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There is no single price for a guided turkey hunt in the Southeast. Here is what drives the cost, two published packages from October 2026, and the nonresident license bill that comes on top.

The Boston Mountains are the high, cut-up southern edge of the Ozark Plateau, and they are a major source of Arkansas's turkey harvest. This ecology report walks the oak-hickory hollows of the Ozark National Forest, reads three years of AGFC brood and harvest data, looks hard at what prescribed fire did and did not do for nesting hens at White Rock, and lays out the 2027 spring zones that split these mountains.

The 2026-27 Kentucky Outdoors report sets federal and state data beside an audit of 102 Kentucky operators. Here is what each chapter found and what it means for guides, marinas, lodges and outfitters.

The 2026-27 Wild Turkey in the Southeast report covers record spring harvests, poult recruitment below the level agencies call sustainable, and an audit of 124 turkey operators. Here is what each chapter found.

South Carolina's outdoor economy weighs heavily on the state, but its hunting base is small and many operators have room to improve online. Here is what each chapter of our 2026-27 state report found and what it means for guides, charters and lodges.

Virginia's outdoor economy runs from the Chesapeake Bay to the Appalachians, with the lowest share of state GDP in the region and wide gaps between sub-regions online. Here is what each chapter of our 2026-27 state report found.

Tennessee has no coast, a hunting-heavy license base and a very large visitor trade. Here is what each chapter of our 2026-27 state report found, from tailwater trout to public land permits, and what it means for operators.

The 2026-27 Florida Outdoors report sets federal and state data beside an audit of 117 Florida operators. Here is what each chapter found and what it means for charter captains, guides and outfitters.

North Carolina's outdoor economy runs from the Smokies to the Outer Banks. Here is what each chapter of our 2026-27 state report found, including the guiding permits that vary by agency, and what it means for guides, charters and outfitters.

Alabama's outdoor economy is mid-sized, its hunters and anglers are among the most numerous per resident in the region, and its guides work under a patchwork of agency rules. Here is what each chapter of our state report found.

The 2026-27 Georgia Outdoors report sets federal and state data beside an audit of 136 Georgia operators. Here is what each chapter found and what it means for plantations, guides and outfitters.

Alabama's two upland national forests hold turkeys in hardwood and mixed pine country that works very differently from the Coastal Plain. This deep dive covers oak mast, the near-absence of young forest, fire, southern pine beetle, feral pigs, the Sipsey Wilderness, and what the 2025 brood and harvest numbers actually say.

Conecuh National Forest covers 84,224 acres of pine, bog, and floodplain on Alabama's Florida line, and fire decides what kind of turkey country it is in any given year. This deep dive separates what the research actually measured from what gets repeated, and explains how burn timing, rotation, wild pigs, and the 2026-27 county split shape turkeys in south Alabama.

Alabama's Black Belt grew from Cretaceous chalk and once held a prairie mosaic that is now almost entirely gone. This deep dive follows the eastern wild turkey through that changed landscape, from nest timing and brood survival to what Alabama's 2025 turkey report shows statewide, and why no one has yet published a Black Belt hatch number.

Alabama counted 1.53 poults per hen in 2025, below its own 2.00 line. This field synthesis walks through the state brood surveys, the vital-rate science on hens and poults, nest predators, habitat, and why moving opening day has not, by itself, brought turkeys back.

MDWFP calls the Pascagoula the largest undammed river in the contiguous United States, and its floodplain still runs on a natural pulse. This field report walks the cypress-tupelo bottomlands, the conservation history behind them, and the seasonal signals that shape a deer, turkey, duck, fishing, or paddle trip in southeast Mississippi this fall and winter.

The Alabama Black Belt's namesake soils, dark, alkaline prairie weathered from Late Cretaceous chalk, do more than grow cotton: they grow some of the South's best trophy whitetail and the bobwhite habitat behind its quail tradition. This field report walks the chalk geology and calcareous soil chemistry, how that fertility flows through forage into bigger deer, the famously late Black Belt rut, and what the 2026-27 audit shows about the outfitter market.

Kentucky is two outdoor states in one: reservoir waterfowl and tournament bass around Land Between the Lakes in the west, and an elk herd rebuilt on reclaimed coalfields in the east, with the Cumberland Plateau in between.

Kentucky is two outdoor states in one license year: reservoir bass-and-waterfowl country in the west on Kentucky Lake, Lake Barkley, and the flooded Mississippi bottoms, and in the east one of the continent's great comebacks, a free-ranging elk herd rebuilt on reclaimed coal mines. This field report walks all four Kentucky ecologies, the migration and rut timing that drive them, the basecamps that anchor them, and the opportunities for operators who tell these stories well.

The eastern wild turkey was restored from roughly one million continental birds in the 1930s to six to seven million by the early 2000s -- and is now entering a recruitment crisis that has reduced populations by 20 to 40 percent across the Southeast. This synthesis covers the full biology: mating system, brood ecology, the poult-per-hen ratios that quantify the decline, and the prescribed-fire management that offers the clearest path forward.