Taxidermy Laws in Georgia: Licensing, Species Rules, and Federal Permits Explained

If a buck you shot this fall is headed to a professional’s workbench instead of your own garage, taxidermy laws in Georgia determine who is allowed to do that work and what paperwork has to follow the animal through the door. Georgia treats taxidermy as a licensed commercial activity, not a hobby you can charge neighbors for on the side, and the rules stack a state licensing system on top of federal permit requirements for birds, raptors, and CITES-listed specimens. Understanding where those layers overlap can save you from a citation, a seized mount, or a denied application.

This guide walks through when you need a state taxidermist license, which species you can legally mount, and how federal migratory bird rules fit alongside Georgia’s own tagging and recordkeeping requirements.

Do You Need a Taxidermy License or Permit in Georgia?

Georgia law draws a sharp line between mounting wildlife for yourself and doing it for someone else. Under Georgia Code § 27-2-9, it is unlawful for any person to engage in the business of taxidermy or provide taxidermy services to anyone other than himself unless he has first been issued a taxidermist license by the department. That license comes from the Wildlife Resources Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

The license itself is narrower than many applicants expect. It authorizes the holder to have, at their business premises, wildlife which has been legally taken for the sole purpose of preserving or mounting, or preserving and mounting. In practice, that means the license doesn’t give you blanket authority to possess any animal you want — only wildlife taken through lawful means and held for taxidermy purposes.

Pro Tip: You only need the state taxidermist license if you plan to mount wildlife for other people. Mounting your own legally taken deer, turkey, or fish at home doesn’t require this license.

You might wonder how strict the licensing threshold really is. According to the Georgia DNR, a license is required for various outdoor activities such as hunting, fishing, and trapping, and it’s important to obtain the license specific to your needs so that you remain compliant with Georgia law. Taxidermy falls under that same commercial-licensing umbrella rather than being treated as a casual side activity.

Commercial Taxidermy vs Mounting Your Own Legally Taken Wildlife in Georgia

The practical difference between commercial taxidermy and DIY mounting comes down to who benefits from the finished piece. If you’re preserving your own harvest — say, a deer you took while following Georgia’s hunting laws — you’re not “providing a service” under the statute, so no taxidermist license applies. The moment you accept another person’s animal, hide, or bird for mounting, you cross into licensed territory.

This distinction matters for hunters who use specialized methods too. Someone who takes a deer with archery equipment under Georgia’s bow hunting laws still only needs their hunting license to mount their own trophy. But if that same hunter starts mounting heads for friends for money, they need the commercial taxidermist license before touching another person’s animal.

Scenario	License Needed	Who It Covers
Mounting your own legally taken animal	Hunting/fishing license only	You, personally
Mounting for a friend, even without payment	Georgia taxidermist license	Anyone other than yourself
Running a taxidermy shop or business	Georgia taxidermist license	All customers

Note that “providing a service” isn’t limited to paid work. The statute’s language covers taxidermy services rendered to anyone other than the license holder, so doing free mounts for family members still triggers the licensing requirement.

What Species You Can and Cannot Mount in Georgia (Game, Nongame, and Unprotected)

Not every animal that walks, swims, or flies through Georgia can end up on a wall. The state sorts wildlife into rough categories, and each carries different documentation expectations for a taxidermist.

Game species like deer, turkey, bear, and alligator require proof of lawful harvest before a taxidermist can accept them. Georgia tracks much of this through its own reporting system — the Georgia Game Check program covers reporting the harvest of deer, turkeys, alligators, and bears. A taxidermist working on an American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) or other tagged game species should expect a customer to have that harvest record available.

Georgia law also carves out a specific exception for furbearers and alligators. It is not unlawful for a licensed taxidermist to mount and sell legally taken furbearers or alligators and alligator products without procuring a separate fur dealer’s license. That’s a meaningful convenience for shops that handle a lot of coyote, bobcat, or gator mounts, since it removes one extra licensing step for those specific categories.

