After seeing numerous hunting shows and online hunting videos highlighting how undervalued the Arizona OTC archery mule deer/coues deer hunt is, I decided to look into it. Arizona offers a license that is good for 365 days. They also require you to buy a hunting license in order to apply for any big game points. So I already had a nonresident hunting license that was valid from Feb 2018 until Feb 2019 due to the Arizona elk draw. Their OTC deer tags are also valid for the entire year. So a 2019 deer tag can be used in January during the archery rut hunt, the early archery hunt in late August/September, or the late archery hunt in December. I first started by seeing how expensive it would be to get there, get transportation, and stay there. So I looked up the flights from Philadelphia. They were around $350 to $400, which I felt was reasonable. Then the rental car, for a week in a 4wd truck or SUV it was around $400, again something that was reasonable. Then I searched for lodging, hotels seemed expensive, but AirBnB seemed very reasonable, I found a place for $45 a night.

With all the accommodations looking like they would work out I decided to try to enlist some friends to go with me. I got one right away and a few maybes. Everyone’s big concern was using a compound bow out west. Many people started using crossbows when they became fully legalized a number of years ago and haven’t practiced with their compound bows in quite some time. I tried to convince them that 3 months was more than enough time to practice at 50 or 60 yards to feel confident at shooting out west. I wasn’t having any luck, so it looked like it was just going to be 2 of us going. We booked everything for Jan 1st to the 7th. We’d have 5 full days of hunting, which is all we could get away with when it came to our wives. We knew it wasn’t going to be much time, but you never know unless you try.

We found an AirBnB in the center of the state, surrounded by national forest, so that was a good starting point for doing some internet scouting. I went to OnX maps and started looking for trail heads, pull offs, anything that looked like it would get us off the road and onto some higher ground to glass. In all I probably had around 30 way points saved to my phone that we could check out once we got there.

We set off on New Years day to the airport, all loaded up and ready to go. This was the first time either one of us ever flew with firearms, we were taking pistols with us in our bow case. So we wanted to get there early in case there were any issues. Everything went very smooth, the airport website outlined everything to do well enough that we didn’t have any hiccups. We landed in Phoenix a little after 830 pm and stood at the luggage carousel waiting for our bags. No one told us that the firearms wouldn’t be coming out there. So we sat there for about 10 minutes until after the last bags were taken off the carousel confused, slightly annoyed, and worried. I finally went down to the baggage office and before I could ask what where our bow case with two handguns in it was, the lady behind the desk announced another gentleman’s name and told him his firearms had arrived around back. Relieved I stood in line and gave her my information so they could retrieve my case. I guess I should have known that an airline wouldn’t send guns through the luggage carousel, but I honestly didn’t even think about it. We got out bags, took the airport bus to pick up the rental truck,  then headed to the Wal-Mart to get our tags.

We arrived at the first Walmart that was in along our route to the AirBnB. When I initially looked at hunting in Arizona I had called the fish and game office for information and to figure out the tag buying process. The lady on the phone told me that while I could buy a tag over the phone it would be a long process and it was just easier to get them when you got into town. The tag season runs from Jan 1st of that year until Dec 31st. Since we were hunting on the first day of the year the fish and game office didn’t really have an easy way for us to get a tag that wasn’t to be sold yet. We stopped at the Walmart and made our way back to the outdoor section. A worker was standing in the back at the counter and we asked him if we could buy a hunting license and an over the counter deer tag. He rifled through some boxes that had deer tags in them then shifted to under the counter pushing things around and pulling more boxes out. After a few minutes he indicated that they had not yet received the new deer tags for the year. Shocked and visibly annoyed I asked what the hell are we supposed to do then? He told us that maybe some other Walmart’s in the Phoenix area may have deer tags but it’s doubtful. The only place he knew for sure to have them was the Flag Staff Walmart. We walked out of the Walmart to the truck. There’s about 10 Walmart’s in Phoenix so Justin started down the list calling. The first 3 were a no on having the new deer tags. So I called the Flag Staff Walmart and they said they did have tags. The Walmart was two and a half hours away which was about an hour farther than we had to travel and we were quickly coming up on 9:30 pm. So I asked the employee if they knew of anywhere between Phoenix and Flag Staff that would have deer tags available. They asked if we had checked the Walmart in Payson, the town 5 minutes from where we were staying. I hung up called the Payson Walmart and we were in luck. Only problem was we had 30 minutes to get an hour and a half away because the only lady that does deer tags was leaving at 10pm. I practically begged this lady to stay late so we could get deer tags. She put me on hold for a few minutes then came back on the line and said she’d train someone quickly to go ahead and get there whenever we could.

We rolled into Payson around 11 p.m. that evening, the parking lot was covered in piles of snow, the air was cold, the truck thermometer was reading in the 20s. We made a Beeline for the outdoor section. They had the tags out and ready for us. Unfortunately the crash course in training the employee received was less than adequate. After 4 different employees had to be called and some reading comprehension assistance from the two of us the license and tags were filled out. We made it to the front where we had to explain to the cashier that we actually had to pay for the license and tags. After we had paid we were so preoccupied with getting the tags taken care of we had kind of forgot that we wanted to get food for the week. So we got a cart and headed to the grocery section. A few loaves of bread, a couple of pounds of meat, couple of pounds of cheese, a case of bottled water, some gatorades, and a few other snacks was enough to hold us over. The AirBnB didn’t have a stove, not something we thought of at the time of booking since it was such a good price. We both decided some TV dinners would be fine for dinner the next evening and microwave hot pockets would work for breakfast.

We didn’t get in until late that night around 1 a.m. Arizona was two hours ahead of eastern time so in reality it was closer to 3 a.m. for us. We unloaded what we needed to quickly got organized and got to bed.