Outdoors in Maine: Updates on Sunday hunting movement

Efforts by some Augusta lawmakers to raise the ban on Sunday searching in Maine are nearly as perennial as lupine and roadside daisies. Skeptics contend that these initiatives have been defeated so usually that it’s a misplaced trigger. They argue that Maine just isn’t prone to be part of so many different states which have allowed Sunday searching.

V. Paul Reynolds, Open air Columnist

As issues now stand, a lawsuit to overturn the Sunday searching ban in courtroom is in limbo awaiting a call by the Maine Supreme Courtroom to both hear the case, or dismiss it as did the District Courtroom. Based on Jaren Bornstein, spokesman for HUSH (Hunters United for Sunday Looking), the state courtroom is prone to decide by this spring.

There’s a new modification to the State Structure that protects each citizen’s proper to “harvest” their very own meals. The central authorized query that has but to be adjudicated is whether or not, certainly, “harvest” means searching wild sport. All of it boils right down to legislative intent. The Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine (SAM) has lengthy contended that, sure, the harvest modification completely protects, not solely growers and foragers, however the act of attempting to find meals as effectively.

This subject actually must be resolved on the judicial stage as soon as and for all. So it’s hoped that the Maine Supreme Judicial Courtroom doesn’t abdicate, dismiss the case, and depart the intent query hanging on the market for Maine residents to endlessly surprise about. In 2021, Maine voters, by a snug margin, demonstrated help for a proper to meals modification to the state structure. They deserve a solution from the parents within the black robes.

Within the meantime, in accordance with Bornstein, State Consultant Sophia Warren will quickly introduce laws that, if handed, would permit Sunday searching statewide with bows and crossbows. Within the lengthy parade of pro-Sunday searching laws, it is a new twist that does get exterior the field. Gun hunters is not going to be happy; bow hunters shall be smiling. The pondering is that with simply bow hunters within the Sunday deer woods there shall be no rifle stories ringing off the ridges and making Sunday hikers and equestrians nervous.

In fact, if the Maine Supreme Judicial Courtroom helps HUSH’s rivalry that the Sunday searching ban is negated by the proper to meals modification, then Rep. Warren’s Sunday searching laws would not matter. Alternatively, if the excessive courtroom dismisses the lawsuit out of hand, the Sunday searching debate is prone to proceed within the halls of Augusta for years to return.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal, an writer, a Maine information and host of a weekly radio program, “Maine Open air,” heard at 7 p.m. Sundays on The Voice of Maine Information-Discuss Community. Contact him at [email protected]