A 3,000-acre tract in Murray County, almost in the shadows of the rugged Cohutta Wilderness, intensively managed for deer for the past seven years. Lush food plots, supplemental feed, minerals, and selective harvest should have caused what has traditionally been a low deer population to literally explode.

Seven years on 3,000 acres, where not a single doe has been killed, not one, and the deer population is still so low that more often than not, hunters don’t see a deer from the...

The talk around the fish-supper table rambled from the one that got away to the comeback of the beaver and eventually wound up with a plan to help out Georgia’s waterfowl population. Wood ducks are glad it did.

Back in 1999, David Beecher, of Lyons, and a group of friends were discussing how the beaver had brought back quite a bit of our state’s natural waterfowl habitat, but they were bemoaning the lack of natural tree cavities for wood duck nesting sites. From that...

My first hunting memories were born on B.F. Grant WMA. Growing up east of Atlanta, dad and I wore some tires out running back and forth to this 14,000-acre Putnam County WMA, roaming hardwood hillsides and creek bottoms for squirrels and turkeys.

In the early 1990s I killed my first turkey there. The first drake woody I ever watched fall was at B.F. Grant. The first time my young eyes saw a fox squirrel, a wild hog and a buck in velvet was at B.F. Grant, and the biggest deer rub I’ve ever seen in my life was on this piece of public land.

I’m certainly not the only one who has a special place in the memory box for this WMA. There are hundreds of folks who cherish this University of Georgia owned — state leased — public-hunting area, many of whom enjoy the good deer hunting.

Thomas Cooper is one hunter who is synonymous with deer hunting at B.F. Grant. In November 1974 he killed B.F. Grant’s largest-ever buck, a 215...