2021 VOTES Survey And Rate Your Deer Season

VOTES, which stands for Voice Of The Educated Sportsman, is a GON survey that has been around for more than two decades. A question on the survey each and every year is Rate Your Deer Season, which gives us county-specific ratings that can be compared to historical trends. We’d like to hear how your deer hunting was this season, and we’d like to hear why you gave it that rating. We also want to hear your comments and opinions on how you feel the hunting could be improved.

In addition to the annual Rate Your Season survey, we also ask other survey questions. Here are this year’s additional questions to the Rate Your Deer Season survey:

Question No. 2: Compared to five years ago, are you deer hunting more, less or about the same? Like a lot of VOTES questions over the years, this one began around the campfire at a deer camp. Those hunters in camp had varying opinions, and their discussion piqued our curiosity.

Question No. 3: If any of these are the candidates for Georgia governor in November, who would most likely get your vote (listed alphabetically): Stacey Abrams, Vernon Jones, Brian Kemp or David Perdue? 

The Party primaries take place on May 24, 2022 in Georgia to determine which candidate will earn the right to run as the party’s nominee in the state’s gubernatorial election, which is Nov. 8, 2022. But the race is already making national headlines. We realize some folks might change their minds several times between now and casting a ballot, but who’s your pick at the moment?

Question No. 4: On a scale of 1-5, how concerned are you about Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) getting to Georgia—one being the least concerned and five being the most concerned? 

If you’re not familiar with CWD, please spend some time online and visit cwd-info.org and georgiawildlife.com/cwd.

You don’t have to cut off the bottom of your January magazine cover to participate in the VOTES survey. You can photo-copy it, or you can take a digital photo with your phone and email the picture of your ballot to [email protected]. Simply include your comments in the email along with the attached picture of your cover ballot.

Also, again this year, GON subscribers who we have email addresses for will receive an online VOTES ballot through a service called Survey Monkey. The emailed survey will also include a way to write and submit comments digitally. The email survey is super convenient for GON members. If you received an email and did your VOTES survey there, we have your results—there’s no need to use your cover ballot.

Reminder: If you only want to respond to Rate Your Deer Season and not the other ballot questions, you can Rate Your Deer Season with a quick email. 

Simply list your rating (excellent, good, fair or poor), the primary county you hunted, and write your comments on why you rated it that way. Then, you can simply email us at [email protected] with the subject “Rate Your Season.”