.”

Perhaps sometime soon Sunday hunting will be as accepted as Sunday shopping.  A history lesson could help.

In the 1980s, Maine people were prohibited from shopping on Sundays in all but the smallest of stores.  A ballot measure initiated by citizen petition got onto the referendum ballot, and after a hard fought campaign pitting small stores against large stores and malls, Mainers voted to allow Sunday shopping in all stores – but only by the narrow margin of 52 percent to 48 percent.

Almost half the voters didn’t want shopping on Sundays.

Today, few would give any thought to Sunday shopping.  It has been accepted in a big way.  It is unthinkable – today – that we would be prohibited from shopping on Sundays.

Perhaps Sunday hunting will follow the same path – controversial at the start – but widely accepted after a brief transitional period.

That is certainly the hope of Governor John Baldacci, SAM, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and sportsmen throughout Maine and the nation.

Now, we’ll see if Maine legislators are willing to step up for Maine sportsmen and our hunting economy.