With 6,785 records across 153 counties, the white-tailed deer is one of the two most recorded mammals in Georgia’s atlas. Totals run highest in the populous northern counties, Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Cobb, but the named clusters tell a broader story, from Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area and Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park down to the coastal marshes of Jekyll Island and Cumberland Island National Seashore.
A browser that lives on the edge
White-tailed deer feed on leaves, twigs, acorns, and soft green growth, and they thrive where habitats meet: young forest against mature timber, fields against thicket, marsh edge against hammock. Georgia supplies those edges from one end of the state to the other, which is why deer turn up as readily on the barrier islands, strong swimmers that travel between them, as in the mountain coves of Chattahoochee National Forest. They are most active around dawn and dusk, slipping out of cover to feed in the open.
Fawns on the landscape in early summer
Georgia’s record climbs steeply through spring and tops out in June and July, when does bring spotted fawns out of hiding and deer stay visible through the long evenings. The fall breeding season, the rut, runs from October into December, and after a gestation of roughly seven months most fawns arrive in late spring, timing the state’s greenest forage to the months when a nursing doe needs it most.
Status in Georgia
NatureServe ranks the white-tailed deer S5, Secure, in Georgia, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
