Pennsylvania hunters say first online doe tag sale fuels ‘mad dash’

As of 11:59 p.m. Monday, 166,074 general licenses and 164,666 antlerless licenses were sold.

• By Molly Bilinski/Lehigh Valley News

Walter Srebalus has had an annual routine—a tradition he’s stuck to for about two decades, since he moved to Pennsylvania.

“We would fill out our envelopes on Sunday night and on Monday morning, drop it into the mailbox for the doe tags,” Srebalus said Thursday. “Now, it’s turned into every single hunter trying to log in at the exact same time, because we’re competing against each other, unfortunately, trying to get a doe tag.
“It creates this mad dash now.”

Monday was the first time in decades there were no pink envelopes for Pennsylvania hunters looking to buy antlerless licenses. The state Board of Game Commissioners in April voted to discontinue the mail-in application process for doe tags, as well as move up the sale to the fourth Monday in June, the first day of license sales. While hunters may have endured long wait times and at least one glitch on the first day of sales, state officials are considering the launch a success.

“If you were to measure success of the new antlerless license process by sales alone, and knowing that over five times more licenses were sold compared to previous opening days of sale, which are always busy, I think you’d have to call it a huge success,” said Travis Lau, communications director for the state Game Commission. “The sales system definitely was successful in processing that huge number of sales without ever crashing.”

And “huge” might be an understatement.

As of 11:59 p.m. Monday, 166,074 general licenses and 164,666 antlerless licenses were sold, Lau said in an email. Last year, 30,522 general licenses were sold as of 11:59 p.m. on the first day.

Lau did not have data on sales for Lehigh and Northampton counties.

But, it’s not an even comparison, looking at data from last year to this. Antlerless licenses weren’t available until July, and there wasn’t the same sense of opening-day urgency.

‘We anticipated delays on the first day of sales, and saw them’

Srebalus, 51, of Robeson Township, Berks County, logged on about 9 a.m. to buy his license and tags. When he entered the queue, there were more than 55,000 hunters in line in front of him.

By 1 p.m., he gave up and went to Walmart, he said. There, he was able to buy his license and doe tag in about 20 minutes.

“In concept it works well, but I don’t think they were anticipating everybody trying to log in at the same time, getting your hunting license and your doe license doe tag at the same time,” he said. “I think that was a bad idea.”

Lau said there was “one correctable problem that shut down sales to many people for two hours” on Monday, but that was the only glitch.

“No one is blaming hunters for lining up for licenses, because they just wanted to make sure they got theirs,” Lau said. “They’re willing to go through a lot because hunting is that important to them. But in hindsight, nobody needed to stand in line, because there were licenses remaining after the lines cleared.”

Bryan J. Burhans, state Game Commission executive director, posted a video on YouTube earlier this week about the delays.

“We anticipated delays on the first day of sales, and saw them. But the system has been operational all day and sales have ceased,” Burhans said. “Our staff worked with our online vendor to prevent a complete system outage during the surge this morning. This did extend some wait times early in the day, in some circumstances for an extended period of time.”

‘I liked it, even though it didn’t work’

The new system did allow Srebalus to buy a doe tag in a sought-after wildlife management unit, or WMU.

He was able to get tags for both WMUs he wanted: 5C, which includes much of the Lehigh Valley and Berks County, as well as 2G, which includes parts of Potter, Lycoming and surrounding counties.

“It’s interesting, because it just kind of shows that I don’t think everybody had an equal chance of getting those tags in the past,” he said. “Rolling it out, testing it and educating everybody on it – I think it could have done a little bit better.”

It takes time to work out issues in any new system, he said.

“You’re never going to make everybody 100% happy,” Srebalus said. “Not everybody is going to be totally happy with the system. I’m okay with it. I liked it, even though it didn’t work.”

The switch to online licensing was made possible by Senate Bill 431, sponsored by state Sen. Daniel Laughlin, R-Erie, and signed into law by then-Gov. Tom Wolf in November. Before that, state law had required antlerless licenses be issued only by county treasurers.

Srebalus said he’s hopeful next year’s sale will go more smoothly, but noted that moving sales online may end up shouldering out older hunters, who aren’t comfortable navigating technology, as well as those without reliable access to the internet.

“The one thing you always have to remember is that not everybody’s gonna have accessibility to technology,” Srebalus said. “If they do, they may not know how to use it.”