By George Smith,Special to the Sun Journal

The need to compete with hunting opportunities offered in other states may finally tip the political balance toward Maine sportsmen who have always harbored the desire to enjoy their favorite outdoor activity on Sundays.

The governor’s budget includes authorization for Sunday hunting in all seasons except the regular firearms season on deer. Most of these seasons involve less than 15,000 hunters spread throughout the state – with few problems for landowners or the general public.

We are competing for hunters’ dollars today – and those hunters don’t hesitate to travel where their hunting opportunities are best. Nonresident hunters – and Maine hunters, too – have been diverted to neighboring states like New Hampshire, Vermont and New York, all of which offer Sunday hunting.

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 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.

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.”

Finally, there is the issue of funding for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Although a recent study showed that DIF&W provides $4 million of direct services to the general public, the governor and Legislature have been unable to provide public monies to DIF&W to fund those services – including critical services like search and rescue.

In the next biennial budget, the governor has once again asked sportsmen to fill DIF&W’s budget gap with another $3 across-the-board hike in every single license, permit and registration – because General Fund tax dollars are unavailable. Once again we’re willing to do that – but this time, we’ve asked for additional hunting opportunities. That is only fair.

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 Gov. John Baldacci, the Sportman’s Alliance of Maine, 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.

George Smith is the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.

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