Flocks of eager hunters will flood the deserts this month and through December in hopes of being some of the lucky ones who harvest a deer providing food for their family, antlers on their wall and hours worth of stories to share with friends.

Arizona’s sportsmen are a crucial part of the state economy bringing in millions of dollars through hunting licenses, big and small game permits or tags, camping equipment and hunting gear like apparel, guns and ammunition.

“I spent well over $1,000 this year to outfit my daughter for her first hunt,” said Brad Fulk, Arizona Game and Fish field supervisor in Region 5. “That’s not even including gas, food and camp costs for the weekend.”

Fulk said his daughter has been asking to go hunting with him for years but said he didn’t want to start her out too early because kids first hunting experience can either be positive or negative. He wanted his 11-year-old daughter to be able to hold a rifle before he decided to take her on her first hunt.

“Now the pressures on me to make it happen,” Fulk said.

Tombstone, called Unit 30B by Arizona Game and Fish Department, is one of the more challenging units to hunt because of numerous ranches and private property in the area, he said.

A lot of sportsmen who flock to Unit 30B have had a lot of trouble with hunting around ranches or mistakenly hunting in a ranch.

“The ranchers do an excellent job with providing water to their cattle,” said Robert Hoskins, of the Arizona camping club. “With signs of waters sources…the deer love the grass around there”

Hoskins, an avid sportsman used to hunt 30B but said many of the spots in wilderness areas would have made it hard to retrieve a deer if you ended up harvesting (killing) one because some of the deer weigh a lot more than a person would want to carry for miles.

“I wouldn’t want to sleep out there (30B), and I have a gun” said Hoskins referring to the illegal immigrants who he said roam the desert. “Tracking the game trails is tough; it’s all sneaker tracks, not deer.”

AZGFD has been working with ranchers through the Adopt-A-Ranch Program in which a group of sportsmen will adopt a ranch and a few times per year they will help out the landowners with tasks like cleaning up trash and things left behind by illegal immigrants, Fulk said.

“Complaints come from the ranchers about people leaving gates open” he said. “Littering and off highway vehicles running up through washes and off trails.”

Ranchers were solving the trash problems and trespass problems from the immigrants by closing and locking up access all together. These closures hurt the hunting success in 30B because the hunters were usually not the ones to blame but were being closed off limiting the areas that big game could be located drastically.

The 47 Ranch and the Double U Ranch have been excellent participants in the programs, Fulk said.

“If open access to land starts closing up it becomes an issue with hunter concentrations,” Fulk said. “That’s what AZGFD tries to maintain.”

AZGFD surveys the big game populations (deer, bear, elk, turkey, javelina, big horn sheep, mountain lion and buffalo) every year so they can get an accurate count on what populations have increased and which have decreased in order to get as many hunters out there as they can without effecting the quality of the hunt, Fulk said.

There are tags (permits to hunt a certain species at a certain time) left over every year because hunters only put in for the most popular units. If you apply for some of the lesser secondary units you’re almost guaranteed a tag, said Hoskins.

“AZGFD strives for a 15-20 percent success rate for sportsmen,” Fulk said. “We only allow buck (male) harvest which is one method of protecting the deer herds and producing units.”

AZGFD is beginning to see more violations occurring out of season because of the bad economy and they are finding that people are breaking the law just to provide food on the table.

This causes problems with deer populations because the producing female deer called “doe’s” are being killed because meat is meat whether it’s female or male, Fulk said.

“If violations are found they can be charged with class 1, 2 or 3 misdemeanors typically.” Fulk said.

For 2009, the hunting season will run in chunks with four hunts for white tailed deer and two hunts for mule deer, he said. This helps eliminate a lot of the competition for hunting spots and spreads out the hunters so the quality of their season is better.

“White tail have been expanding recently,” Fulk said. “All this is positive when compared with the long term drought we’ve had.”

In good rain years the deer populations increase and in bad rain years the populations drastically reduce.

AZGFD makes adjustments accordingly to the weather but they cannot control the weather, Fulk said.

“Hunting season can be a breath of fresh air, it’s what they (hunters) live for,” Fulk said. “Growing up in rural Illinois, I couldn’t sleep the night before the hunt.”

Fulk said some of his fondest memories are those hunting with his dad and his uncle. He hopes to pass that experience to his daughter this coming hunting season.

Hoskins said it’s all about stalking an animal and waiting, sometimes a whole day for the right time.

“It’s the American tradition,” Hoskins said. “My kids will remember our hunt for their whole life time.”