• Game species: Deer, turkey, bear, alligator — require proof of legal harvest
• Furbearers: Coyote, bobcat, fox, raccoon — taxidermists can mount and sell without a fur dealer’s license
• Protected nongame species: Hawks, owls, songbirds — generally off-limits without federal authorization
• Unprotected/nuisance species: Feral hogs, armadillos — fewer restrictions apply

Unprotected and nuisance wildlife, including animals taken under Georgia’s coyote hunting laws, generally carry lighter documentation burdens than protected game or migratory birds. Animals found as roadkill occupy their own gray area, and the rules on what you can legally keep differ from what a licensed hunter can bring to a shop — Georgia’s roadkill possession rules are worth reviewing before assuming a road-killed animal is fair game for mounting. Fish and other species taken by unconventional methods, such as those covered under Georgia’s bowfishing laws, generally fall into the unprotected or lightly regulated category as long as the harvest itself was legal.

Federal Overlay You Still Must Follow: Migratory Bird Taxidermy Permits (MBTA)

Georgia’s taxidermist license doesn’t cover birds protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and this is where a lot of shops run into trouble. Federal regulation is layered directly on top of the state license, not replaced by it.

Under federal rule, a taxidermist permit is required before any person may perform taxidermy services on migratory birds or their parts, nests, or eggs for any person other than himself. This is a separate application from the Georgia DNR license — you need both if you plan to work on protected birds for customers. The federal application process requires you to apply as an individual, and you must be at least 18 years old to apply for a migratory bird permit.

Key Insight: Nearly all native Georgia birds count as “migratory” under federal law, even species that never leave the state. The exemption list is short.

The scope of “migratory” surprises a lot of people. All native birds are classified as migratory except for the starling, English sparrow, quail, and turkey. That means a taxidermist generally cannot mount hawks, owls, herons, or any other nongame migratory bird brought in by a private individual, since federal law prohibits possessing these specimens or mounting nongame birds for ornamental use. If you’re processing waterfowl taken during a hunt covered by Georgia’s duck hunting laws, the game-bird exception applies, but songbirds and raptors brought in casually generally do not qualify.

There’s also a resale restriction built into the federal permit. A permitted taxidermist may not sell captive-reared migratory waterfowl that have not been mounted, nor may they sell any migratory bird that has been taken from the wild. And critically, holding a federal permit doesn’t excuse you from state rules — your federal permit isn’t valid unless you’re also in compliance with state requirements, meaning if a state requires a permit to perform taxidermy on migratory game birds, you must hold that valid state permit too.

Endangered, Threatened, and CITES Specimens in Georgia

Endangered and threatened species add a third regulatory layer on top of state licensing and standard migratory bird permits. Raptors get singled out specifically: each raptor must be covered by a CITES certificate of ownership, and full documentation of the bird’s lawful origin — including band numbers or propagation reports — has to accompany the specimen.

Beyond raptors, you may need one or more additional permits to take a bird from the United States or to bring one back, under the Wild Bird Conservation Act, the Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants regulations, or CITES. Federal permitting staff don’t process these requests in isolation either — when a species appears on the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife or is CITES-listed, concurrence must be obtained from the appropriate Ecological Services or International Affairs office before a permit moves forward.

For native and non-native wildlife that falls outside the usual recreational and commercial license categories, Georgia’s own Special Permit Unit handles the state-level piece of this puzzle. This unit issues permits related to native wildlife and non-native wild animals that aren’t covered by usual recreational or commercial licenses, which becomes relevant for taxidermists who occasionally handle unusual or protected specimens outside the standard game categories.

Recordkeeping, Tagging, and Inspection Rules for Taxidermists in Georgia

Once you’re licensed, Georgia expects paper trails on nearly everything sitting on your workbench. The tagging system is designed so a game warden can walk into any shop and cross-reference a mount to its origin in minutes.

Every specimen at a taxidermist’s business premises needs identifying paperwork. Any wildlife at the business premises of a taxidermist must have a tag attached displaying a number that can be cross-referenced with the same number in the written records required under the code section. If a mount changes hands between taxidermists mid-project, the paperwork travels with it — the receiving taxidermist attaches a second tag showing their own contact information so the chain of custody stays intact.

1. Attach a numbered tag to the specimen when it arrives at the shop
2. Log the tag number in written records, along with species and date received
3. Add a secondary tag with contact information if the specimen transfers to another taxidermist
4. Keep the tag attached throughout the mounting process, removing it only as necessary during work
5. Retain all records until the specimen is fully disposed of or delivered

Retention isn’t optional or short-term. Each taxidermist must keep these records at their business premises until they have disposed of the specimen to which the records refer. Federal migratory bird specimens carry a parallel, slightly more detailed tagging standard — each migratory bird specimen must remain tagged with the species, date, location, name of the donor, and the donor’s authorization for acquisition, such as a permit number.

