HARRISBURG, Pa. — Note: The video is from June 14.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission issued an apology Monday to frustrated hunters after the launch of its new online ordering system for hunting licenses experienced outages and delays, leading to frustration for customers.
Under the new online ordering system, hunters were supposed to be able to purchase antlerless deer tags online at HuntFishPA or at any store authorized to sell hunting licenses. The Game Commission said hunters would also be able to acquire their tag as soon as hunting licenses become available for purchase on Monday.
Under the old process, hunters were required to get mailed envelopes from the game commission and send them out to a county treasurer to apply for an antlerless license. A process hunters say was tedious.
But if hunters were frustrated by the old process, the launch of the new system was off to a rocky start Monday morning. Many of those who logged in to HuntFishPA.com to purchase licenses found messages stating they were one of more than 100,000 people in the queue waiting for service.
Hunters frustrated with the long wait times and system outages took to social media to vent their anger, prompting an apology from the Game Commission on its Facebook page.
"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 Game Commission said. "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."
Republican State Sen. Greg Rothman, chair of the Senate Game and Fisheries Committee, issued the following statement on today’s faulty launch of online antlerless deer license sales in Pennsylvania:
“The launch of today’s online antlerless deer license sales was unacceptable. Pennsylvanians expect government to function timely and efficiently, and they experienced neither today. We will be working with the Pennsylvania Game Commission and all other involved parties in order to ensure this problem is addressed now and moving forward.”