Ground Zero: Rocky Mountain's Record Bucks

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Check out this video to learn how to manage your small track of land to bag your trophy buck.

ARIZONA

Don’t overlook the trophy-deer potential of the Grand Canyon State. The desert Southwest may not sound like a sweet spot for big bucks, but it produces toads — whitetails and mule deer — each season.

The record book shows 68 Booners were entered from 2013-17; 40 percent of those coming from southern Cochise, Pima and Santa Cruz counties in southern Arizona. Of the 15 or so units from this region, the later season hunts for both mule deer and whitetails fare significantly better than their early season counterparts. Units 29, 30, 31 and 33 post success rates from 60 to 80 percent for both mule deer and whitetail, while the remaining units produced solid harvest numbers that hovered between 30 and 40 percent. Buck-to-doe ratios are also solid, averaging around 30-to-100. These counties offer both BLM and national forest lands, and there is plenty of it to go around.

There also is no shortage of public dirt in Gila County, where representative bucks total 24 percent of our 68 B&C qualifiers. For the public-land deer hunter, about half of Gila County consists of the Tonto National Forest and largely covers units 22 and 23, north to south from Mogollon to Lordsburg, and east to west from U.S. Highway 180 to the California border.

Getting a deer tag is also fairly easy in these units. About 1,200 tags are issued to rifle hunters annually, while archery hunters can grab one over the counter. With buck-to-doe ratios around 27-to-100 in Unit 22 and 17-to-100 in Unit 23, seeing a quality buck is a real possibility.

Several years of drought have impacted overall mule deer numbers, but Dan Adler, owner of Diamond Outfitters in Prescott, says they are recovering well. Adler says whitetails, too, are in excellent shape across the region, and hunter success proves it. Last season more than 50 percent of the region’s hunters in Unit 23 connected with a whitetail buck during the late season; more than 75 percent of late-season hunters did the same in Unit 22. Mule deer success was much lower, ranging from 25 to 35 percent.

A trophy hunt with Diamond Outfitters is an all-inclusive deal — guides, lodging, meals, USFS and/or BLM permits, private-land access and trespass fees (if applicable), all trophy fees, taxes, trophy prep for taxidermist and butcher. Outings vary for mule deer, whitetails and Coues deer, with costs running upward of $4,750 for a seven-day hunt mule-deer hunt, plus your Arizona hunting license. Most of the tags applied to these hunts are bought over the counter, but the Diamond Outfitters team does all the paperwork for you when you choose to apply for a draw hunt.