As a somewhat old-fashioned guy, I’m usually all about tradition. And for most of my life, the chief tradition around which my whole year revolved was Pennsylvania buck season.

Living in flat, featureless northwest Ohio, the forests and mountains of McKean County were all I could think about come fall. My parents signed me and my brother out of school for the first week of the season — we arrived at the camp just after Thanksgiving and spent the extended weekend grouse hunting, checking out our stands, scouting and taking some shots to make sure our rifles were sighted in.

That first Monday morning was almost a religious experience, one of anticipation and awe, as I waited for shooting light and for a buck to trot by me as I sat on an old metal bucket against an ancient, gnarled maple tree.

When I was 13, I shot my first buck from that spot, using a Winchester Model 94 made in 1936 and which had belonged to my grandfather. There were many more opening days over the years — some successful, some not — but the wonder and excitement of buck season was always the same.

But a funny thing happened. A few years ago we moved to Olean, and while I had never bothered to hunt deer in New York, my brother Pete was a big proponent of its deer season. As a resident, I decided to try it, while still getting my nonresident Pennsylvania license.

In a couple years, something that would have been unthinkable to me in the past came about: I ended up hunting in New York only. How could that be?

For starters, the NY gun season opens on a Saturday, usually the weekend before Thanksgiving, and Sundays are open for hunting. That’s three full weeks, with Sundays included, compared to Pennsylvania’s less-than-two-week rifle season.

New York’s earlier start also means that you might catch some rut activity (although that really hasn’t panned out in recent years), while Pennsylvania’s rifle season is basically a winter hunt in which the bucks have already settled into their post-rut wariness. New York also follows its gun season immediately with an eight-day muzzleloader hunt, in which you can use an inline, so you essentially get more than a month to hunt deer with a modern rifle rig.

It should be clear that I’m writing all this in support of the changes that the Pennsylvania Game Commission is trying its rifle deer season. I say give them a chance.

While a lot of folks I’ve talked to don’t like the state messing with their deer-camp tradition — Pennsylvania’s Monday opener dates back six decades — the old days of everyone automatically getting that Monday off and then taking vacation days to hunt the rest of the week are long gone for many. Meanwhile, the hunting tradition itself faces a crisis that must be addressed.

In the 1980s, hunting license sales in Pennsylvania totaled more than 1 million. In 2018, that number was fewer than 860,000, a decline of more than 30%. More weekend hunting days should help hunters get into the woods more, especially young hunters, and keep them engaged. It’s important that all generations of hunters remain active, but it’s especially important that young people have the opportunities to hunt and be successful.

The sport’s future in the Keystone State is at stake.

While some might argue that hunting is already less of an important economic factor than it was, it’s still estimated that hunting in Pennsylvania has an annual impact of more than $1.5 billion on the state’s economy. Hunting remains an important driver of jobs and wages, tax revenue and — lest it be forgotten — funds for game-land conservation and environmental protections.

For my part, I’m just like a lot of hunters — I have to pick and choose my days off throughout the year and welcome Saturday openers, while I’d also like to see more days open to Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania. After all, the Sunday hunting ban dates back to the 19th century.

While Sunday hunting concerns are a bigger deal in the southern counties with nonhunters and landowners, the northcentral region’s abundance of public land and greater wildness in general are good arguments for opening up hunting on Sundays.

With more days to hunt, I would definitely get my Pennsylvania license again. New York works for me, but you sometimes have to hustle to line up places to hunt; I miss the freedom of hunting more unposted lands in Pennsylvania.

And I wonder if that old metal bucket is still there.

(Jim Eckstrom is executive editor of Bradford Publishing Co. His email is jeckstrom@oleantimesherald.com.)