Saturday deer opener not good for some businesses

When the Pennsylvania Game Commission changed the traditional opening day of the rifle deer season last year from the Monday after Thanksgiving to the previous Saturday, the reaction was mixed among customers at Dallas Sporting Goods in Shavertown.

But owner Bob Albee wasn’t in favor of the change when it was enacted in 2019, and he’s even more opposed to it today after he saw a drastic decline in business.

“Normally, the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving are my busiest days leading up to the Monday deer season opener,” Albee said. “As a small business, I relied so much on those sales and depended on it as a push to get through the slower times of winter. But I didn’t do well at all.”

Albee said he purchased extra inventory in preparation of the deer season opener, but three-quarters of the stock still remains unsold. He also paid for advertising in a local newspaper, but only had five customers on Saturday and four the following day.

“The last minute sales disappeared because of the change. Saturday was Small Business Saturday, but all of my customers were in the woods,” Albee said.

The drop in business at Albee’s shop was experienced by businesses across the state, according to one hunter who is pushing the PGC board to restore the Monday deer season opener.

Randy Santucci, who resides in Robinson Township near Pittsburgh, serves as a regional director for The Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania and is a former member of Governor Corbett’s Advisory Council for Hunting Fishing and Conservation. He gathered sales data from 10 hunting-related businesses across the state that reported they lost a total of more than $360,000 last year during the weekend after Thanksgiving because of the change to the deer season opener.

The economic impact, coupled with widespread opposition among hunters across the state, according to Santucci, is reason enough to do away with the Saturday opener and move it back to Monday, he said.

“The evidence shows that hunters didn’t support it, and the economic indicators show it was a poor decision,” Santucci said. “The weekend build-up before opening day brings a lot of economic stimulation to rural areas and small businesses. Losing that is a big impact to them.”

He added that other businesses, such as restaurants, also lost revenue due to the deer season opener change, along with non-profits such as fire departments that hold events for hunters during the weekend.

“From a hunter perspective it’s difficult balancing family obligations of the Thanksgiving holiday and a quick turn to the Saturday opener, and from a business standpoint it resulted in an entire weekend of lost revenue,” Santucci said. “The economy needs to be considered in this decision.”

However, for the Game Commission, the change to a Saturday opener was good for the agency’s business.

Faced with an annual decline in license sales, the PGC saw the trend reverse this hunting season. As of Dec. 31, 2019, general hunting license sales totaled 849,573, a .40 increase over the same period from last year. License revenue also increased by more than $235,000 over the previous year.

Dupont resident Stanley Knick, who represents the Northeast Region on the PGC board, said he hasn’t spoken to any businesses about the impact of the Saturday opening day, but he questioned if the lost revenue from that weekend wasn’t made up somewhere else.

“People probably went out earlier and bought things. I can see an impact to businesses on that weekend, but they probably did more sales earlier,” Knick said.

He attributes the increase in license sales to the Saturday opener because it provided more opportunity for younger hunters and those who couldn’t take Monday off from work.

Knick also said, in regards to the northeast, he didn’t hear many complaints.

“I think the Saturday opener was fine with a lot of people. We’re giving youth more opportunity, and that’s what this was about,” Knick said. “I didn’t talk to a lot of sportsmen’s group or deer camps, but I did talk to the regular people and everyone seemed to be happy.”

Santucci doesn’t believe it, and said he spoke to sporting goods shops in the northeast who said many of their customers didn’t like the change. He added that a PGC survey conducted in 2017 revealed that 65 percent of hunters opposed changing opening day. He added that last year 81 percent of the 1,300 comments received by the Game Commission were against the Saturday opener, and agency staff reports given at the April 2019 working group meeting didn’t support the change.   

The PGC board approved a motion at its quarterly meeting on Jan. 25 to keep the Saturday opener in place, add the following Sunday and open all 14 days of the rifle deer season to both antlered and antlerless deer. Still, the measures need final approval at the board’s next quarterly meeting in April. In addition, the House Game and Fisheries Committee has scheduled a hearing on the Saturday opener to be held on Feb. 20 in Washington County.

Knick said he’s undecided about making the entire season concurrent for buck and doe, and he’s still forming an opinion on keeping the Saturday opener in place.

Albee isn’t the only business owner in the area that would like to see it change back to Monday.

In Lackawanna County, Irene Panfili, owner of Hunter’s Gallery in Lake Ariel, said her business was down during the three days after Thanksgiving, but not as much as she anticipated.

Still, Panfili agreed that a return to the Monday opener would be best from a business standpoint. If the Saturday opener does remain and the following Sunday is added, she said it will definitely have more of an impact to businesses such as hers.

“We can only do so much to try and make up the lost business, and I’m not going to open and make my employees work on Thanksgiving because we lost the weekend,” she said. “From a business standpoint, the Monday opener worked much better.”

• This story originally appeared in The Citizens’ Voice newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.