Brian Hagberg
WARREN, Pa. – While the move was ostensibly designed to streamline the process, the first day of online antlerless deer tag sales was anything but for local hunters.
Monday was the first day antlerless deer tags were available for purchase and by 8 a.m., according to various hunters Your Daily Local spoke with, the “line” for online sales was already in the thousands. By 8:45 a.m., the queue stretched beyond 50,000.
“Due to the high volume of sales this morning, Pennsylvania’s hunting license system experienced widespread slowness and intermittent errors, both online and in-stores,” the Pennsylvania Game Commission said in a social media post Monday morning. “The Pennsylvania Game Commission apologizes for the issues this has caused for our hunters. We are diligently working with our online vendor to identify and resolve issues to continue license sales.”
One YDL reporter got on the queue at approximately 8:40 a.m. and was not able to sign in to make their purchase until 7:03 p.m., a nearly 11-hour waiting period.
In response to a Your Daily Local Facebook post Monday, a number of local hunters shared similar experiences.
“Gave up,” one person said. “Awful,” another commented. One person said they got online at 8 a.m. and “six hours later got the email back to start. After that it was quick.”
The checkout process wasn’t quick for all.
Once Autumn Hagberg was able to get into the system, she had further issues going through the checkout process. (Editor’s Note: Autumn is the wife of Your Daily Local co-owner Brian Hagberg).
“After my line number arrived, an hour and 40 mins of TONS of ‘refresh screen’ finally was able to complete around 10:50 a.m,” she said.
One person did say they got on at 7:40 a.m. and had both his and his son’s licenses “with doe tags by 8:50 a.m.”
Wait times had diminished substantially by Tuesday. In a check at 11:20 a.m. Tuesday, the number of people waiting was less than 2,000.
Of the 86,000 total antlerless deer licenses available in the two Wildlife Management Units that encompass Warren and Forest Counties (1B and 2F), 47,826 were still available as of 11:25 a.m. Tuesday.
