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At their regular quarterly meeting on April 15, the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners gave final approval to a new system of how Pennsylvania hunters will apply for antlerless deer licenses.
For generations, state law required all antlerless deer licenses to be issued only by county treasurers. Before the adoption of Wildlife Management Units, antlerless deer licenses were allocated on a county-by-county basis, and hunters were obligated to submit their antlerless deer license applications to the treasurer of the county where they desired to hunt.
In the early 2000s, the Pennsylvania Game Commission divided the state into 22 WMUs to better manage wildlife resources. That shift in strategy did away with county allocations of antlerless deer licenses in favor of allocations for individual WMUs because most WMUs included all or parts of several counties. But the law still required all licenses be issued by county treasurers. Hunters were therefore permitted to send their applications to any county treasurer for any WMU using special large pink envelopes issued with their hunting license.
By any reasonable assessment, however, the county treasurer connection in the process of applying for and the issuing of antlerless deer licenses had long outlived any usefulness, if it ever had any real validity to begin with. And the conversion to a computerized electronic licensing system for all other hunting licenses many years ago had made mail-in antlerless applications even more irrelevant.
Thankfully, a new law was recently passed eliminating the requirement for county treasurers to be involved in issuing antlerless licenses. The final approval of the commissioners has now put in place a more modern and less complicated system for all hunters to apply and obtain their antlerless deer licenses.
Hunters will be able to purchase a doe license over the counter anywhere hunting licenses are sold and receive their license and tag at the time of purchase or buy it online and receive the license documents via mail. There will be four rounds of antlerless deer license sales, each beginning at 8 a.m. The first round will be the fourth Monday in June, which is June 26 this year.
Only Pennsylvania residents may apply during the first two weeks of this round. Nonresidents can apply beginning on the second Monday in July, which is July 10 this year.
The second round of sales will begin on the fourth Monday of July, which is July 24 this year. Both residents and nonresidents can apply for a second tag for any WMU where licenses are still available. The third round will begin on the second Monday of August, which is Aug. 14 this year. Both residents and nonresidents can apply for a third tag for any WMU where licenses are still available.
In the fourth round, which will be Aug. 28 this year, both residents and nonresidents can buy additional licenses up to a personal limit of six for any WMUs where license are still available. Additional licenses, if available, can be purchased after the season begins, as the hunter harvests antlerless deer and reports them.
There is also a "Catch-up allowance" during the first three rounds: An eligible applicant may submit multiple antlerless deer license applications in a single transaction if the applicant had previously not applied for an antlerless deer license during one or more previous open rounds, and only then equal to the number of rounds currently open on the date of application.
The antlerless deer license allocations were also announced and finalized at the recent commissioner's meeting. The statewide total for 2023-24 will be 1,095,000 antlerless deer licenses, which is up 147,000 from the 948,000 licenses allocated for 2022-23, so hunters interested in obtaining multiple doe tags under the new application process will have favorable odds to do so.
All four of the WMUs covering our region all had significant increases as well, including: WMU 2C with 88,000, up from 67,000 last year; WMU 2E with 52,000, up from 42,000 last year; WMU 4A with 61,000, up from 50,000 last year; and WMU 4D with 77,000, up from 55,000 last year.
The commissioners also set the seasons and bag limits for the 2023-24 campaign and there weren't any surprises or major changes. To mention a few areas of interest here in our region, WMUs 4A, 4B and 4D will once again only have a week of fall turkey season.
WMUs 4A, 4B and 4D were removed from the extended bear season the runs concurrently with the firearms deer season because the number of nuisance bear complaints has dropped substantially.
And one last housekeeping measure of possible interest to those who hunt in the northcentral region of the state north of Interstate 80, WMU 2H has been dissolved back into WMU 2G. WMU 2H was split from WMU 2G about ten years ago, but wildlife managers have decided it was too small to present a significant difference in how it should be managed from WMU 2G.