CA Big Game Deadline SNAFU or Where The Heck Is CA’s Online License Sales Program?
Well, happy Tuesday!
It’s June 1, and tomorrow, California big game hunters, your applications for limited draw hunts are due in Sacramento by 17:00. Miss this deadline, and not only do you not get into the draw for this year, you also miss your opportunity to acquire another preference point.
No big deal, right? The draw deadline is pretty much the same every year. We get our applications and big game booklets (listing season dates, locations, and availability) in the mail. We run out and get a license (or for those of us with lifetime licenses, they come in the mail), we do a little research to decide where and when we want to hunt, and we shoot those applications in to the Licensing Branch office. There’s always plenty of time.
Except this year.
Someone, somewhere at DFG, screwed the pooch this year and the application booklets, licenses, and the whole shebang didn’t start showing up for folks until about a week or two prior to the deadline. Still plenty of time, of course, unless you know, you had other things going on. For example, I was in NC on business for the past two weeks. I heard through the grapevine about the delay, but since I had yet to receive my booklet, license, or tag applications, I couldn’t do anything about it anyway. All I could do was hope everything would be waiting for me when I got home, so I could put it all together and get it in the mail. Of course, with the Memorial Day holiday and no mail service on Monday, that kinda put things up against a pretty solid wall.
Now I’ve found the big game booklet with the elk applications, and I’ve got my little pre-printed address stickers to go on it, but as far as I can tell I still haven’t recieved my 2010-2011 lifetime license, or the 1st deer tag application that is supposed to come with it. Should all of this turn up today, I can still overnight the whole works to DFG… and I will, as soon as I get home from work, despite the cost of overnighting mail.
I’m pretty pissed off. I suppose even if it were just me, I’d be mad. The thing is, though, I know I’m not the only one impacted by this. I’d even hazard a guess that a lot of folks will just now be figuring out that they’re about to miss the deadline… especially those who don’t visit the web forums, blogs, or DFG website.
OK, so pissing and moaning doesn’t serve much of a constructive purpose, and venting here is barely cathartic. But this whole thing illustrates a bigger issue… where the hell is California’s online licensing and application program? Heck, I can buy a license online to hunt Texas, Colorado, or even North Carolina! I can’t get one in the home state of Silicon Valley? It can’t possibly be THAT hard!
It’s been in the works since 2006, but the whole thing was something of a sour joke the last time I heard it come up at the Fish and Game Commission meeting. The system was supposed to have been piloted for fishing license last May, but it looks like they’re still piloting now. According to the DFG website, the program is due to rollout in mid-August of 2010 (although this update was from December of 2009 and I haven’t seen anything else since). I don’t know if I should get my hopes up or not, given the way the state bureaucracy moves things along.
It’s past time, Sacramento. Implement the damned thing, or fire the idiots who have spent the better part of five years diddling the database and wasting our money, and get someone in there who knows what the hell they’re doing!
AH…CALIFORNIA PHIL!! I FEEL YOUR FRUSTRATION..THIS D.F.G.
IS IN DANG SAD SHAPE..WHEN I CALLED ,,THE POOR LADY ON THE OTHER LINE WAS SO FRAZZLED FROM BEING SLAMMED WITH PHONE
CALLS OVER THIS CRAP..SHE DAMN NEAR SOUNDED LIKE SHE WAS IN TEARS..AND SHE WAS THE ONLY 1 IN THE OFFICE TAKING THESE CALLS..{IMAGINE THAT!!}MY 2 CENTS…HOPE IT WORKS OUT FOR YOU BRO..
June 1st, 2010 at 10:13 am
The whole system is pretty sad. For the state that leads the world in technological development so much of the DFG is 20 years behind.
I was lucky, I was in-between jobs, figureed out what hunts I was doing from the online version of the regs and was ready to go as soon as I saw an booklet in my local shop.
I hope the numbers left out are few, then again the little devil on my left shoulder hopes that this SNAFU may be the boost I need to finally get a tag.
ahh, the joys of hunting in CA!
June 1st, 2010 at 10:47 am
I’m going to take a huge step here, and say that we’ve decided in California that, for whatever our reasons, we want lower taxes, rather than 1st World service. Over the years, our tax hatred have slowly impacted our roads, our schools, our fire and police, and now, with the lag time between tax collection and the largest recession since the 1930′s, we have seen the loss of 10-15% of our public workforce hours. Couple this with California’s historically abysmal Fish & Game budget, tack on absolutely HORRENDOUS management of the taxes we do have (imagine agreeing to an automatic tax increase DURING A DOWNTURN), and we find ourselves here. In California. The 9th largest economy on Earth.
What does it say when the second wealthiest man on the planet says he pays, for his Malibu home, 1/3rd the tax of his Ohio residence, though it is more than double the retail value!??
I feel bad for you Phillip, I really do. I’m lucky enough to live right next to Sacramento. In fact, if there is anything I can do to help (go turn in papers for you), just shoot me an email.
June 1st, 2010 at 11:11 am
Thanks, Matt. And J.R… well, I’m virtually thumbing my nose at you. Of course, you’re right. The more people who miss the deadline, the less pressure there’ll be on certain limited hunts. Personally, I’m more pissed that I might miss out on the preference point than on any specific hunt… I’m at max points for elk right now, and have really been hoping for that big break. Being behind by a single point is definitely a disdvantage. So you can have the Anderson Flat hunt if you’ll just give me my points.
