Drone Deer Surveys in Georgia
Georgia's problem isn't how many deer. It's how many fawns.
Most survey pitches in the Southeast are built around density — how many deer are on the property. In Georgia that framing misses the actual issue.
Georgia holds roughly 1.0 to 1.3 million deer against an estimated ecological carrying capacity near 1.1 million. The state is deliberately managed at carrying capacity, down from a peak near 1.8 million in the late 1990s and held steady since about 2004. Georgia is not short on deer.
What Georgia is short on is fawn recruitment. DNR deer biologist Charlie Killmaster has documented the state's most significant decline in fawn recruitment between roughly 2000 and 2017 — enough that DNR responded by cutting either-sex days. Georgia now produces fewer fawns per doe than it did a generation ago.
Fawn-to-doe recruitment is the single hardest number to get out of a trail camera survey and the easiest to get out of a thermal drone flight. Cameras undercount fawns badly — they are small, they move with the doe, they are frequently cropped out of frame or misidentified, and they are far less likely to independently visit bait. A thermal survey flown in January or February sees the doe and counts the fawns standing next to her.
If you want to know whether your property is actually recruiting, that is the flight.
The Georgia calendar
Georgia has largely retired the old Northern/Southern season split in favor of statewide dates with county-level either-sex and antler rules. Three structural things matter for survey planning:
Georgia's general archery opener is the earliest of any state we serve, and its firearms season closes earlier than Alabama's. Both ends of your season run early, which shifts your survey window earlier than it would be one state west.
Twenty-nine counties run extended archery, closing weeks later than the rest of the state. That list is a split personality — metro Atlanta suburban counties on one side, southwest Georgia ag counties on the other.
Nine southwest Georgia counties run extended firearms. Baker, Calhoun, Decatur, Early, Grady, Miller, Mitchell, Seminole and Thomas.
Antler rules vary by county, and a handful — including Dooly, Macon, Hancock, Harris, Meriwether, Montgomery, Randolph, Talbot and Troup — carry their own restrictions. Worth knowing before you set harvest criteria off a survey.
Current season dates, county rules and antler restrictions: Georgia DNR Wildlife Resources Division
Georgia's county-level rules change more often than most states'. Verify yours each season.
Two very different Georgia markets
Southwest Georgia — Baker, Calhoun, Decatur, Early, Grady, Miller, Mitchell, Seminole and Thomas counties, the extended-firearms zone. Limestone karst under center-pivot peanut and cotton, longleaf quail plantations, and the best deer ground in the state. Open ag with defined timber blocks is excellent thermal country, workable nearly year-round. These are also large, professionally managed properties with budgets for outside services and the highest lease rates in the Southeast — roughly $30 to $45 an acre and up on premium ground.
Metro Atlanta's extended-archery counties — Cobb, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Fulton, Forsyth, Cherokee, Henry, Rockdale, Fayette, Paulding, Douglas, Clayton, Barrow, Hall. These counties are on extended archery through January 31 for a reason: suburban deer overpopulation, deer-vehicle collisions, and browse damage on HOA greenspace, golf courses and parkland. Counting deer in that environment with trail cameras is impractical and often not permitted. A thermal drone flight over a 200-acre greenspace on an overcast winter morning is a very different proposition, and one that produces a defensible number for a county commission or an HOA board.
The full extended-archery list runs 29 counties and includes both groups: Baker, Barrow, Bibb, Calhoun, Chatham, Cherokee, Clarke, Clayton, Cobb, Columbia, Decatur, DeKalb, Douglas, Early, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Grady, Gwinnett, Hall, Henry, Miller, Mitchell, Muscogee, Paulding, Richmond, Rockdale, Seminole and Thomas.
Terrain across the state
Georgia spans more physiography than any state in the Southeast, and it changes what a survey can deliver.
Blue Ridge — Rabun, Union, Towns, Fannin. Steep, over 4,000 feet, closed hardwood, heavily National Forest. Lowest deer densities in Georgia and the hardest drone terrain in the state. We will fly it, but we will be straight with you about what it costs and what it returns.
