Exotic big game outfitters in Tennessee: 6 compared on packages, prices and 2,234 reviews

How to tell six Tennessee exotic outfitters apart

All six sell exotic big game and most sell the same animals, so the star rating on its own decides nothing. Three things do the work here: how many reviews sit behind each star, which species each outfitter actually keeps, and whether it prices the whole hunt or only the animal.

Start with the counts, not the stars. The review counts behind the six run from 1,944 down to 15, and under 20 reviews a star rating is not a measurement.

Then the species. All six sell exotic deer and five sell exotic sheep, but exotic antelope, exotic buffalo, exotic goat and watusi cattle come from three or four apiece. If it is the scimitar oryx or the watusi cattle you are after, the species table below cuts the six down to three or four before you have looked at a price.

What $4,995 is the middle of

The 60 exotic big game packages price themselves three ways: 20 quote a total for the hunt, 27 quote a fee per animal, and 13 quote nothing. The $4,995 is the middle of the 20, and 14 of those 20 come from a single outfitter's price list. Two of the six publish no comparable total at all.

Two of the cards below show a price under that $1,200, at $900 and $1,150, and neither is an error. Those are per-animal prices: what one animal costs, not what the hunt costs. The lowest full-hunt total among the six is $1,200, and a second animal on a per-animal hunt is a second fee.

The standing objection to any median is that the hunts worth booking are not in it, because those outfitters do not print prices. Here that objection is arithmetic. Forty of the 60 packages sit outside the $4,995.

What the 4.94 rating is an average of

The panel below holds 2,234 Google reviews across the six Tennessee outfitters, averaging 4.94. One of the six holds 1,944 of them, seven of every eight, so 4.94 is close to one business's average rather than six businesses agreeing.

We sell these hunts, so count the one-stars too: 25 of the 2,234, against 2,183 five-stars. The 25 are the reason the 4.94 is worth reading at all.

What a Tennessee exotic hunt price covers

Lodging is in 55 of the 60 exotic big game packages and a guide in 52, transport in 49 and meals in 46. Taxidermy is in 29 and meat processing in 28, so on about half of these hunts the cape and the meat are a separate bill. No package lists the tip.

Eleven of the 60 bundle the licence and tags into the price. For the other 49, ask the outfitter before the deposit goes out: TWRA's big game page names deer, elk, bear and turkey and does not mention exotics, preserves or high fence anywhere on it, and our own listings data holds nothing on licensing for this category either.

What the ranking below is ordered on

The six Tennessee exotic big game outfitters below are ordered on their Google rating with review volume weighted in, so a rating built on 1,944 reviews outranks the same rating built on 15. Not on price and not on package count: the outfitter with the most packages sits third, and the one with the fewest sits first.

What the order cannot account for is the drive. Five of the six sit on the Cumberland Plateau within about an hour of each other — Crossville, Jamestown, Grandview and two in Clarkrange. The sixth is in Henderson, in West Tennessee, three hours west of the rest.