DMU 7
As the fall line creates a transition from Piedmont to coastal plain, the habitat changes rapidly. This narrow band running from just south of Macon to the South Carolina line is an area of big farms and pine tracts.

Part of this DMU is in GMU 6, and biologist Chris Baumann offered that Jenkins and Screven counties on the eastern edge of the area are usually good for numbers of deer. Agriculture plays an important part in the lives of deer in this area, and the animals take advantage of any wooded areas bordering big fields.

Di-Lane WMA's 22.6 percent hunter success rate tags it as a good bet --likewise Oaky Woods and Tuckahoe WMAs. You should see a good many deer on any of them and have a better than 20 percent chance of taking one of their whitetails home.

DMU 8
Covering the central Coastal Plain region, this unit's sandy soil is very poor and doesn't make for the best deer habitat. Some big farms improve specific areas, but much of the region is covered with flat pine woods.

This is also the area most damaged by wildfires last spring. Many bottomland oaks were killed, along with thousands of acres of pines. Food plots will be very important during the late fall and winter for deer here, since most natural browse is gone, area biologist Chris Baumann pointed out.

River Bend and Beaverdam WMAs had solid hunter success rates of 25.1 and 24.8 percent -- probably better than the average for this unit, mostly owing to the management practices employed on the two tracts. You can also improve the odds on your land by exercising savvy management and planting food plots.

DMU 9
The lower coastal plain counties make up this unit, which contains lots of marsh and swampland. Hunter success is not great, owing to the difficulty of hunting where the deer live.

Area biologist Brooks Good observed that drought has affected the area's deer by reducing mast crops this year -- a problem that started last year and has only worsened.

To show, however, how distinct different areas within a region can be, the coastal islands can have great hunting. Sapelo and Ossabaw WMAs have the highest hunter success rates of all public tracts in Georgia, with an incredible 65.4 percent rate on Sapelo and 51.4 percent on Ossabaw. Getting drawn for those hunts is harder than getting a deer. And, of course, given the sandy, very poor soils on these islands, the deer are going to be the smallest in average size in the state.

* * *

No matter the part of the state that you hunt in, you can find deer. Pick your area, or improve your land, and the deer will be there. Or you can drive to a better area and sample a hunt at a WMA whose success rate is high. Georgia hunters have a lot of great options for killing a de