Important Note: Georgia and federal recordkeeping rules run in parallel, not in place of one another. A shop handling both state game species and federally protected birds needs to satisfy both tagging systems simultaneously.

Unclaimed Mounts: Can a Taxidermist Sell Abandoned Work in Georgia?

This is one area where Georgia’s taxidermy statute stays quiet, and that silence creates real uncertainty for shop owners. Unlike the detailed tagging and licensing provisions in § 27-2-9, there’s no specific state code section spelling out what a taxidermist can legally do with a finished mount a customer never picks up.

In practice, most Georgia taxidermists handle this through their service contracts rather than relying on statute. A written agreement that spells out a pickup deadline, storage fees, and an abandonment clause giving the shop rights to sell or dispose of unclaimed work after a set period is the most defensible approach available. This mirrors how Georgia handles other categories of unclaimed animals — the state’s estray livestock laws follow a similar logic, requiring notice and a waiting period before an unclaimed animal’s status changes.

Important Note: Because state law doesn’t directly address abandoned mounts, taxidermists should not assume they can sell a customer’s unclaimed work without a documented contractual right to do so. When in doubt, consult an attorney before disposing of or reselling a mount tied to game species, since the underlying wildlife is still subject to the tagging and possession rules discussed above.

Penalties for Unlicensed Taxidermy or Illegal Possession in Georgia

Operating without a license isn’t a gray-area violation in Georgia — the statute is direct about it. It is unlawful for any person to engage in the business of taxidermy or provide taxidermy services to anyone other than himself unless he has first been issued a taxidermist license by the department. That single sentence is the basis for enforcement action against unlicensed operators, whether they’re running a full shop or just doing occasional side work for cash.

The recordkeeping and tagging failures discussed earlier aren’t just administrative footnotes — they’re separately enforceable violations. A shop that skips tagging, fails to maintain records, or can’t produce documentation when a DNR officer asks is exposed on multiple fronts at once, not just the licensing question. This overlaps conceptually with how Georgia treats other wildlife-handling violations, including cases that intersect with the state’s animal cruelty laws when illegally possessed or improperly handled specimens are involved.

Federal violations carry their own, separate enforcement track. Working on migratory birds without the required federal permit, or accepting protected nongame birds without proper authorization, exposes a taxidermist to action from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service independent of anything Georgia DNR does at the state level. Because exact fine schedules and charge classifications can change and depend heavily on the specific violation, contacting DNR Law Enforcement or USFWS directly before assuming a specific penalty applies to your situation is the safest approach.

Where to Apply and Who to Call in Georgia (Wildlife Agency + USFWS)

Getting properly licensed in Georgia means dealing with more than one office, depending on what you plan to mount. Here’s how the pieces fit together.

The core state license comes through Georgia DNR’s Wildlife Resources Division. The taxidermist application for resident or nonresident applicants is part of the broader Commercial License Application. When completing it, applicants must also attach a separate form — the application requires completing a separate Taxidermy Survey and attaching it to the main application. The resulting license doesn’t need annual renewal in most cases, since it’s valid across three license years, ending March 31 of the third license year.

Identity and residency verification are part of the process too. Applicants must provide a valid Georgia driver’s license or equivalent identification and verify their lawful presence in the United States under O.C.G.A. § 50-36-1.

Agency	Purpose	Contact
Georgia DNR Wildlife Resources Division	State taxidermist license, commercial application	Any WRD office; application by mail
Special Permit Unit	Native/non-native wildlife permits outside standard licenses	770-918-6408
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Southeast Region)	Federal migratory bird taxidermy permit	1875 Century Boulevard, Suite 400, Atlanta, Georgia 30345, 404-679-7188

For applications and forms, Georgia DNR’s commercial license application is the starting point for the state side, while the federal side runs through the USFWS regional office serving the Southeast — the same office that happens to sit right in Atlanta, making in-person questions more convenient for Georgia-based taxidermists than for those in most other states.

Because state and federal requirements run on separate tracks with separate applications, plan for both processes if your work will ever touch a protected bird, a raptor, or a CITES-listed specimen. Confirming your paperwork with Georgia DNR and, where applicable, USFWS before accepting a customer’s animal is far simpler than untangling a licensing problem after the fact.