Roger Henry has spent his share of hours sitting in a deer stand waiting for game to cross his path.

So when the 62-year-old Mountville hunter had to wait around nearly three hours to get his antlerless deer license Monday at Lancaster Archery Supply in East Lampeter Township, his patience had plenty of practice.

“(The state) has to work out kinks in the new system,” Henry said. “But I have faith they will work them out.”

Henry was among the thousands of hunters who waited for hours Monday — the first day to buy new licenses — while the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s new online antlerless deer license application system processed a glut of applications.

Instead of buying their hunting licenses and then mailing off for doe tags as they had done in previous years, hunters now purchase doe tags online, and can do so right away when they buy a license. Because doe tags are sold in limited quantities, hunters wanted to be first in line.

When the clock struck 8 a.m. Monday morning, hunters jammed onto huntfishpa.gov to purchase licenses and doe tags, and the system choked.

Game Commission spokesman Travis Lau acknowledged a slowdown in the morning hours, but said the commission had anticipated a backlog.

“Those who got licenses without a problem likely think the new process is great,” Lau said. “Those who stood in line when the system was at its slowest, maybe without ever getting a license, might see it differently.”

Lancaster County Treasurer Amber Martin, whose office also sells doe tags, offered more pointed criticism.

“Hunters are steadily coming into our office because the Game Commission’s system is either down or telling hunters they are number 47,000 or so in the queue,” Martin said. “To say that our hunters are frustrated with the online system would be an understatement.”

The treasurer and retailers like Lancaster Archery Supply are license issuing agents, which have a more direct connection to the state’s online licensing system. While individual hunters can be kicked into online waiting areas when the volume of applicants gets too high, issuing agents aren’t made to wait.

But even for agents, the system was slow Monday. Martin said her team’s system was down for roughly 45 minutes mid-morning and was crawling after.

Around noon, the Game Commission shared on its Facebook page that the system was experiencing widespread slowness and intermittent errors online and in stores. The commission attributed the problem to a lack of space in its cloud server.

State Sen. Greg Rothman, who represents portions of Dauphin, Cumberland and Perry counties and chairs the Senate Game and Fisheries Committee, expressed disappointment in the process.

“The launch of today’s online antlerless deer license sales was unacceptable,” Rothman said in a news release. “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.”

The patience of hunters

Lancaster Archery Supply had 64 people using their system to get a license as of 12:15 p.m. The store opened an hour early to sell the licenses, and store manager Chris Scott had put out coffee and cinnamon buns for customers who had to wait.

Sales were moving decently until 10 a.m. when the system significantly slowed down at the store, Scott said.

While some customers did get sick of waiting and left, others were more easygoing.

Daniel Cotchen, 61, of Lancaster city, put his name in the queue at Lancaster Archery Supply at 9:30 a.m. The store’s system sent text alerts to customers as they got closer to their turn. At noon, Cotchen was getting his license. During the hours in between, he went home, cut his grass, did chores and waited for a text from the store.

Cotchen said there were 17 people in the queue when he arrived at the store.

“Anything new you can expect glitches,” Cotchen said. “Hopefully they will figure it out.”

Dennis Buckwalter, 69, of East Lampeter, was arriving at Lancaster Archery Supply at 12:30 p.m. with no expectations of it being a fast process ahead of him. Instead, he planned to shop while he waited.

“I teach hunter’s education, and I warned people,” Buckwalter said. “I saw this coming and was expecting it.”