Having grown up in Virginia, I see this as a hold over from "a time long, long ago". Growing up in the 60s, I remember grocery stores couldn't open before noon on Sundays. The pharmacy could open prior to noon, as could the occasional gas station, but in general, almost all commerce was shut down before noon on Sundays. Then, they started repealing the blue laws (I think it started with the 7/11 stores coming to town!
). Grocery stores could open Sunday morning (or even stay open all night Saturday night) but they couldn't sell alcohol between midnight Saturday and, I think, 8 AM Monday. Then they changed to where they could sell beer after 12:00 noon on Sunday. Some voluntarily delayed alcohol sales until 1 PM on Sundays. This trend grew in the 70s to treat Sunday like any other day of commerce. I don't think they started selling beer before noon until some time in the 90s though, and I think the ABC / liquor stores being open on Sundays is something that happened only in the last 10 years or so.
See, the deal of not hunting on Sundays is as much "tradition" as is many other things in this state that needto go away or were eventually ended- such as like having the school holidays in the Fall scheduled around tobacco harvest. When this "tradition" was established, the hunting season was only a couple of weeks long, and no one outside of doctors, policemen, firefighters and a few othersworked on Saturdays. We did away with the harvest holidays and should probably do away with the Sunday hunting ban -- maybe just in baby steps at first, such as was tried with the bill that was just defeated which tried to legalize Sunday hunting only during bow season and only on private land. If "tradition" is going to rule the decisions in the General Assembly, then I say they should go back to wearing powdered wigs when in session.
BTW - I usually take 4 or 5 vacation days a year to hunt, but I'm fortunate enough to have enough time built up that this doesn't interfere with family vacations.