Archaic

I feel guilty, all of our group drew successfully on the Oct. 36B hunt this year.

Excellent, that will give the old man something to do. I've looked at the weather data for the area, it looks like pretty comfortable warm days and cool (40ish) nights. Is that pretty typical for late Oct.?

Our strategy is that each of us guys with grey hair had to recruit a young spry marathon runner type to carry extra water. I found mine (he's supposed to be logging in here soon). But yeah, water was our first conversation when we started planning. Figuring on two trips in-out, one to haul the spike camp and one to haul water. We aren't planning on going too far in, we just want to be beyond the radius of the casual road hunters. That seems to pay off pretty well on public land.

So, a good range finder is not optional equipment huh?

I'm shooting through a box of 150 grain 30-06 Hornadys every 2 weeks. Steve, you don't have to outrun the mountain lion, you just have to outrun dad.

Sorry about 'Tuscan' instead of Tucson, my spell check must have been hungry for Italian. Would you guys expect there to be any water on the ground in creek beds or springs in October, or will it still be bone dry? Will we be permitted to have a campfire? We have not been able to burn outdoors in TX for over 2+ years. What about radios, in most of the states we hunt in getting caught using a two way radio to stalk game is a bad bad thing, but I've read that a spotter-stalker using radios is permitted in AZ. Great stuff so far guys, thanks!

Read, thanks Winmag.

I will be part of a six person group hunting AZ for the first time this coming October. We are all experienced hunters, but this will be our first AZ hunt. Because of the availability of tags, we have applied for 36B. I don't want anybodies secret spot or anything like that, we'll hunt and scout for ourselves. What we are hoping for is if you guys could help with the following questions: We will be hunting the last week of October, should we expect to have to deal with mosquitoes, ticks, snakes? We plan on parking and hiking in to set up a camp, how safe will our three vehicles be and what can we do to make them safer? Is there any kind of cell phone coverage or will we have to hike out to make a call if something happens? If I am reading correctly, the only overlapping season is for quail. Can we hunt quail while deer hunting and do we need additional stamps to hunt them? Is there any place between Tuscan and Nogales to get dry ice? If one of my hunting buddies gets eaten by a mountain lion, do we HAVE to tell G&F, or can we just divide up his stuff and pretend nothing happened?

Thanks, thats how I read it but it seemed odd (coming from TX, TN, WV) so I thought I'd ask.

So, am I reading this correctly, is there no doe hunting at all in AZ?

We think that 36B will be the likely beach head of the hillbilly invasion. It looks like we are pretty well assured of drawing the October hunt based on the last 5 years application results. I may even try to bolt out there this summer from east Tx to do some scouting if I get a slow week at work.

I think we've decided its going to be an all coues deer hunt.

Any suggestions as to units that have decent draw rates and less access issues? Like my brother said, this hunt is as much about getting the old men in the woods and spending some time together, as it is about filling tags - not that we don't like filling tags too! We've had the good fortune to be able to hunt a lot of this country, but this is our first southwest hunting trip. You guys have already been a huge help.

It would appear that I am an idiot, I never ealized that the mule deer and whitetail hunts did not coincide. That essentially means that we have to go either mule or coues - that simplifies things I guess. I notice there are several any antlered deer hunts in some of the western desert units, would I be correct in assuming that the odds of seeing any deer in those units is pretty slim?

I'm one of the other guys that will be going on the hunt with CVITech. One of the reasons we were looking at 30A,B is because of the opportunity for some of the guys who want to hunt mule deer to get shots. One of the other reasons is that we'd like to try a unit that gives us a decent chance of getting a draw. We'll put in the work and don't mind a tough hunt, but we'd like to max our chances of getting tags first.