Pennsylvania Outdoors Columnist
April 11, 2026, 4:13 p.m. ET
Pennsylvania’s rifle deer season approved, but debate continues
- The upcoming season will include three Sundays for the first time, expanding hunting opportunities.
- Officials believe moving the opening day to Saturday has helped stabilize the number of licensed hunters.
Rifle deer season will begin the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but the Pennsylvania Game Commission is still exploring the possibility of moving the season before the holiday in future years.
During the April 11 board meeting, the commissioners approved a variety of deer seasons including making firearms deer season Nov. 28 to Dec. 13. It’s the first time the season ends on a Sunday.
The legislature removed the partial ban on Sunday hunting in July 2025 allowing the agency to approve Sundays as part of regular hunting seasons. This year the rifle deer season will include three Sundays. Since 2019, the two-week season only included the first Sunday after Thanksgiving.
When the seasons were tentatively approved in January, the commissioners voted down a change to move the season up one week to start on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. However, during Saturday’s meeting, several board members spoke of still considering that earlier timeframe when more people are off school and work.More: Turkey hunters can expect a good season, annual harvest numbers climbNeed a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!
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“It was voted down as many of our board members felt that we had not educated our hunters as to why this was a very reasonable idea,” Michael Mitrick, commissioner for District 6 in southeastern Pennsylvania, said.
He heard comments from some hunters that the proposal was a realization that it was a mistake in 2019 of moving the opening day up two days from the Monday after Thanksgiving. “This was absolutely not the case,” he said.
He said the move away from the Monday opening day to Saturday did upset many of the camp hunters, but the change to Saturday and including that Sunday created more opportunities for people who have to go to work or school during the week.
The day before the voting meeting, Dave Gustafson, deputy executive director of the Game Commission, spoke about hunting license numbers and when rifle deer season should start. “This topic is really a purely social issue. It doesn’t matter whether your start the season on a Monday or a Saturday. A dead deer is a dead deer,” he said.
In 2000, Pennsylvania had 1,038,874 general hunting license holders compared to 837,791 in 2025. The composition of those hunter ages has changed. In 2000, there were 90,774 senior hunters and 103,719 juniors. In 2025, there are 167,391 seniors and 59,123 juniors.
“That’s something I think we can all agree is somewhat troubling when we look down the road to the mission of the Game Commission to work towards managing wildlife in their habitats for both current and future generations,” Gustafson said.
Since the changes with moving the opening day to Saturday and including three Sundays through the fall season, he said the licenses numbers have held relatively steady. “It’s a pretty flat cure. It’s not declining nearly at the same rate that it once was,” he said.
He told the board he believes the change to open deer season on Saturday is one of the things that has helped retain hunters. “I think we can demonstrate here very clearly that providing more opportunity has had an impact. It has slowed the decline,” Gustafson said.
During the voting meeting on April 11 Mitrick believes the change to Saturday from Monday has helped to maintain the number of hunters.
“From 2019, which was obviously the start of the Saturday opener through 2025, we’ve lost less than 1% of our hunters,” he said. “This was much less than any other state in the country. I’m really tired of hearing how this didn’t help. I cannot say that this was solely due to the switch to the Saturday opener, but I do believe it was a significant factor,” Mitrick said.
The challenge, he said, with the Saturday after Thanksgiving is that it rushed the holiday for some people and their camp experience during the busiest travel time of the year.
With many schools being closed during the Thanksgiving week, he said starting the hunting season on the Saturday before the holiday would reduce conflicts with the holiday. “Families that have friends or relatives in for the holiday would be able to hunt if they wished. The weather is more likely to be milder than it is the latter part of the season. Camp hunters would be able to take their days off before the opener and not be rushed so they could enjoy their camp traditions instead of taking days off of work after Thanksgiving as in the past,” he said.
The move would require the firearms black bear season to also move up one week to avoid an overlap of the two seasons.
“I would simply request that our deer hunters think about moving the rifle deer opener to the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I do believe there are many good reasons to take this into consideration,” Mitrick said.
Commissioner Robert Schwalm, board secretary from Lehigh County, agreed that moving opening date up a week deserves further discussion. “We have an obligation to structure our hunting seasons in a way that creates the greatest opportunity for the greatest number of hunters. That is especially true for younger hunters who we are going to rely on to manage and carry our hunting heritage forward,” he said.
Commissioner Todd Pride from Chester County also wants more information about moving the date forward. “I think there’s a lot of valid reasons to explore moving the firearm season opener before Thanksgiving. But I just want us to be mindful of the things that we’ve heard over the last few years regarding the preparation and travel that go into starting this season. We’ve got a lot of different constituencies, whether or not it’s deer camps and others,” he said.
The board also had lengthy discussions on when Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) and antlerless deer seasons should be held and the length of the Agricultural Deer Control programs.
With the DMAP program, there were discussions about having the season continue after firearms deer season and have a shorter season after Christmas. The DMAP firearms season for antlerless deer will run Dec. 26 to Jan. 24. Extended regular firearms for antlerless deer in Wildlife Management Units (WMUs 4A, 4C, 4D and 5A) will be Dec. 26 to Jan. 18. In WMUs 2B, 5C and 5D, the season continues another week to Jan. 24.
The board adopted Aug. 1 to April 15 for Agricultural Deer Control programs. The board had discussed proposals to widen the season to run July 1 until the first day of May, but opted for dates similar to last year, Aug. 1 to April 15.