• The online guide carries a corrections sheet updated 26 August 2026, revising deer hunts on John's Mountain, Carter's Lake, River Bend and Ocmulgee wildlife management areas and a dove season on Flat Creek PFA. No private-land deer season is affected.
• Statewide carcass disposal requirements are in force: leave the carcass where the deer was killed, use household trash or a landfill, use a commercial processor, or deep burial or incineration under the Dead Animal Disposal Act.

Bow and arrow

Regulations, printed p. 11

• A bow in the archery season, and in the primitive weapons and firearms seasons too.
• A bow in the four archery-only counties, where nothing else is legal for deer.

• Possessing any firearm while hunting during the archery deer season.

Primitive weapons

Regulations, printed p. 11

• A muzzleloader, with scopes.
• An air rifle of .30 calibre or larger, and an air bow.
• Any legal deer firearm, for a youth under 16, during the statewide primitive weapons season.

• Possessing a centerfire or rimfire firearm while hunting the primitive weapons season, unless a lawful weapons carrier.
• Primitive weapons hunting in the four archery-only counties.

Any legal deer firearm

Regulations, printed pp. 11-13

• Any legal deer firearm during the firearms season, in every county but the four archery-only ones.

• Firearms deer hunting in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb or Fulton north of GA Highway 92.

Legal Shooting Hours

Regulations, printed p. 9

"Legal hours for hunting are 30 minutes before sunrise until 30 minutes after sunset, except alligators, raccoons, opossums, foxes, coyotes, bobcats and feral hogs which may be hunted at night." The guide prints no table and points hunters at the Go Outdoors GA app; the times here are computed for the pin.

Fluorescent Orange

Regulations, printed pp. 9 and 11

At least 500 square inches of daylight fluorescent orange or blaze pink, worn above the waist Required of "a hunter, and anyone accompanying the hunter" during the primitive weapons and firearms deer seasons, of archers as well as gun hunters — "Archery hunters must wear at least 500 square inches of daylight fluorescent orange or blaze pink during primitive weapons and firearms deer seasons, except in archery-only counties or WMAs." So the exemption is about where you are, not about what you carry. Blaze pink counts the same as orange.

Sundays

No day-of-week closure appears in the 2026-2027 regulations

Georgia closes no day of the week to hunting on private land.

Six colours and a county map

Regulations, printed pp. 12-13

Georgia colours every county on one map and prints a season table per colour. What changes between them is not the length of the firearms season — most of them run 17 October to 10 January — but how much of it is either sex.

Green, most of the state, is either sex throughout and adds two antlerless-only days on 3 and 4 October. Yellow, in the north-east corner, gives three either-sex days in the entire season.

• Yellow: Towns and Rabun. Cyan: Fannin and Union.
• Orange: Whitfield, Murray, Gilmer, Pickens, Dawson, Lumpkin, White, Habersham and Stephens.
• Magenta: Calhoun, Early, Baker, Miller, Mitchell, Seminole, Decatur, Grady and Thomas.
• Gray, archery only: Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton north of GA Highway 92.

Checking your deer

Regulations, printed pp. 8 and 11

"All deer hunters are required to have a Harvest Record for the current season. Additionally, harvested deer must be reported through Georgia Game Check within 24 hours."

"It is unlawful to remove the head of a deer until the deer is processed, surrendered to a storage facility for storage or processing, or head is submitted for Chronic Wasting Disease testing."

• A person transporting a deer harvested by another hunter must carry that hunter's name, address, telephone number, licence number and the Game Check confirmation number, in writing.
• A cooler locker or processor must mark the deer with the hunter's name, date, county of harvest and sex, and the hunter must give them the Game Check confirmation number.

Antler restrictions

Regulations, printed pp. 11 and 13

Statewide, one of a hunter's two antlered deer must have four points of an inch or longer on a side, or a 15-inch outside spread.

Two county rules go further. In Dooly and Macon every antlered buck must have a 15-inch outside spread. In Hancock, Harris, Meriwether, Montgomery, Randolph, Talbot and Troup every antlered buck must have four points on a side or a 15-inch spread.

