A new ordinance enacted by Kennett Township requires hunters to obtain written consent from property owners whose lands are being traversed
By P.J. D’Annunzio, Staff Writer, KennettTimes.com
KENNETT — The list of safety measures has been lengthened for local deer hunters as the Kennett Township Board of Supervisors enacted a new hunting ordinance Monday night geared toward protecting local homeowner’s property rights and security.
“This ordinance will require hunters to have written permission from landowners to be on their land,” township Board of Supervisors Chairman Allan Falcoff said, “The permission slips are an annual event [for individual homeowners], if it’s a homeowner’s association piece of land it will be good until it’s revoked.”
The preamble of the ordinance states that it “enhances the ability of local authorities to be better aware of hunting activities on lands located within Kennett Township so as to better provide for the safety and welfare of Township residents and others. It does not, however, impinge on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s statutory and regulatory provisions relating to hunting or on other state or federal provisions relating to the possession and use of firearms and other weapons.”
This new regulation dispels any previous verbal agreements between hunters and property owners, requiring all consent to be documented and up to date.
Chief of Police Albert McCarthy said that reason for this is “the number of issues we’ve had with who has permission and who doesn’t. We’ll get a guy that says he has permission, he shows me a letter that’s ten years old, and the property owner says ‘I took that back three years ago.”
“We’re not reinventing the wheel,” McCarthy said detailing the genesis of the ordinance, “We went to other townships and looked at their ordinances, we talked to the state, we talked to the deer management committee,”
Several attendees posed questions regarding the definition of a hunter. McCarthy clarified that any person with a firearm is classified as a hunter and is subject to the ordinance.
The ordinance itself states that a firearm is “any rifle, gun, pistol, revolver, musket, or shot gun which uses a discharge of gunpowder as the propellant of a projectile. Any projectile rifle or handgun which uses compressed air or gas as the propellant is not such a defined weapon.”
The regulations also apply to bows, crossbows, or similar weapons defined as, “any device for launching an arrow, bolt or similar projectile which derives its propulsive energy from the bending and recovery of limbs or the operation of levers rather than from percussion, concussion or the discharge of air, gas or gunpowder.”
With deer season approaching the township encourages hunters to get letters of consent sooner rather than later and also to contact the Chief of Police with any questions or concerns.
