LITTLE ROCK — Some turkey hunters discovered this week that it occasionally pays not to follow directions.
As it does for its wildlife management area quota deer hunts in the fall, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission sells on a first-come, first-served basis WMA quota spring turkey hunting permits left over from the lottery. Hunters who were selected for many of the permits failed to pay for them, so the commission put 582 up for general sale. The permits cost $10 and are available for some of our best WMAs for turkey hunting.
With great anticipation, I logged onto the commission’s website early Monday morning in hopes of getting a permit for the Harold E. Alexander Spring River WMA or the Madison County WMA. None were available, and I quickly discovered why.
The permits were scheduled to go on sale at 8 a.m. Monday. Knowing the best permits would go quickly, I got online about 7:45 a.m. The link to the permit application clearly said the permits would go on sale at 8 a.m. I clicked on the link anyway, and to my surprise, the application page appeared on my screen. Many high-quality permits were still available, so I bought two. I expected to get a notice voiding the transaction, but it never appeared. I printed the permits, and it wasn’t long before I started getting phone calls and e-mails from friends and readers who also noticed the sale began early.
Brad Miller, assistant chief of the commission’s wildlife management division, acknowledged the error with audible chagrin.
“Our intent was, and what we have been telling everybody, was to have the draw at 8 a.m. this morning,” Miller said. “Apparently there was a technical error, and the online sales actually started at 12:01 a.m. Monday. People were able to buy their permits and we sold some permits earlier than we wanted to. People expecting them to go on sale at 8 a.m. sharp saw that they were already on sale.
“By that time, the phone was ringing, people calling and saying the sale was on before 8. I’m afraid there’s not much we can do. We can’t put more permits out there, and we can’t revoke the people that paid early because they didn’t do anything wrong.”
Miller blamed the Information Network of Arkansas, a board that oversees the Arkansas.gov website and online services for state agencies. He said the system worked fine for surplus deer permits last fall, but a programmer for the information network neglected to install the 8 a.m. time element in the turkey sale program.
Phil Billingsley, general manager for Information Network of Arkansas, accepted the responsibility but added that the commission did not make clear when the sale was supposed to start.
“It’s a bad deal,” Billingsley said. “We nailed it for deer and hit that 8 o’clock mark on the nose. This was a little miscommunication between them and us. It should have been turned on at 8 o’clock Monday morning, but the person that did it wasn’t aware of the time constraint. A Game and Fish employee just saw the date.”
Billingsley said he received complaints from two hunters who were disappointed that they didn’t get permits for hunts in their regions.
“I was honest with them,” Billingsley said. “They said they were still disappointedbut that they appreciated the explanation.”
Those two hunters were Mike Stanley and Philip Pickett, who said they went online to purchase leftover permits for the youth hunt at Harold Alexander WMA. Pickett said something doesn’t ring true about Billingsley’s explanation because he said he tried to buy a Harold Alexander permit at 1 a.m. but could not. Billingsley acknowledged that “a few” permits were indeed sold before 8 a.m.
Miller said a “couple hundred” permits were sold before 8 a.m. A total of 355 were sold Monday, but Billingsley said 300 were sold before 9:30 a.m.
Stanley and Pickett said they were disappointed for the youngsters who didn’t get a fair shot at a Harold Alexander WMA hunt because of the error.
Billingsley said the Information Network of Arkansas charges 50 cents for every permit sold.
“It’s not like they’re paying us $20,000 or $40,000 to build this,” he said. “We’re adding an enhancement to the system so that it doesn’t happen again.”
Just in case, you might want to “jiggle the doorknob” at midnight when the 2013 deer quota permits go on sale.
Sports, Pages 20 on 03/07/2013