What is prohibited

Regulations, printed p. 9

• Using a drone to locate any game species on public or private land.
• Hunting without the landowner's permission, including on power line and other rights-of-way.
• Hunting from a stand or platform attached to a transmission tower.
• Taking a deer by any means while it is in a lake, stream or pond.

Regulations, printed pp. 8 and 11

Every deer must be reported within 24 hours of the harvest.

• Carry a Harvest Record for the current season.
• Report every harvested deer through Georgia Game Check within 24 hours — in the Go Outdoors GA app, online at GoOutdoorsGeorgia.com, or by calling 1-800-366-2661.
• Keep the confirmation number — a processor or a cooler locker will ask for it, and so will anyone transporting the deer for you.

Regulations, printed pp. 10-11, and GeorgiaWildlife.com/CWD

Chronic wasting disease was first detected in Georgia in January 2025. The CWD Management Area — any county where CWD was detected and any county within five miles of a detection — is Atkinson, Berrien, Lanier and Lowndes counties as of April 2026, and carries no season or bag change of its own; WRD asks hunters there to have their deer tested. Statewide, carcass disposal rules apply and a deer's head may not be removed until the animal is processed, surrendered for storage or processing, or submitted for CWD testing.

• "Current CMA: Atkinson, Berrien, Lanier and Lowndes counties (as of April 2026)." Hunters in the CMA are asked to submit deer for testing at a participating processor, taxidermist or self-serve sampling site listed at GeorgiaWildlife.com/cwd; deer that test positive do not count toward the bag limit and processing fees may be reimbursed. Testing is not required of hunters outside the CMA.
• A white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, moose, caribou or other deer killed outside Georgia may be brought back only as boned-out meat or products of it; hides with no head attached; antlers, skulls, skull plates, teeth or jawbones with no soft tissue attached (velvet antlers are allowed); or finished taxidermy.
• The guide's baiting and feeding advice to reduce transmission — broadcast bait or feed over 500 square feet or more, avoid troughs, gravity feeders, salt licks or piles on the ground, move feeding locations, and limit baiting to times when actively hunting — is advice, not a rule; the guide prints no deer-baiting prohibition for private land.
• Lawful disposal of a carcass or unused parts: leave it on the property where the deer was killed; household trash service or a solid waste landfill; a commercial deer processor; or deep burial, incineration or another method approved under the Dead Animal Disposal Act.
• It is unlawful to remove the head of a deer until it is processed, surrendered for storage or processing, or submitted for CWD testing.

• Wildlife management area seasons are not carried. Georgia prints a separate table for each of more than a hundred WMAs, with its own dates, sign-in or bonus-quota rules and either-sex days, on printed pp. 32-57. Only the private-land seasons are here, and a WMA's dates are frequently narrower than the county's.
• The extended archery table gives the nine magenta counties either sex from 12 September, but the magenta zone's own table and the season summary on printed p. 16 both make the first two weeks of archery, 12 to 27 September, antlered bucks only. The zone's block is carried and the extension runs from 28 September.
• The portion of Glynn County lying within Jekyll Island is closed to firearms deer hunting (printed p. 16). Jekyll Island is a sub-county boundary and is not drawn; Glynn carries the green zone's ordinary firearms season here.
• The archery-only rule for Fulton County applies north of GA Highway 92; the county is treated as archery-only throughout here, because the app resolves to whole counties.
• The portion of Forsyth County south of GA Highway 20 is marked archery, shotgun and muzzleloader only on the season map — "only shotguns and muzzleloaders may be used (no other firearms allowed)", printed p. 16. It is a sub-county boundary and is not drawn; the county carries its zone's ordinary firearms season here.
• Georgia's rut map gives every county its own peak week and they span eleven weeks, from 13-19 October in Ben Hill to 22-28 December in Seminole, with the northern mountains among the late ones rather than the early. The rut meter uses your county's own week; a pin outside any county falls back to the median county's 6 November. The map is built from deer-vehicle collision peaks, which WRD reports track conception closely but are not themselves conception dates — and the map's footnote flags counties with fewer than 100 collisions in the sample period as low-confidence, though no county on the printed map carries the flag.

Ranger hotline

1-800-241-4113.

Licences

1-800-366-2661, or GoOutdoorsGeorgia.com.

Regulations

GoHuntGeorgia.com