At the April 19th, Game and Fish Commission meeting, the commission approved orders setting hunting seasons for deer, turkey, javelina, bighorn sheep, buffalo, bear and mountain lions, and established season dates, bag and possession limits, permit numbers and open areas for the remaining 2008-09 seasons not previously addressed (elk and antelope have already been drawn).
Also, a few changes came out of the April 19th, meeting. Two of those changes involve the initiation of the first-ever over-the-counter turkey tags for youth in the designated units. The second was the approval of the first-ever permitted archery deer hunts in specific units based on a harvest apportioning formula. Also, young hunters have a new opportunity being offered in this year’s fall hunt regulation package is that all the fall javelina hunts are juniors-only, which will coincide with juniors-only antlered deer hunts in the respective units.
The commission set the various small game hunts for a 2-year period & increased the tree squirrel season 5 weeks, that will now close on Dec. 31st. The Gambel’s & scaled quail season opener will now be the first Friday in October each year. Mearns’ will remain unchanged, with a season opener of Nov. 28th, this year.
The new hunt guidelines the Game and Fish Commission adopted last August will be implemented & in place for two years and will constitute evolutionary steps to improve the Arizona hunt scene. These guidelines reflect an over-arching desire to increase the hunting prospects for everyone while also standardizing hunts where feasible.
For the fall turkey season, it is now relegated to shotgun shooting-shot-only with 6,100 permits, which is a 230-permit increase over 2007. Plus there are 6 units (Hunt Unit 1, 6A, 8, 10, 12A, 23, and 27) with juniors-only seasons where over-the-counter nonpermit tags are being offered – for the first time ever.
The commission also approved a youth-only 600-permit antlerless deer season for Unit 12AW due to the continued high-fawn production on the Kaibab Plateau.
These newly-adopted fall regulations are expected to be posted online on April 30th. The printed regulation booklets are expected to be available at license dealers around the 3rd week of May.
The deadline to apply for the remaining permitted hunts (elk & antelope have already been drawn) is June 10th, at 7 pm MST, postmarks do not count. Don't forget, there is no online application process available at this time, it's a manual paper-permit process.
Also, May 29th, is the end of the application grace period. During the grace period, if you make a mistake on your application for one of the remaining fall hunts, they attempt to call you 3 times in a 24-hour period to allow you the opportunity to correct the mistake. After that date, any mistakes can mean your application will not be accepted.
If you would like to see the hunt guidelines or the packet the commission considered, they can be viewed online, anytime. The commission did make a few changes to the hunt recommendation packet as submitted, so you cannot use that particular proposed packet to apply. However, it does give an idea of what hunts are when, and what the level of permits will be.