HARRISBURG, Pa. — The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) hopes the second time is the charm.
On Tuesday, the organization's online purchasing system for antlerless deer hunting licenses went live for its second round.
The first round had some hang-ups.
Last month, many visitors were met with a screen showing tens of thousands of people were ahead of them in line. Some people complained of having to wait seven to 10 hours to purchase their licenses.
In just 24 hours, 166,000 general licenses were sold, as well as about 164,000 antlerless deer licenses.
Even with its issues, the PGC says after the initial day, the online purchasing system seemed to work a little better.
“Folks who bought tags then and went online found the process easy to navigate; it was quick,” said Travis Lau, spokesperson for the PGC. “Far more hunters had that experience in the first round than those who waited through that process to get their license.”
After the initial round, the PGC says they thought about ways to upgrade the online system. But they found simply upgrading the system won't fix the problem.
"It's not as simple as throwing money at it, and you can't add additional servers and get the benefit of a faster system," said Lau. "[We] have some limitations on what we can do in ways of improvements.”
However, the organization remained optimistic that the process should be running smoothly from now on.
“I don't expect a repeat of round one," said Lau. "But, this is the first time that we've gone through this new process. And the first time we've kicked off a round two in this new process, so that there's no pre-existing sales data to lean on."
Online sales went live on Tuesday at 8 a.m.
To check on sales, click here.