According to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP), due to various technical difficulties, many hunters who were recently trying to purchase a nonresident surplus elk combo license online on Monday, May 6 at 5 a.m. were unable to complete their transactions for a leftover elk license. Over the next 10 days, FWP will be contacting the customers who were one of the impacted individuals that attempted to purchase their license between 5 and 5:30 a.m. on May 6 by email and phone. Those customers will then be given the opportunity to complete the purchase of their elk only combination license.

I called FWP this morning, and they mentioned they are going to run this process starting from the hunter who tried to purchase the first licenses at the 5 a.m. starting time and will go down the list until they hit the 393 surplus elk tags that were available. They discussed that the purchase time/error codes all have timestamps, and so that information will be used to figure out the order of who to call in order to offer up a license.

According to information on FWP's Facebook page, they will also be addressing the processes they use for future surplus license sales to ensure a better transaction experience. Additionally, FWP will no longer be offering sign-ups on the alternates list for big game combination licenses, however, the list for deer combination licenses will still be available. The alternates list will be open from May 15 to June 30.