There are several differences between this year and past years that account for the antler less licenses appearing to not be moving as fast.

First and probably foremost is the method in which the applications are counted and the license considered as having been sold has changed this year. In past years the license was considered sold as soon as the applications were counted by the PGC and forwarded to the County Treasurers. Once the Treasurer’s received the applications they knew they had the license on hand to issue one to every application so there was no real rush though they had to open the envelopes, physically issue a license, place it the envelope and seal the envelope before getting it ready to mail. Any applications that were incorrect were simply a voided license. This year it is different in that all of the mail has gone to the County Treasurers and no one knows how many applications are still sitting in mail trays in the various County Treasurer’s Offices waiting to be processed or counted as a sold license.

Simply put, this year they aren’t counted as sold until they are processed by a County Treasurer while in past years they were counted as sold before the County Treasurer’s ever saw them.
Another factor that probably comes into the equation is that I am sure some hunters haven’t even figured out yet that they should have sent their applications in this early. They will probably figure that out in another few weeks when the normal time to apply from previous years rolls around.

Then there is the factor that in the past there was no good way to prevent people on revocation from buying a license or to prevent people from illegally sending to multiple counties for antler less license on each round, especially the first round of unsold. Many people were doing both of those things and getting away with it for a long time. Each year we caught a few doing that but we always knew we were hardly even scratching the surface of the volume of violators getting illegal licenses. This new license system simply will not allow that to happen unless they take other illegal steps to do it and it is going to be much easier to both catch them at it and prove they did it with illegal intent. Those factors are likely to reduce regular license sales this year but also make more antler less license available for legal hunters and for a longer time period.

I think everyone is going to find out that antler less license sales and issuance are very much on schedule for the year. In fact, I think everyone will likely get their license earlier this year then ever in the past.

R.S. Bodenhorn