What Is the Most Expensive Goose Hunting Package in Tennessee?

The bigger number you'll find first isn't a Tennessee hunt

Search this question and the biggest price on the market belongs to an outfitter carrying a Tennessee business address but running every one of its hunts out of Carlisle, Arkansas, on 15,000 acres of leased ground near Stuttgart. Its own booking site never mentions Tennessee as a place you'd actually hunt. Search "Tennessee goose hunting," book that name, and you're booking an Arkansas trip with a Tennessee mailing address on the paperwork. Worth catching before you call, not after you've wired a deposit. Pull that one out of the running and the real Tennessee record drops from $14,400 to $2,400.

What $2,400 actually buys

Reelfoot Lake Duck Hunting Guide's top package runs $600 a hunter, per day, with a four-person minimum: $2,400 for the group, one day, not a per-person rate. That's a real Tennessee outfitter on the Reelfoot Lake shoreline, and this particular hunt crosses the state line into Arkansas as one line in its lineup, labeled as such in its own name. Bring three other hunters, or split the four-person minimum with people you don't know, and the math works out to $600 a head for the day, cheaper per hunter than several of the "expensive" day rates quoted elsewhere in this market.

The rest of the market, priced the same way

Only four of Tennessee's 11 real goose packages price in a way you can set side by side. Most of the rest are quoted as open-ended day rates, or aren't priced online at all. Below the record: Triple C Ranch's Water Fowl Hunt, $800 flat for a four-person group; Elk River Outfitters' Guided Specks & Snow Goose Hunt, $350 flat for the day; Fowlers Point Guiding Service's package, $300 for one hunter, one day; and Reelfoot Lake's other listing, from $250 a hunter per day. Six more packages, spread across four outfitters, carry no price online at all. Call for a number.

What the price covers, and who else is worth a look

Across the packages that do list what's included, a guide rides along on 90% of them, decoys and meals on 80% each, lodging on 70%. Reelfoot Lake Duck Hunting Guide, the record-holder, also carries a full 5.0 average across 7 reviews, tied for the top trust score in this market with Waterfowl Outfitters of West Tennessee, whose own 5.0 runs deeper, on 32 reviews. Check both before you book on price alone.