Geocaching in Wildlife Management Area's

After working with the Department of Natural Resources - Wildlife Resources Division (WRD), we are pleased to announce geocaching is permitted on Wildlife Management Area's (WMAs). Several of these WMA's have never been open to geocaching before.

WRD had two concerns. Like their sister division, (Park, Recreation and Historic Sites Division), the WRD has concerns for preserving the natural surrounding of the geocache. You will notice similarities in the WRD geocaching guidelines as you see in our state parks guidelines.

Along with preserving nature concerns, the WRD has concerns with 'interaction' between geocachers and hunters. We feel the WRD geocaching guidelines will assist educating geocachers about WMA's, decreasing the possibility of both parties (hunters & geocachers) to have interactions with each other as we share these natural resources and coexist.

The geocaching agreement has been forwarded to WRD managers, but don't be surprised if there is confrontation from those employees that are unaware of this new geocaching agreement.

Also keep in mind, (like state parks) a land pass is required, or a hunting or a fishing license to be on most WMA properties.

This opens up several thousand of acres for us to discover through geocaching!

The WRD Geocaching guidelines can be viewed on the GA WIKI here.

As a Geocacher this is excellent! This will offer more opportunities to hide caches in more areas!

As a hunter I was worried until I saw the Wiki getting into more detail about it. Geocaching is an exciting event but definitely not a quiet one. Most hunters would get very heated if they were interrupted by Geocachers talking loudly in the woods. So not allowing it during quota and check-in hunts was definitely a great idea.

Hopefully cachers will pay attention to the cache pages and not search for them during those months of serious hunting. Thank you for continuing to work with GA to get involved and offer more opportunities and places to hide caches!