ACTION ALERT: Tell Pennsylvania Legislators — Don’t Turn Elk Killing Into a Holiday
**A bill in Harrisburg would create an official “Pennsylvania Elk Hunt Day.” Pennsylvanians who see elk as neighbors, not trophies, need to speak up now.**
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## What’s Happening
Rep. Jim Haddock (D-Lackawanna/Luzerne) has circulated a co-sponsorship memo for a bill that would designate October 3 — the opening day of this year’s elk hunting season — as “Pennsylvania Elk Hunt Day.” The date is meant to mark the 26th anniversary of Act 111, the 2000 law that created Pennsylvania’s elk hunting license.
Read that history again: Pennsylvania’s elk were hunted to local extinction by the late 1800s. It took over a century of painstaking restoration work — reintroduction, habitat protection, careful population management — to bring them back. And now, the state is being asked to carve out an annual, official day not to honor that restoration, but to commemorate the reopening of the elk to hunters.
## Why This Matters
**Elk are not a season opener. They are individuals with families, memory, and fear.** Elk live in matriarchal herds, form lasting social bonds, communicate with a complex range of calls, and remember the places and dangers of their home range. A cow elk that loses a calf to hunters, or a bull that is killed in front of his herd during the fall rut, is not a “harvest” — it is a death that ripples through a family group that grieves and reorganizes around loss. Wildlife biology increasingly confirms what anyone who has watched elk closely already knows: these are not interchangeable units of a “resource.” They are neighbors on the same landscape we share.
**This bill turns a restoration success story into a celebration of killing.** The story Pennsylvania *should* want to tell every October is one of comeback — a species nearly erased, painstakingly brought home. Instead, this bill asks the legislature to formally center that anniversary on the day hunters go into the woods with rifles, rather than on conservation, coexistence, or the animals’ recovery itself. It sends the message that the measure of an elk’s worth, and the point of “restoring” a species, is how efficiently it can be turned into an opportunity to kill it.
**State commemorations shape public values.** An official “Elk Hunt Day” isn’t neutral — it’s the state telling every Pennsylvanian, especially children, that this is what elk are *for*. It normalizes and glamorizes killing free-living animals as a matter of state pride, at a moment when public appetite for hunting is declining and public interest in wildlife watching, ethics, and coexistence is rising. Pennsylvania could commemorate elk restoration in ways that reflect that shift — a Pennsylvania Elk Watching Day, an Elk Conservation Day — instead of enshrining the hunt itself in statute.
**It’s a lopsided story for a tiny slice of hunters.** Fewer than 200 hunters are drawn from tens of thousands of applicants each year. This bill isn’t really about broad public tradition — it’s an official state honor built around a lottery a small fraction of applicants ever win, at the expense of the animals whose lives are the prize.
## What You Can Do
Pennsylvania legislators need to hear — before this memo becomes a bill with real momentum — that not every Pennsylvanian wants the state calendar to include a day built around killing elk. Contact your PA House Representative and Senator, and Rep. Haddock directly, and ask them to withhold co-sponsorship and oppose the bill if introduced. Tell Rep. Haddock he is out of touch with the will of most Pennsylvanians.
**Find your PA legislators:** https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/
**Contact Rep. Jim Haddock (D-Lackawanna/Luzerne):** https://www.pahouse.com/Haddock/Contact
### Sample message
> I’m writing to oppose the proposed “Pennsylvania Elk Hunt Day” (memo circulated by Rep. Haddock, designating Oct. 3). Pennsylvania’s elk represent one of our state’s great wildlife restoration stories — a species brought back after being hunted out entirely. I don’t want that anniversary formally tied to a day of killing them. Elk are sentient, social animals, not a symbol for the legislature to hand to hunting interests. I’m asking you to decline to co-sponsor this bill, and if it’s introduced, to vote no. If Pennsylvania wants to commemorate elk restoration, it should do so in a way that honors the animals’ recovery — not the day that bloodlust is unleashed.
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*Please personalize this message in your own words — personal, specific messages carry far more weight with legislative staff than form letters. Share this alert widely with other Pennsylvanians who care about how our state treats its wild neighbors.*
More information on this issue can be seen on this news site: https://www.aol.com/articles/pennsylvania-bill-commemorate-start-elk-151717000.html