OK this is a proposal coming up at the January meeting. It's been proposed that we change hunting hours from 1/2 hour before sunrise till sunsetby adding the 1/2 hour after sunset. I checked all our adjoining states and all but New York are 1/2 before sunrise till 1/2 after sunset.
I also checked several other states NJ, OH,WVa,MD,DE,IN,IL,VA,KY,NC and they ALL allow hunting from 1/2 hour before to 1/2 hour after.

The PGC staff cites safety concerns and inconsistencies with federal waterfowl regs as their reason to reccomend against expanding our hours by 1/2 hour but they then recommend that we adopt the extra 1/2 hour for resident goose season! So much for their inconsistencies arguement!

As for "safety" what is less safe about the available light in the 30 minutes after the sun goes down when we'vehunted the 30 minutes before sunrise safely for years? How do they explain the fact thatvirtually all the other sates all manange to be safe in that last 30 minutes?

I'm trying to be open minded here but this just doesnt make sense and it never did. I think the PGC staff dropped a ball on this one. Sometimes tradition is defined as doing the same stupid thing again and again because we've always done it that way. IMHO it appears that we're keeping that kind of tradition here!

I'm with the PGC on a lot of issues but thisseems plain stupid or just plain stubborn. Maybe there's someting I dont see. I invite anyone to come up with a valid reason for the PGC staffs recommendation.