After a week of Pennsylvania hunting license sales, only one Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) has sold out of antlerless deer licenses.
WMU 2G in northcentral Pennsylvania sold all of its 37,000 antlerless licenses by the morning of June 25.
Tuesday morning, WMU 1B in northwestern Pennsylvania still had 3,029 of its 37,000 licenses available and WMU 3A in the northcentral part of the state had 1,934 of its 21,000 antlerless licenses.
Those three are usually the first places to sell out of antlerless licenses. However, for the 19 other parts of the state, hunters are guaranteed to have the option to buy one antlerless license if it’s purchased by 7 a.m. July 8.
The sales appear to have been going smoothly for vendors.
“I’m not hearing a whole lot, and that speaks to how few problems we had,” said Travis Lau, communications director for the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
Last year, the first year hunters could purchase their antlerless licenses at a store, county treasurer or online instead of by mail, resulted in long lines of hunters all wanting to purchase their tags on the first day and it bogged down the system. This year, the sales are being spread out over a longer period.
Over the first four days of sales, the agency sold 489,939 general licenses and 477,830 antlerless licenses. In 2023, hunters bought 578,357 general hunting licenses and 565,666 antlerless deer licenses in the same first four days.
On June 24, hunters could start purchasing antlerless licenses for WMUs 2G, 1B and 3A on a first-come, first-served basis. That morning there were lines for hunting licenses.
“Once the tags are sold out, we won’t be selling anymore. So in those three WMUs, hunters who wanted a tag one way or another needed to be there to buy one before they ran out,” Lau said.
After that first morning, he said there were few waiting times for hunters purchasing a license online.
Jackie Berkey of Somerset purchased her hunting license Tuesday morning at the Somerset County treasurers office.
“I just keep doing what I always do,” she said about getting her licenses at the office for a few decades. “I think it’s a lot better than going to a store,” she said.
The convenience of having direct antlerless license sales at every license retailer instead of being mailed to a county treasurer has redistributed some of the revenue away from county treasurers.
License agents make $1 for every license they process. Now that hunters can purchase doe tags online and at retail establishments and county treasurers, those sales commissions are spread out to many places.
Tony DeLuca, treasurer for Somerset County, said the change has decreased the number of sales his office makes.
“It’s slow, so far this year we have sold 258 antlerless deer licenses,” he said Tuesday morning.
For the license year ending in June 2023, the local treasurers office made a commission of $24,229 for gross sales of $196,978.20 in hunting licenses.
For last year’s license sales ending June 21, his office earned an agent commission of $3,697 for gross hunting license sales of $39,513.35, a decrease of $20,532.
“They were allowed to buy them online, they were allowed to go to any shop to buy them,” he said. The sales commissions goes to the vendor, including those who aren’t headquartered in Pennsylvania.
He agrees there’s good and bad that has come out of the changes in how licenses are sold.
“I love technology, it’s convenience. But what else could have been done is to keep everything in-house?" he asked.
For example, county treasurers could print and mail the online license sales to hunters in their area and receive the $1 commission. Now the online vendor is mailing them from out of state.
“They could have kept everything local,” DeLuca said.
Dates to remember
Nonresidents are also able to start purchasing an antlerless license at 8 a.m. July 8.
The second round of sales begins at 8 a.m. July 22. The third round begins at 8 a.m. on Aug. 12. Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) permits also go on sale when the third round begins.
During the fourth round, which begins at 8 a.m. Aug. 26, a hunter may purchase more than one license for any WMU where licenses are available. No hunter may possess more than their personal limit of six antlerless licenses at a time.
The Game Commission allocated 1,186,000 antlerless deer licenses statewide for 2024-25, which is up from the 1,095,000 licenses made available last year.
Allocations by Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) are as follows, with the allocation from the previous license year appearing in parentheses. WMU 1A – 46,000 (46,000); WMU 1B – 37,000 (37,000); WMU 2A – 46,000 (46,000); WMU 2B – 53,000 (53,000); WMU 2C – 93,000 (88,000); WMU 2D – 102,000 (86,000); WMU 2E – 54,000 (52,000); WMU 2F – 55,000 (49,000); WMU 2G – 37,000 (35,000); WMU 3A – 21,000 (21,000); WMU 3B – 34,000 (32,000); WMU 3C – 40,000 (40,000); WMU 3D – 41,000 (41,000); WMU 4A – 61,000 (61,000); WMU 4B – 60,000 (46,000); WMU 4C – 53,000 (32,000); WMU 4D – 77,000 (77,000); WMU 4E – 61,000 (54,000); WMU 5A – 40,000 (40,000); WMU 5B – 67,000 (60,000); WMU 5C – 79,000 (70,000); and WMU 5D – 29,000 (29,000).
Hunters are able to give feedback about their personal experience of getting their licenses by filling out an online survey found at pgc.pa.gov.
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him atbwhipkey@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.
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