Tennessee

Tennessee's bobwhite quail range covers nearly the entire state, all but the highest elevations of East Tennessee, but a very uneven population sits underneath that statewide season. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency's own restoration data puts the highest wild density in West Tennessee, the row-crop counties of the Mississippi Valley Loess Plains and Southeastern Plains, where 14 of a 28-county restoration project's target counties sit and where Wolf River Wildlife Management Area in Fayette County anchors both the agency's own quail-focused management and a national bobwhite conservation focal site. Middle Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau, centered on Bark Camp Barrens and Bridgestone/Firestone Centennial Wilderness wildlife management areas, and East Tennessee, anchored by Kyker Bottoms and Lick Creek Bottoms wildlife management areas, both carry habitat investment and a handful of restoration counties, but the agency describes both as holding only a few remaining birds rather than a robust population. The season runs from early November through the end of February statewide, with a separate, shorter season on wildlife management areas running from early November through mid-January.

Ruffed grouse has contracted from a range that once covered East Tennessee and most of Middle Tennessee down to two current pockets: the Cumberland Plateau, where Northern Cumberland Wildlife Management Area is a named anchor, and the high ridges and mountains of East Tennessee, including Cherokee National Forest, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Roan Mountain. A smaller, marginally successful reintroduction on the Western Highland Rim in Middle Tennessee persists as a third, much thinner pocket outside the two main current-range regions. The statewide season runs from mid-October through the end of February.