By Chris Berens, D&DH Intern
Hunters in Pennsylvania endured a good test of their patience this past Sunday July 10, long before sitting in a tree stand this coming deer hunting season. According to a Pennsylvania Game Commission news release, the automated licensing sales system the state uses was disrupted for about 10 hours between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. The problem prevented license sales from being finalized at point-of-sale agents.
A large number of resident hunters were attempting to buy their regular deer hunting licenses on Sunday so that they could apply for antlerless deer licenses beginning on Monday July 11. Over 600,000 hunters in Pennsylvania annually take to the field in search of venison for the freezer, and antlerless deer account for more than half of the state’s annual harvest. Fawn and doe bleat calls can be a great tactic to help fill some of those antlerless tags.
Dot Derr, the director of the Game Commission Bureau of Administrative Services, said that about 85 percent of sales agents had difficulties during the interruption, and that 2,000 transactions had been corrected already with 5,173 to finish. There was no information on the number of license buyers that were turned away because of the problem.
Active Network Inc., the company contracted by the state to provide the license sales system, has resolved the issue and is working with the commission to correct the uncompleted transactions. The company stated that the problem was due to a glitch in the system and not the high volume of sales, and apologized for the inconvenience to hunters and the PGC, the news release stated. Active Network Inc. provides hunting licenses through automated licensing sales systems for 23 states.
Same thing happened last year, it was on Friday before the antlerless applications were to be accepted. I was caught up in the "GLITCH" last year, this year I purchased my hunting license early.
FYI to my fellow hunters in PA: the PALS system is located in Tenessee, that is correct, PA has a contract with a company in TN to issue our PA hunting license to us. So, when you purchase hunting licenses in PA, you are paying for the services rendered by this system and it should work properly. For the system to go down two years in a row on the same weekend in my opinion is unacceptable.
As I purchased my license early as the hunter in the previous comment did, I still can not fault the late purchasers. The last minute license purchase will not go away, the weekend before antlerless applications are due will continue to be the weekend of high volume license purchasing here in PA. Sort of like "Black Friday", all the merchants are prepared for high volume sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Maybe TN should should prepare for "Black Weekend", the weekend before antlerless applications are to be accepted.
Good Luck this season fellow sportsman!
I think the PALS system is great. We should have had it years ago. I don’t feel bad for the guys who waited until the last second to buy their license. They should have bought them a month ago when they first went on sale.