Ridge and Valley and Cumberland Plateau — northwest Georgia, alternating limestone valleys and sandstone ridges, flat-topped mesas with steep escarpments.
Piedmont — Atlanta south through Athens, Macon and Columbus. Rolling clay hills, loblolly plantation mixed with hardwood creek bottoms and old fields. Georgia's population center and its suburban deer market.
Fall Line Sandhills — the sharp break through Columbus, Macon and Augusta. Deep sand, longleaf and turkey oak, low fertility.
Upper Coastal Plain — row-crop ag mixed with pine.
Dougherty Plain — the southwest ag country described above. The best thermal ground in Georgia.
Lower Coastal Plain and flatwoods — flat, wet, planted pine. Georgia's CWD counties sit in this belt. Planted pine flies better than most people expect — thermal reads through pine canopy well in every season.
Okefenokee and the coastal marsh — specialized and largely public.
A canopy note worth having: Georgia's firearms season closes earlier than Alabama's, which makes Georgia's post-season leaf-off window shorter. Southwest Georgia's open ag matrix and the planted-pine flatwoods are workable almost any time. The Blue Ridge high country is the hard case.
CWD arrived in Georgia in 2025
Georgia confirmed its first-ever CWD-positive deer in Lanier County in January 2025. The management area has expanded since and now covers Atkinson, Lanier, Berrien and Lowndes counties, all in south-central Georgia near the Florida line.
That county list is current as of writing and it has grown twice already. If you manage ground in or near those four, check the current boundaries and the baiting, feeding and carcass-movement restrictions directly with DNR before building a survey plan around bait.
Current CWD zone and restrictions: Georgia DNR — CWD in Georgia
Georgia DMAP requires a deer survey. That's the whole argument.
Georgia's Deer Management Assistance Program is the most structured of any state we work in, and it is built as an acreage ladder:
| Level | Minimum acreage | Cost | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | None | Free | Basic enrollment |
| 2 | 250 acres | $200 startup / $100 annual | Antlerless harvest flexibility |
| 3 | 500 acres | $400 / $200 | Buck-only and antler-restriction flexibility |
| 4 | 1,500 acres | $1,000 / $500 | Detailed buck harvest flexibility |
Participants must collect harvest data and deploy cameras for deer surveys. That requirement is written into the program.
Two things follow. First, if you are enrolled at Level 2 or above, you already owe DNR a survey — the question is only whether you produce it with a camera grid or with a census flight. Second, DNR permits adjacent properties to form cooperatives to meet acreage minimums. A single drone survey flown across several neighboring tracts in one day satisfies multiple landowners' obligations at once, and it produces something a stitched-together set of separate camera surveys cannot: one consistent count across the whole cooperative, on the same day, with no double counting at the property lines.
If you are organizing a cooperative to reach 500 or 1,500 acres, that is worth a conversation before you plan your camera deployment.
Worth noting for Georgia landowners: the National Deer Association is headquartered in Bogart, outside Athens.
How we fly
Every flight is under FAA Part 107 by a licensed pilot. We fly at 400 feet in overcast daylight — which is the ceiling FAA Part 107 allows. We are not just high enough that deer do not react to the aircraft; we are at the highest altitude it is legal to fly. That is the opposite of pressuring an animal, and it is deliberate. We do not drop to spotlight altitude, we do not make repeat passes to push deer out of cover, we do not fly in aid of a take, and we do not relay deer locations to anyone hunting.
What we need from you
Your property boundary — onX link, KML, shapefile, or a marked-up map.
Get on the Georgia schedule
We fly November through March, and Georgia's earlier close means your late-winter window is shorter than most. Check your dates with DNR and call with room to spare for weather.
Call or text (205) 394-6256. We travel, and the trailer comes with us.
Where to verify
Season dates and county rules: Georgia DNR Wildlife Resources Division · Population and recruitment: GON, "The Future of the Herd Starts Here" · CWD: GA DNR, CWD in Georgia · DMAP: GA DNR DMAP
Get on the Georgia schedule
Send your onX link or boundary file with your acreage and we will come back with a quote and a date.