Drone Deer Surveys in Mississippi

That is not a figure of speech. Supplemental feeding is banned in all Mississippi CWD Management Zones — salt licks, mineral licks, and feeders included. The North Mississippi Management Zone covers Alcorn, Benton, DeSoto, Lafayette, Marshall, Panola, Prentiss, Tate, Tippah, Tishomingo and Union. The Issaquena Management Zone covers all of Warren County plus portions of Issaquena east of the river and south of Highway 14.

The standard method for estimating deer density in the Southeast is a baited camera survey. Inside those zones, you cannot run one. And MDWFP's DMAP program still asks cooperators for "observation data and/or camera survey estimates."

A thermal drone census uses no bait at all. It is the obvious substitute, and in those counties it is close to the only one.

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We fly all four Deer Management Units

Mississippi does not use "zones" — it uses four Deer Management Units, and they matter for both season dates and what a legal buck is:

• Delta DMU — west of I-55 and north of I-20, plus south of I-20 and west of US-61
• North Central DMU — Alcorn, Benton, DeSoto, Marshall, Tate, Tippah
• Southeast DMU — south of US-84 and east of MS-35
• Hills DMU — everything else

Legal buck criteria differ by unit, which is a detail worth knowing before you set harvest goals off a survey: Hills and Southeast require a 10-inch inside spread or 13-inch main beam. The Delta requires 12-inch inside spread or 15-inch main beam. North Central has been relaxed to any hardened antler above the hairline, deliberately, to suppress CWD.

That last one is important. If you are managing in North Central under a relaxed antler rule, your harvest data tells you much less about your buck age structure than it used to — and a census that classifies bucks visually fills the gap.

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The Mississippi calendar

A few structural things about Mississippi's season that don't change year to year and are worth knowing when you plan a survey:

The gun opener is always the Saturday before Thanksgiving. That's a fixed rule, so you can anchor your planning to it without looking anything up.

The Southeast DMU opens roughly two weeks after the rest of the state and runs later on the back end. If you're south of US-84 and east of MS-35, your calendar is different from the Delta's in both directions.

There is an early velvet archery hunt — permit-only, with mandatory reporting and CWD sampling. It's a useful survey marker: velvet is still on, bucks are still bachelored up, and a flight in the weeks before it gives you a clean inventory well ahead of general archery. It's the tightest, highest-value window in the state and the one that books first.

Current season dates: MDWFP — Hunting Seasons and Bag Limits

Dates shift every season and the DMU boundaries can be adjusted. Verify before planning around them.

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Mississippi's herd: more deer, fewer good bucks

MDWFP puts the statewide population at roughly 1.75 million deer, with about 280,000 harvested annually. The problem is not headcount. It is quality — enough so that the trade press has run the story under the headline "Mississippi's deer dilemma: more deer, fewer trophies."

That is a buck age-structure problem, and age structure is exactly what harvest data is worst at measuring. Hunters shoot what they see. A census counts what is there, including the bucks nobody has laid eyes on.

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Terrain: the sharpest habitat break in the Southeast

Mississippi has eleven named physiographic regions, and the transition from the Delta to the Loess Hills is the most abrupt habitat change anywhere in the region. It is worth understanding what your ground is before you book anything.

Mississippi Alluvial Plain — the Delta. Flat, 94 to 210 feet of elevation, ag-dominated, with deer concentrated in discrete cypress brakes and hardwood blocks. Highest densities and biggest-bodied deer in the state. From a survey standpoint this is close to perfect: flat, no terrain-following, deer concentrated in cover you can define on a map, and huge open fields between blocks.

Loess Hills / Bluff Hills. The escarpment running down the Delta's east edge, with 100-plus feet of wind-blown silt near Vicksburg. Extremely steep, deeply dissected hardwood ridges. Hard to walk and hard to camera-survey — which is exactly when a drone earns its money.

North Central Hills. Broad sand and clay uplands cut by streams, heavy pine with hardwood draws.

Black Prairie / Black Belt. Chalk and marl, level to gently sloping, rich soils, more open country. Good thermal ground.

Pontotoc Ridge. Narrow and rugged Cretaceous sands, including Woodall Mountain, the state high point.

Tombigbee Hills and Paleozoic Bottoms. Northeast Mississippi, the oldest rock in the state.

Jackson Prairie. Rolling clay plains.

Piney Woods. The southern third of the state — dense loblolly and longleaf plantation, and this is where the deer are. Pine canopy rarely gives our thermal sensors any real trouble; it flies well in every season. This is also the Southeast DMU, which opens later than the rest of the state.

Flatwoods and Coastal Meadows round out the list — a narrow strip of low wooded Paleocene clay and the flat sandy relict beach ridges near the coast.

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Why not just run cameras

Outside the CWD zones you can still run a baited camera survey, and plenty of clubs do. Three things it will not do for you:

It will not count the deer that avoid bait. Mature bucks are the least likely animals to visit a feeder, and they are the animals you most want in the inventory.

It will not stop double counting. One buck working four camera sites reads a lot like four bucks unless he has distinctive antlers, and most do not.

It will not give you a snapshot. A two-week camera census composites two weeks of deer movement across an unfenced property. Mississippi's Delta clubs sit shoulder to shoulder — deer cross those lines constantly.

Because we fly up to eight drones simultaneously with multiple pilots, we cover a large tract in one session instead of spreading it over several days. On adjoining Delta clubs that is the difference between a count and a guess.

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DMAP in Mississippi

MDWFP's Deer Management Assistance Program currently has roughly 650 properties on about 1.7 million acres enrolled — down from a mid-1990s peak near 1,200 cooperators on 2.8 million acres. The program is free except for the obligation to collect and submit data.

Required submissions include harvest data, jawbones, boundary maps, and observation data and/or camera survey estimates. A thermal drone census produces precisely the population estimate DMAP asks for. And in the eleven North Mississippi CWD counties where feeding is banned, it produces the one MDWFP still wants and the feeder can no longer give you.

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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.

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What we need from you

Your property boundary — an onX share link, a KML, a shapefile, or a marked-up map.

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Get on the Mississippi schedule

We fly November through March. If you want an early-season count — the one that sets your doe harvest while there is still season left to act on it — call early, because that end of the calendar fills first. Check your DMU's dates.

Call or text (205) 394-6256. We are based in Tuscaloosa — the Delta, the Black Prairie and the Loess Hills are all an easy run, and the trailer travels.

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Where to verify

Season dates and DMU boundaries: MDWFP Hunting Seasons · Population: MDWFP White-tailed Deer Program · CWD zones and feeding ban: MDWFP CWD Management Zones · DMAP: MDWFP DMAP · Federal rules: MDWFP General Hunting Rules · Physiographic regions: Mississippi Encyclopedia