Jul 28, 2024 By Ben Moyer 5 min read

Habits can be hard to break. That’s why deer hunters should make sure they’re keeping up with purchasing the licenses they’ll need this fall. The State Legislature broke a long-standing hunters’ habit for them when it abolished the old system of buying antlerless (doe) licenses before the 2023 season.

Most hunters have no complaints. The old way was cumbersome. Every adult deer hunter remembers the pink envelopes and the awkwardly fitting paper application that had to be mailed, with a check, at specified times to county treasurer offices around the state. They also remember the other pink return envelope in which their license got delivered. In this day of convenient online purchasing (most of the time) the system seemed like something dreamed up to discourage participation through redundant busywork.

But state lawmakers finally grasped the system’s obsolescence and made it lawful for the Game Commission to sell doe licenses directly to hunters online.

Clumsy as it was, though, hunters got accustomed to the routine and had their piles of pink documents, plus rolls of postage stamps, ready on time.

In the new procedure, there’s still a schedule in place that dictates when hunters can apply. With the old habits gone, it can be easy to forget to get on the Game Commission website (www.pgc.pa.gov) and click on “antlerless licenses” to complete a purchase.

Antlerless licenses for the 2024/25 deer seasons first went on sale a few weeks ago. By today’s date, a Pennsylvania resident may have legally bought two of those permits-one in the first round that opened June 27, and another in the second round starting July 22.

But here’s a reminder. If you forgot, you may still go online and buy both. There is no deadline date for buying a doe license. There’s only a starting date for the respective rounds. If you have not already exceeded your legal maximum, you can buy doe licenses until the quota in the Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) of your choice sells out.

And here’s encouragement. The online purchasing process is far less frustrating than it was last year, in its initial launch. Then, licenses for all units went on sale at the same time, and hundreds of thousands of hunters across the state rushed online at once and jammed the site. Some related tales of being informed their “wait time” was six or more hours.

This year the Game Commission made some adjustments. They put licenses valid in a few of the high-demand, but low quota, northern WMUs up for sale first, on June 24, so a smaller volume of applicants were queuing up to buy. First-round statewide sales followed three days later.

Lots of antlerless tags are available in units most hunters around here prefer. Game Commissioners allocated a generous 93,000 tags for WMU 2C, which covers the “mountain” in eastern Fayette County (east of Rte. 119), plus all of Somerset and most of Westmoreland counties. As of July 23, 62,393 of those licenses remained unclaimed.

In WMU 2A, embracing eastern Fayette (west of Rte. 119), all of Greene County, and most of Washington County, commissioners set the allocation at 46,000 tags. Just under 31,000 of those remained available as of July 23.

You can check on the availability of licenses in various WMUs on the same Game Commission’s website where you’ll buy your license. Just click on “Antlerless Deer WMU Quota” to access a constantly changing report of how many tags remain.

Following the proper schedule, hunters can possess a maximum of six antlerless licenses at a time. But once hunting begins, if you kill an antlerless deer you can buy another license until quotas are exhausted. You cannot legally give your license to another hunter to use, with the exception of a mentored youth under age 7.

Again, hunters who forgot about the schedule and have not yet purchased any doe tag can go online now and buy two. If you’ve already bought your maximum of two, you must wait for the third round of sales to open on Aug. 12 at 8 a.m. You must have already bought your general hunting license before you can buy any antlerless tag.

It’s important to remember that you can’t hunt antlerless deer until you have that physical license in your possession. That’s because you still need a physical tag to attach to a deer’s ear to make your kill legal. After online purchase, licenses are mailed to hunters as before (but not in a pink envelope). Generally, it takes about 10 days for online buys to arrive in the mail.

If you don’t have a computer or capable phone, or if you’re uncomfortable buying online, you can go to any retail license agent and buy your antlerless license in person. The agent will print it for you there-no waiting for the mail.

These pre-hunt preparations always seem to come around sooner than expected. The first deer season in our local units, statewide archery season, opens Oct. 5.