The 30,557 Acres Behind Dallas Are About To Switch Seasons

Ride the Silver Comet Trail past mile marker 29 this week and the woods already look different than they did in July. Trucks are parked at gravel pull-offs that sat empty all summer, and if you look past the tree line you might spot a stand that wasn't there before. Bowhunters are out scouting ahead of Saturday, when Georgia's archery deer season opens on the same public land the trail cuts through. If you've lived in Paulding County for more than a season or two, you've probably clocked this shift without ever tracing it back to a calendar. Archery season opens statewide this Saturday, September 12, and the ground it opens on isn't some distant tract you'll never see. It's the same 30,557 acres that border the trail most of Dallas and Hiram already use to walk the dog or get a run in before work.

That number isn't rounded. It's two separate public properties added together, and knowing where one stops and the other starts changes what you can expect to find there depending on the month.

Two Wildlife Management Areas, One Address

Paulding Forest Wildlife Management Area covers 25,707 acres across Paulding and Polk counties, and it's the larger of the pair. It's also where Raccoon Creek runs, which the Georgia DNR describes as one of the southernmost trout fishing opportunities in the state. Right next to it, entirely inside Paulding County, sits Sheffield WMA at 4,850 acres. Both properties allow hunting for deer, bear, turkey, and small game, and both sit directly against the Silver Comet Trail corridor that runs through Hiram and Dallas on its way toward the Alabama line.

Add them together and you get 30,557 acres of public land that most residents drive past without a second thought, right up until archery vests start showing up in the tree line every September.

What Opens This Saturday

Georgia's 2026-2027 archery deer season runs September 12 through October 9, followed by a primitive weapons and youth firearms window October 10 through 16, then the general firearms season from October 17 through January 10, 2027. That's the statewide framework. Paulding gets more than that.

The county is one of 29 across Georgia, alongside Cobb, Cherokee, Forsyth, Fulton, DeKalb, and Gwinnett, that keep archery open on an either-sex basis all the way through January 31, 2027. The pattern connecting those 29 counties isn't random. Most of them are the state's fastest-growing suburban and exurban counties ringing Atlanta, places where firearm deer hunting is limited or restricted outright but deer populations still need managing, so archers get extra weeks to do what a gun season can't. Paulding didn't earn that extension because it's remote. It earned it because it's grown enough to need a different set of rules than the rest of the state runs on.

Bag limits stay the same as everywhere else: 12 deer per hunter per season, no more than 10 antlerless and no more than 2 antlered, with one of those two required to meet a minimum standard of four points on one side or a 15-inch outside spread. That's a lot of deer for a county this close to Atlanta traffic.

The Silver Comet Trail Is The One Thing That Doesn't Close

Here's the detail that actually matters if you're a regular trail user rather than a hunter. On Paulding Forest WMA, horse and bike trails and surrounding areas close entirely during firearm deer hunts, and they close before 10 a.m. during archery and turkey hunts. The Silver Comet Trail itself is the specific, named exception. It stays open on its own schedule regardless of what's happening in the woods on either side of it.

That's a narrow distinction, but it's the one that lets a cyclist commute through Hiram on a Tuesday morning in late October without wandering into an active hunt zone, while the side trails and pull-offs a hundred yards off the pavement follow an entirely different set of rules. No ATVs are allowed on the property at any time, hunting season or not.

Where The Fish Hand Off To The Deer

Raccoon Creek doesn't just sit inside Paulding Forest WMA. It's part of a genuine restoration story that most people biking past it have no reason to know. Georgia Outdoor News reported that the state's Wildlife Resources Division worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Paulding County, Kennesaw State University, Georgia Power, and The Nature Conservancy on a project that had put nearly $70 million into transforming the creek and its surrounding land, including stabilizing stream banks and removing culverts along a 1.2-mile stretch. The goal was straightforward: turn a creek scarred by decades of farming and old gold mining into a trout fishery close enough to Atlanta that people would actually drive out for it.

It worked. Anglers travel in from across metro Atlanta to fish Raccoon Creek, and the state's stocking schedule has historically run those fish into the stream twice a month from April through Labor Day. That timing matters this particular week. Labor Day falls this Monday, September 7, which means the regular stocking cycle on Raccoon Creek closes out for the year just five days before archery season opens. The same public land that spent the summer as a fishing destination is about to quietly become a hunting one, on the same calendar, without anyone announcing the switch.

Getting to the best water was never simple, and that's part of what's kept it from feeling crowded. The gravel access road that stocking trucks use is gated to public vehicles, which means reaching the good pools requires roughly a two-mile walk or bike ride down the Silver Comet Trail from the nearest trailhead before cutting off onto the creek-side path. It's not a stop you make by accident.

A Few Practical Notes If You Use This Land

• Blaze orange isn't required if you're simply walking or biking the paved Silver Comet Trail, but it's a reasonable habit anywhere near the WMA boundary once firearms season opens October 17, since active hunts run right up to the trail edge.
• Trail-adjacent areas close entirely during firearm hunts and until 10 a.m. during archery and turkey hunts. The paved trail itself does not.
• If you want trail access without walking anywhere near an active hunt zone, the Hiram Caboose trailhead connects to Homer Leggett Memorial Park, which has its own walking trails, a playground, covered picnic tables, and the 27,000-square-foot Hiram Hounds Dog Park, all separate from WMA hunting land.
• Anyone planning to fish Raccoon Creek later in the season should check the weekly stocking report before making the trip, since the creek is a put-and-take fishery and the state stops adding trout for the year around Labor Day.

What This Actually Says About Living Here

None of this changes anything about property values or school zones or what a house is worth. But it says something real about what this part of West Georgia actually is. Paulding isn't a place where the suburbs simply stop and nature starts somewhere else. The same 30,557 acres about to open to archers this month hosted trout anglers all summer, and the same trail that carries a Tuesday morning commuter also connects to gated gravel roads that lead to a restoration project reported at nearly $70 million. That overlap, hunting and fishing and biking and dog parks sharing one boundary line without much fanfare, is part of what space and land access actually look like in a county still growing fast enough to need its own set of archery rules.

If you're weighing a move to Paulding, or you already live here and are curious what a piece of land near the WMA or the trail corridor might be worth, I'm always glad to talk it through. Reach out to Clay Thomas any time. Let's Connect.