Georgia

Season Dates (2013): Archery-only season opens Sept. 14 and runs until Oct. 11, statewide. Primitive weapons season then runs Oct. 12-18, statewide. Gun season opens Oct. 19 and runs until Jan. 1 in the northern zone; Jan. 15 in the southern zone. Finally, an extended bow season runs from Jan. 2 until the end of the month in select counties. The limit is 12 deer per season, with no more than two antlered deer and 10 antlerless. Some areas and counties have antler restrictions.

The Grade: B+

Georgia has a huge deer population and outstanding trophy buck potential for the southeast region. Its biggest drawback is, considering the size of the state, good public land opportunities can be difficult to come by. There are 90 Wildlife Management Areas totaling nearly 1 million acres. There are eight National Wildlife Refuges in Georgia, most of which are a part of the Savannah Coastal Refuges complex off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina. Limited hunting is allowed on some of these refuges. License fees are a steal for residents, but fairly pricey for non-residents. The three-day hunting option, which isn't available for non-resident big-game hunting in most places, does alleviate some of the cost.

Deer Nation Knowledge: Realtree's home base is a darn-fine whitetail state, especially for the Southeast. Interestingly, although both the record typical and non-typical bucks were taken in Monroe County, in the central portion of the state, the top B&C buck-producing county, with 13 typical entries and six non-typicals, is Worth County, down in southern Georgia. That's nearly 9 percent of the B&C kills for the entire state of Georgia—impressive indeed considering Georgia has the second-highest number of counties of any state in the country. Only Texas has more.