In the Holiday News

Pennsylvania Hunter Education – Sebastian has a recent post on the matter.

I find this interesting as I am one who is interested in hunting. I even know a couple of people who’d take me out hunting. And in fact, I just met with both my State Senator and State Representative, and this was one of the main issues I discussed with them.

I want to experience hunting but have not as of yet. You see, I have been unable to get a permit. Having been held back by a requirement to take a Hunter Education Class. I have no problem with the idea of taking such a class. In fact, I actually WANT to take a class. But there is a severe lack of availability of the required Hunter Ed classes. Every time I check for classes they are either over 2 hours away, or already full. The result is two years have passed by and I have not experienced the tradition of hunting. The common solution proposed by nearly every one is to just go “Buy a permit” as the odds of being asked about one’s course is slim.

So what are the possible solutions? I provided two solutions to this situation:

SOLUTION 1: Implement a “Mentoree” hunting permit. This would be similar to youth being allowed to hunt. With a Mentoree permit you could only hunt in the company of an individual who had a full hunting permit. I believe this would provide a reasonable remedy. I am not looking to hunt on my own, heck, I wouldn’t even know what to do with a deer after I shot it. I “WANT” to be mentored.

SOLUTION 2: Update the Pennsylvania Game Commision site to provide some added resources. Provide a request form, then PA could email those signed up with alerts to classes in their area. Or at the bare minimum, provide an RSS feed.

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Fixing the State Police Problems – Sebastian covering Tom Corbett’s replacing the old State Police Commissioner (who was working with MAIG) with a new appointee from the Attorney General’s officer. One who is hopefully more supportive of our RTKBA.

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Ruger to offer SR-556 uppers

Originally, I was quite fascinated with the SR-556. I would still love to get one as it is one of the more attractive ARs IMHO. However, I’ve toyed with the idea of the SR-556 in 6.8 SPC; and putting together a hunting rifle. In Pennsylvania there are minimum caliber requirements (at least for Elk, and I think I recall seeing it for deer as well). There is also a requirement that the center-fired rifle be manually operated. One of the modes of the SR-556 allows for that. But would not be legal as it is variable. However, my hope would be to acquire a 2nd piston from Ruger that only offers the manual operation.