A full check station on a busy firearms weekend is a long line of hunters and a shorter line of deer on the tailgate. Georgia DNR Wildlife Resources Division keeps that check-in count in the WMA Hunt Summaries dashboard. The season menu defaults to the label 2025-26 and that label filters the Season field to 2025. On the 2025 filter the check-in feature layer sums to 9147 deer, 5508 bucks, 3639 does, 64416 hunters and 60 bears across 455 hunt rows.
The dashboard subtitle is "Data QA/QC occurs weekly." The dashboard item description is blank. The Check-in Hunt Summary Stakeholder service description is blank and its snippet is "WMA harvest records summary." We looked on the dashboard item, the service item and the harvest-summaries page for an agency warning against comparing check-station totals. That sentence was not on those pages. The harvest-summaries page says estimates of statewide deer harvest, hunter effort and hunter success come from a survey. It prints a sample size of 2500. It says each hunter has approximately a 1 in a 100 chance of being in the survey. It says the surveys are built for the statewide and physiographic region level. It says Game Check has been required since the 2016-2017 season and it links that deer harvest to a different map. The annual deer PDF list on that page stops at 2023-2024. This paper ranks check-in counts only. County Game Check totals stay out.
The season menu also lists 2026-27 and stores it as Season 2026. That filter currently sums to 200 deer and 1468 hunters on 16 hunt rows. The harvest-summaries page carried a press line dated Oct. 6, 2026. The line says primitive weapons deer season begins Saturday Oct. 10. The 2026-27 file is an early slice. The rank below is the 2025-26 check-in table.
ITen WMAs
The top check-in names held 3122 deer
The dashboard sums the filter you pick. It does not print a ranking of WMAs. The table is our sum of Total deer harvested grouped by the agency WMA name for Season 2025. We ordered the groups from most deer to least. Tract names stay as the agency stored them. Bullard Creek WMA stays separate from the Bell Telephone, Montgomery and Ocmulgee tracts.
Swipe table to see every column
| WMA | Deer | Bucks | Does | Hunters | Hunts | Deer per hunter | Buck share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cedar Creek WMA | 795 | 532 | 263 | 2727 | 5 | 0.292 | 66.9% |
| Redlands WMA | 418 | 223 | 195 | 2301 | 5 | 0.182 | 53.3% |
| Chickasawhatchee WMA | 312 | 206 | 106 | 1069 | 6 | 0.292 | 66.0% |
| Crockford-Pigeon Mountain WMA | 303 | 235 | 68 | 2230 | 4 | 0.136 | 77.6% |
| Paulding Forest WMA | 252 | 208 | 44 | 2694 | 4 | 0.094 | 82.5% |
| Mayhaw WMA | 240 | 118 | 122 | 626 | 5 | 0.383 | 49.2% |
| Bullard Creek WMA | 238 | 144 | 94 | 722 | 6 | 0.330 | 60.5% |
| Ocmulgee WMA | 210 | 158 | 52 | 829 | 5 | 0.253 | 75.2% |
| Allatoona WMA | 183 | 108 | 75 | 1505 | 2 | 0.122 | 59.0% |
| Alapaha River WMA | 171 | 93 | 78 | 1076 | 5 | 0.159 | 54.4% |
Those ten names add to 3122 deer. Dividing 3122 by 9147 gives 34.1 percent of the 2025-26 check-in deer. The next name in the same ordered result is Flat Tub WMA at 170 deer. That result page ends at Rum Creek WMA with 120 deer. All 146 WMA groups in season 2025 sum to 9,147 deer, 5,508 bucks, 3,639 does and 64,416 hunters across 455 hunts. That is the same as the statewide layer sum.
Deer per hunter in the table is our division of summed deer by summed hunters rounded to three decimals. On a single hunt the agency alias for that ratio is Deer/hunter. The hunter total on the dashboard is labeled # of hunters. The dashboard never calls the field a hunter-day. It never calls it a count of unique people. A person who checked in on two hunts can land in two rows.
