Arizona Hunting License: Cost, Online Purchase & Draw Tags (2026)

Arizona hunting licenses are valid for 365 days from the date of purchase — not a calendar year. This rolling validity is unusual among US states and means you can purchase a license at any time and have it active through the same date the following year. The resident general hunting license ($37) covers small game, upland birds, quail, dove, rabbit, and predators statewide. To apply for any big game draw permit or purchase an OTC archery deer tag, a valid license must be in place first.

Non-residents have one license option: the $160 Non-Resident Combo, which bundles hunting and statewide fishing into a single purchase. There is no standalone NR hunting-only license — if you want to hunt, you buy the combo. Youth hunters aged 10–17 pay $5 for a full combo license regardless of residency. Arizona does not require a separate Conservation Stamp, Habitat Stamp, or Big Game Stamp on top of the base license; the base license itself qualifies you to apply for big game draws.

All license purchases and draw applications go through the AZGFD online portal at azgfd.com. Create an account before any transaction — the portal stores your bonus points history, draw results, harvest reports, and license documents across all species and years. A portal account is required to participate in any big game draw.

Arizona uses a bonus point system, not a preference point system. Each year you apply unsuccessfully for a given species, you earn one bonus point for that species, and a successful draw resets that species to zero. Points are species-specific: elk points do not carry over to deer or pronghorn.

Non-residents face allocation limits in the draw. Draw application windows are staggered by species group: elk and pronghorn applications typically close in February; deer, bighorn sheep, and fall bison close later; spring turkey, javelina, and bear use separate windows. Missing a window can mean waiting for the next cycle, so hunters should confirm the current AZGFD deadline before buying a license for a draw plan.

Non-resident hunters can earn a permanent lifetime bonus point across all species simultaneously by completing the $300 'Ethically Hunting Arizona' online course — a one-time investment that applies a single bonus point to every species permanently. The course must be completed at least 30 days before the relevant draw deadline to count for that cycle. The optional PointGuard fee ($10 per species) allows a hunter who draws a tag but cannot hunt that year to surrender the permit and retain their accumulated bonus points, rather than having them reset to zero.

Arizona elk planning is heavily unit- and draw-dependent, with different costs and hunt structures for bull and antlerless permits. For hunters not willing to wait on limited draw odds, antlerless and lower-demand hunt choices can be part of a more realistic planning path, but the current hunt code should drive every decision.

Coues whitetail deer are Arizona's native whitetail subspecies, concentrated in oak-juniper woodlands and sky island mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona. OTC archery deer tags for non-residents ($300 tag + $160 combo = $460 total before processing) can provide access to both Coues deer and mule deer without a draw, but they are capped for nonresidents and units may close when harvest limits are met. AZGFD announced 2,785 nonresident OTC archery deer tags for the 2026 calendar year.

Gambel's quail, dove, and javelina create additional Arizona hunting interest, but each follows its own license, tag, season, and reporting rules. Hunters should not assume deer draw rules, OTC archery deer rules, and small-game access work the same way.