Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Michigan: Licensing System Online, Hunters Must Carry Licenses Afield

After experiencing technical issues Saturday, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources licensing system is performing as expected.

At around 9 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, the licensing system began experiencing slowness and timed-out transactions as some customers tried to purchase licenses. The DNR continues to work with the system vendor, Sovereign Sportsman Solutions (S3), to determine the cause of the issues, which affected S3-supplied licensing systems in other states, too.

As of Saturday afternoon, Michigan’s licensing system was successfully processing transactions as expected, and more than 45,000 hunters have purchased licenses since then. The DNR wanted to ensure the vendor's system was selling licenses without issue for 48 hours before making this announcement.

Hunters who were unable to purchase licenses or deer tags due to Saturday's system slowdown should do so online at Michigan.gov/DNRLicenses or at a local retailer as soon as possible to comply with state law. The DNR does not have the authority to waive a license as a requirement for hunting.

Successful hunters who used a homemade deer kill tag as instructed must consider their purchased, official tag to be validated and not use it to take another deer.

Michigan’s firearm deer season opened statewide Sunday morning. For more information on deer check stations, safety and other resources, visit Michigan.gov/Deer.

Media contact: Ed Golder, GolderE@Michigan.gov