Buck share is summed bucks divided by summed deer rounded to one decimal. Statewide that division is 5508 divided by 9147 which is 60.2 percent. Dividing 9147 deer by 64416 hunt-row hunters gives 0.142.
IIHunt labels
The sex split sits on the hunt name
Cedar Creek WMA is region 3 on all five opened rows. Two bonus either-sex firearms hunts hold most of the deer. The Oct. 23-25 row has 919 hunters, 301 bucks, 55 does and 356 deer. The Nov. 13-15 row has 866 hunters, 204 bucks, 168 does and 372 deer. Adding those deer counts gives 728. The archery either-sex row has 50 deer. The specialty firearms either-sex row has 10 deer. The Dec. 1-14 row is named Buck Only. It stores does as null and still counts 7 bucks and 7 deer on 192 hunters.
Paulding Forest WMA's 82.5 percent buck share comes from four rows that all say Either Sex. The Nov. 6-9 bonus row has 852 hunters, 129 bucks, 6 does and 135 deer.
Crockford-Pigeon Mountain WMA has a row named Buck Only for Dec. 10-13. That row has 628 hunters, 116 bucks, a null doe field and 116 deer. Those 116 deer sit inside the WMA total of 303.
Mayhaw WMA's either-sex firearms row from Dec. 13 to Jan. 11 has 274 hunters, 82 bucks, 100 does and 182 deer. That row pulls the WMA buck share to 49.2 percent. The Oct. 18 to Nov. 30 row is named Buck Only and still lists 28 bucks and 1 doe. The Sep. 13-28 archery row is also named Buck Only and lists 1 buck and 2 does. Use the counts on the row when the name and the sex split disagree.
IIIOne hunt
Match the ratio before you chase a rate
The success widget is titled Deer Hunter Success Rate. With no hunt selected it reads Select a Hunt. It takes the Deer/hunter field and multiplies by 100. The caption under the value is the word percent and the display keeps three decimals. An empty deer widget uses the text "No deer harvested or deer harvest not allowed."
Try the division on one row. Cedar Creek's Oct. 23-25 hunt stored 356 deer and 919 hunters. Dividing 356 by 919 returns 0.38737758433079433. That matches the stored Deer/hunter value. Times 100 and rounded to three decimals it is 38.738 percent. That percent is the check-in ratio for the row. It is not your chance from one stand.
Sapelo Island WMA sits lower on the same ordered list at 133 deer, 292 hunters and 5 hunts. The youth firearms bonus row for Oct. 10-12 stored 12 deer and 11 hunters. Its Deer/hunter value is 1.0909090909090908. The widget conversion would show 109.091 percent. Twelve deer on 11 hunter records can push a ratio past one. It is not a forecast for the next hunter on that hunt.
Some rows have deer and no usable hunter count. Eufaula NWR archery either sex lists 30 deer and 0 hunters. The Eufaula youth row lists 1 deer and 0 hunters. The Ocmulgee WMA West Lake Road tract lists 8 deer and a null hunter count. Drop a zero or a null hunter cell before you sort on deer per hunter.
Our rule is to rank the WMA on summed 2025-26 check-in deer. Then open one hunt and divide that row's deer by that row's hunters. Match the result to Deer/hunter. Read the hunt name and how large the hunter count is before a high ratio picks the place. Eleven hunter records on a youth row are a different denominator than Cedar Creek's 2727 hunt-row hunters on five hunts. Leave the telephone survey and the county Game Check map out of this table.
The research index holds county harvest papers for other states. The first screen opened for this run did not include a Georgia WMA check-in ranking.
NOTES AND SOURCES
- Source: Georgia DNR Wildlife Resources Division, WMA Hunt Summaries dashboard and check-in feature layer for the 2025-26 season, and its harvest summaries page.
Fully Drawn Research is an independent data analysis desk, not affiliated with any state wildlife agency, transportation agency, mapping provider or outfitter. This paper reports official agency harvest records as published when it was written. It does not predict hunting success at any place.
Keep reading
FDR Scout puts county harvest history like this on the map of the ground you hunt. Open Scout →