Josh, if it were the budget to blame for not having an online system, I could totally see that. I’d sacrifice the convenience of online license sales to have a few more active wardens in the field any day. But it’s not a budget issue, even if someone wants to spin it that way… they started working on this system in 2006 and it still doesn’t work. That’s not a budget problem… that’s a piss poor management problem. The DFG, and by extension, all CA hunters and fishermen have been taken to the cleaners by someone. A database and e-commerce solution isn’t that bloody complicated.
If I had the time, resources and motivation, there’s definitely an investigative report in this one.
Oh, and thanks for the offer of assistance. Of course, if I could get my stuff to you, I could get it to the DFG office. If my license is here, I’ll overnight everything for tomorrow’s deadline. But my Jr Hunter won’t be able to get in on the special hunts this year, even if I get my own stuff in.
June 1st, 2010 at 11:36 am
Are you sure you can’t just send me your hunting license # and contact info., and I go in and fill out everything for you?
You make a good point about the management problem, but we weren’t in much better shape, budget-wise, in 2006. And, oversight costs money.
June 1st, 2010 at 12:49 pm
I was waiting for this blog post for a couple weeks. I held off writing one because my gut told me that the DFG would STILL be running behind by the time the deadline hit. I bought my archery tags a couple weeks ago. I was, of course, given the same bit of speech about how everything would be online next year. A large group of online friends all go to Wal-Mart and buy their tags in CA each year, but I didn’t know you could do that here. They don’t tell you that you can do that. When I lived in NY you would have everything in the database. You’d pay your fee, pick your unit, get your tags. Very simple and efficient. I had to print out the online version of the guide because they hadn’t dropped off any to the Los Alamitos branch as of 2 weeks ago. Heck, even bear tags had to be mailed in. I can only imagine your frustration, Phillip. I purposely bought archery tags this year so there would be no roadblock to my hunting this year.
I really can’t understand why CA can’t get with the program of getting things online and helping everyone out. NY has been doing it for a long ass time. It’s not as difficult as they make it out to be. I guess we’ll keep out fingers crossed and see if they give us a new line of BS at the end of this year, too.
June 1st, 2010 at 1:12 pm
It is just another ploy of the left-wing conspiracy to erode our access to hunting! (just kidding!)
Recently more Condors have come down with lead poisoning? And the biologists immediately were quoted as blaming “lead bullets (thougth they had no PROOF). An X-ray of the birds revealed that there were no lead particles in their gizzards…. The new joke is that at night the condors are eating the lead paint off of old farm houses, fences & ag equipment… or maybe it’s just lead in the environment???!!!
I feel your pain –
I went down to our local hunting license dealer to get my 2010-2011 Hunting License. They didn’t have them, though the deer tag applications were due in 2 weeks!
I immediately went home and did web search & found all of the necessary forms have been available in a .pdf format buried deep in the DF&G’s antiquated website (do you realize that they have hunt drawing forms, opening day, and various game season dates on their site from 2007??!!!)
Last week the Big Game booklets arrived in the mail – the week before they were due.
I’ve lived in California for 50 years… and every year it only gets less & less hunter friendly. Yet, the urbanites complain about mountain lions on their running trails and bike paths (Palo Alto), hogs tearing up their parks and front lawns, and turkey shitting on their roofs & tearing up their putting greens (SJ – Almaden & Silver Creek CC’s).
Why don’t the Democrats just stay in their big cities with their crime, disease, homeless, drugs, and gangs?
I really think that they are jealous of our proven old-fashioned American values & lifestyle – God, Family, America, Hunting, and very little crime!
June 1st, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Josh, thanks again. Part of the problem is that I don’t have my license yet. Otherwise, I’d be able to get this stuff done.
Paolo, it isn’t hard to see how folks believe that there’s an anti-hunting conspiracy in this state. Unfortunately, I think it’s something even more insidious and dangerous to the future of our sport… a serious lack of direction (or too many conflicting directions), overwhelming bureaucracy, hunter apathy, and the simple fact that hunters and fishermen comprise one of the weakest political forces in California.
We’ve live in a state with a whole population of people who don’t have any coherent concept that meat comes from dead animals (and someone has to kill them for them to get that way), who think being outdoors means a drive up to some big parking lot in the mountains, and then bitch about the fact that they had to use a “gross” pit toilet while their kids scream and fight over some made-in-China souveniers. To these folks, hunters are a quaint anachronism at best… or an evil symbol of inhumanity at worst.
These are the people who vote… these are the people who pressure the politicians to pass foolish laws to protect the “poor animals”. It’s not democrat or republican or libertarian. It’s just people… people who’ve lost touch with nature and the wildness in themselves. They are our worst nemesis.
June 1st, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Phillip, sorry. I thought a lifetime license had the same number each year.
By the way, if your license came in today, you still have one hour to call me and give me your number.
: )
June 2nd, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Thanks again, Josh.
I actually got it all worked out.
June 2nd, 2010 at 2:09 pm