If you want a chance at an Arizona deer tag, you must act fast on Monday, Nov. 4. That’s because the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) will be releasing 2,820 over-the-counter (OTC) non-permit tags for nonresident archery deer beginning at 8 a.m. (Arizona time), according to a news release. 

If you want to do some last-minute research to see if this hunt is worth it to you, be sure to jump over to GOHUNT's Filtering set of research tools. There you can check out every single OTC unit and read all of the hunting data on that unit on their Unit Profile. Learn more about GOHUNT's Insider research tools here.

Be aware that Arizona does not honor the time change associated with Daylight Savings Time. Instead, the state operates on Mountain Standard Time year-round.

The OTC tags up for grabs are valid for the 2025 calendar year and will only be sold online right here.

Nonresidents cannot purchase one of these licenses at third-party license dealers. (Note that this restriction doesn’t apply to resident hunters.)

There are also no restrictions on the total number of non-permit tags for archery deer available to Arizona residents.

Be prepared: you must have a customer ID number along with your date of birth in order to purchase one of these tags. If you already have an ID number, but don’t remember what it is, go here to locate it, or log onto your AZGFD portal account and click on “View Details” under “My AZGFD Dashboard.” If you don’t have an ID number, register for one ahead of Nov. 4 right now.

These 2025 non-permit OTC archery deer tags will be valid for all open seasons during the 2025 calendar year. Season dates for OTC non-permit archery deer tags vary by unit. Some are already closed because they’ve met their harvest quota prior to the January 2025 season. Harvest limits now apply to all over-the-counter archery deer hunts in Arizona. Harvest limits apply to hunts between August and January; they will reset each year in August. When the number of deer equaling the archery deer harvest limit for a unit and species has been reported, the unit will close to further archery deer hunting at sundown on the immediate Wednesday. The unit will remain closed until August of the next calendar year.

The bag limit is one deer per calendar year in Arizona. If a hunter harvests a deer during the over-the-counter archery season, that hunter may not take another deer (archery or general hunts) during that calendar year.

AZGFD is strictly enforcing all changes, including failure to report a harvest and hunting in a closed unit.

Check out the current status of hunt units here.

For more information, check out the 2024-2025 Arizona Hunting Regulations.