The 2016 WMA Deer Special

With the Sept. 1 WMA quota-hunt deadline weeks away, it’s GON’s duty to get its subscribers ready for which public-land hunts best suit their needs.

Last season’s WMA hunt stats are on pages 47-53. For each WMA, we list overall hunter, harvest and success data, along with that same information for particular hunts.

These pages alone can be overwhelming, so GON gets all the data into these tables and then looks at each WMA and ranks them from first to worst, based on overall hunter success for last year. That list is below and is helpful in figuring out which WMAs you may want to hunt this fall. 

It’s not surprising that some of the more successful WMAs are either restricted to all quota hunting or at least some quota hunting. In fact, the top-seven WMAs for overall hunter success were areas that hosted quota hunts. Di-Lane WMA was the only one of those seven that offered a non-quota opportunity to the general public last season. That Nov. 12-14 non-quota opportunity saw a 20.5 percent hunter-success rate, too.

GON breaks WRD’s data down even further, looking specifically at quota and non-quota WMAs and specific hunts on those areas. 

WMA Quota Hunts: If you’re going to participate in a WMA quota hunt, you’ll need to apply online at www.gohuntgeorgia.com/hunting/quota. If you’ve never set up an online account, it’s an easy process that’ll unlock the door to some great hunting.

Once you’re through setting up your online account, you can then pick from 42 different WMA quota deer hunts. You can select only one hunt or pick as many as three to up the odds of getting selected for one. Or, if you just want to earn one priority point and start saving your points for some of the more popular hunts in the next few years, you can do that, too.

Ossabaw Island’s Nov. 5-7 quota hunt saw the highest hunter-success rate (68.6 percent) for a firearms hunt last year. The island also had the No. 3 best success (52.2 percent) during its Dec. 10-12 hunt. 

“I think freshwater was the biggest thing to talk about last year. Freshwater is very crucial to the upland habitats and animals on Ossabaw,” said David Mixon, WRD’s Coastal Region supervisor. “We got rain very often, and it kept lots of freshwater on the island. It also made the habitat more productive, so I think that helped contribute to very successful deer hunts.”

David said the deer are in great shape right now, but if you’ve never been to the island, remember they are “island deer.” These deer are typically small in body size and don’t produce large racks. Most hunters attend a hunt on Ossabaw for the experience of hunting an island. Others hunt it because it still provides the chance at a hog, despite a diligent effort to knock back populations on the island.

“Our hog control efforts help to keep the hog numbers well below the maximum, but we certainly haven’t achieved the goal of no ecological effect yet,” said David. “Hunting and trapping efforts have been very successful at keeping the depredation of sea turtle nests to a minimum, so we are excited with these results.”

Look for good deer hunting ahead on Ossabaw this season.

“This year the rain has been consistent enough to provide sufficient freshwater again. While not nearly as wet as last year, it still should be a productive year,” said David.

Are you curious to know how many priority points it took to participate in Ossabaw’s most successful hunt in the state last year? You’ll probably be shocked to know that 6 percent of applicants got drawn with zero priority points. Every applicant who applied with one point was drawn.

WRD supplies rejection-odds information on their website, which really helps in deciding how many points to use when applying for a quota hunt. Go to www.gohuntgeorgia.com/hunting/quota, and click on “Quota Hunt Selection Odds.” 

Pour through the selection-odds tables and the data in this article to figure out where you’d like to hunt this fall. 

Non-Quota WMAs: Many of our readers utilize the non-quota deer hunting opportunities on WMAs. A list of the top-15 most successful non-quota WMA hunts are listed on this page. Beaverdam’s Oct. 29-31 hunt had the highest non-quota hunter-success rate with 41.6 percent.

“Several years back this area suffered major tornado wind damage to areas of mature hardwoods that resulted in nearly 550 acres of clearcut land,” said Chris Baumann, WRD’s Region 6 supervisor. “While this was not as appealing to the eye as the mature hardwoods, it has infused additional edge habitat into what was fairly uniform-aged hardwoods, providing a diversity of early successional habitat that produced high quality and quantity forage plants, as well as great cover. 

“Add that to our guys working harder each year to improve roads and access to these great hunting areas, and I believe you get the results we have seen there the past few years. Additionally, thanks to the increase in PR dollars, which enabled the road work also, we have increased wildlife opening sizes and quality of species planted for deer and turkey on this area, year-round.”

Chris added that there still seems to be good numbers of hogs on the WMA. 

“They have receded back to the river bottoms now to be near water. We are seeing hog sign all along the roads down in the river bottoms,” said Chris.

As always, consult current hunting regs for this season’s WMA hunt dates. The dates you see listed throughout this Special are last year’s dates.

Remember the WMA quota-hunt deadline for deer hunts is Thursday, Sept. 1.