Tennessee dove season 2026

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) manages public dove hunting fields across four regions on Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs). Fields are operated on a first-come, walk-in basis at most locations, with some special-access fields requiring drawings or permit applications. Most fields are designated for opening-day hunts (September 1 noon) and continue through the statewide seasons. All hunters must possess a WMA Small Game Permit and a Tennessee Migratory Bird Permit. The field list publishes annually by county in late August as lease agreements finalize.

TWRA publishes the current list here

TWRA's own mourning dove species page (fetched directly, PRIMARY) states the population is “abundant and widespread” across “backyards, farms, forests, and grasslands statewide” with no agency-stated regional density distinction — a genuine uniform-statewide biological answer. TWRA's separate Leased/WMA Dove Field program, however, is a real access-signal shape rather than a density claim: the program's own region-by-region public field lists (fetched directly, PRIMARY) show a clear west-to-east gradient in the number of managed WMA dove fields — Region 1 (West Tennessee, headquartered Jackson) lists 18 named fields, Region 2 (Middle Tennessee, Nashville) 11, Region 3 (Cumberland Plateau/southeast, Crossville) 9, and Region 4 (East Tennessee mountains, Morristown) just 6. This tracks the west-to-east decline in row-crop agricultural acreage documented for northern bobwhite in this same batch (TN's Bobwhite Restoration SAFE fact sheet names West TN's row-crop counties as the state's agricultural core), and follows this dataset's Michigan/Maine precedent that a species with no hunting-driven population survey can still close on a real, sourced access/habitat gradient rather than defaulting to regions: [].