Round 4 of antlerless deer license sales starts Monday in Pennsylvania. How many remain?
If you hunt where there are plenty of doe in Pennsylvania, Monday is the day to cap off your allocation of antlerless permits.
Monday is the start of the fourth round to purchase remaining antlerless deer licenses online at huntfish.pa.gov and hundreds of sports shops and county treasurers across the state.
Hunters can have up to six antlerless licenses at one time. Plenty of areas across the state have tags available.
The agency plans to issue a total of 1.095 million antlerless deer licenses, up from the 948,000 issued for 2022-23.
As of Tuesday morning, Wildlife Management Unit 2A had 15,993; 2B had 39,508; 2C had 30,169; 2D had 1,949; 2E had 1,263; 4A had 38,087; 4B had 946; 4D had 12,009; 5A had 14,409; 5C had 15,122, and 5D had 12,234.
Hunters can see the remaining numbers at huntfish.pa.gov.
This is the first year that hunters have been able to purchase antlerless deer licenses in-person or online. In the past, hunters had to mail a pink envelope to their county treasurer for a doe tag.
When licenses went on sale June 26, the computer system was bogged down by hunters who anxiously stood in line or logged into the website all at the same time.
“It was just too many people for the system to handle quickly. Outside of that one issue that was related to inadequate cloud server space for a couple of hours and was fixed after that, the system was operable,” Travis Lau, communications director for the Game Commission, said. “There was a lot of people who were upset about it, and understandably so. But outside of that (one day), everything seems to go so smoothly.”
License vendors receive $1 for each doe license they sell.
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Jody Maurer has operated Maurer’s Trading Post in Franklin, Venango County, for 42 years. The store is located in WMU 2D, but there are customers who hunt nearby in 2F, 1B and 1A. Of those four WMUs, only 2D had antlerless licenses available Tuesday morning.
Maurer said the first day licenses went on sale there was a line of customers when the system couldn’t keep up with the statewide demand. “I think they got pounded so bad with everyone trying to do it from home and in all the stores. I think it overwhelmed the system. Once it got straightened out, it was OK.”
When the second and third rounds of antlerless licenses became available, the system was able to handle the demand at his store.
Maurer likes selling licenses to get people to stop at his shop. “It would be nice if the people who came in to buy their licenses would shop a little bit more. Some do, but the majority come in, get their licenses and they’re gone just as fast,” he said, noting the licenses are sold months before deer hunting seasons begin.
“This year, to me, it just seemed like everyone was in a hurry. They picked up their licenses and went back out,” he said.
Lau said the agency is reviewing how the system worked and what can be done to improve the process.
With the remaining license allocations available in real time online, hunters can estimate how soon they may want to make their purchase. “They will have a sense of how much time they have,” Lau said about many people not needing to buy a license on the first day sales begin.
With the hard data of the past year, Lau said hunters “will feel reasonably assured, that if they wait, they will still get a license. And if they wait (until after the first day of sales), they won’t have to wait in line.”
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Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors, X @whipkeyoutdoors and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Next round of antlerless deer license sales in PA starts Aug. 28
