Terrain varies from mountains to desert, depending on what you want to hunt. Mulies and whitetails are out there.
Hunting conditions in the mountains are nice, down below its usually ridiculously hot with tons of mosquitos. The bow season is only the month of September, so its pretty short.
We have a couple ranchers that let us hunt, public land hunting can get busy depending on where you go.
There's good bucks out there but they aren't a dime a dozen by any means. The one I missed last year was a straight up 8pt whitetail that was around 24" inside, tons of mass, and had 12"+ tines and huge brows. Biggest 8 I've ever seen in my life. But like you said, lots of smaller bucks. They get hammered in the gun season where we hunt.