AmmoSight

Tennessee Landowner Tags

Tennessee has no landowner tags or permits of any kind - no landowner elk permit, no preference, no PLM, DMAP or MLDP analogue and no landowner deer or turkey allocation. The only mechanism is the Farmland Owner/Tenant Licence Exemption, which waives fees rather than allocating anything. Elk is 100 percent quota draw (19 permits for 2026), so a landowner must be drawn to hunt elk even on their own land.

Checked against Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency rules, October 20, 2026.

Programs
0

none in Tennessee

Lowest Acreage Floor
—
License on Own Land
Not always

with an exemption

Hunting Your Own Land

The Farmland Owner/Tenant Licence Exemption (T.C.A. 70-2-204) is a fee waiver: owners and tenants of qualifying farmland, their spouses and children, resident grandchildren and great-grandchildren under 16, and tenants' spouses and dependent children may hunt without a licence, and exempt landowners' children are also exempt from hunter education and blaze orange. The elk permit is still required, and nonresidents do not qualify. No source URL for 70-2-204 appears in our sources.

No Landowner Tag Program

Tennessee gives landowners no tags, vouchers or preference for big game. Owning the ground changes access, not the draw.

General Season or Limited Draw?

Deer is over the counter by Deer Management Unit with no draw on private land; quota hunts exist only on specific WMAs. There are six units, a statewide antlered bag of two for the season and one per day, and antlerless limits that are set per unit - moving to a different county within the same unit does not increase the bag limit, and for example the Aug 28-30, 2026 archery season allows two antlerless in units 1-3 and none in units 4-6. Nonresidents face the same OTC deer structure at nonresident prices. Elk is a quota draw of 19 permits, one of which goes to an NGO raffle and one to a resident young sportsman. The geography is six Deer Management Units defined by county rosters plus 10 Elk Hunt Zones, all on North Cumberland WMA - all other public land is closed to elk, and private land is open only in Anderson, Campbell, Claiborne, Morgan and Scott counties.

New for 2025–26: The 2026 elk application window was Feb 4-25. The Rules of TWRA 1660 chapter list and the fee rule 1660-01-28 (eff. Oct 19, 2026) were read for this entry: no 1660 chapter covers the farmland exemption, which is statutory, and the fee rule prices the Supplemental Big Game licences without mentioning it. tn.gov 403s non-browser clients and the 1660-01 sub-index 403s, so chapters must be fetched by file name from the 1660 list.

Per-unit classification: TWRA deer page plus the Tennessee Hunting Guide. Everything is opened by Fish and Wildlife Commission Proclamation - all hunting seasons are closed unless opened by a specific Proclamation - and the proclamations are archived at tnsosfiles.com..

Check a parcel on the map →

Click the ground or paste a listing's coordinates: the unit for every species (12 Tennessee units mapped), and whether the acreage clears the floor.

Tennessee draw odds →

Every species, unit and hunt code, with the odds at each point level, fees and deadlines.

Things That Trip People Up

  • No property-tied tags exist in Tennessee at all, which makes it one of the clean cases for a unit lookup.
  • A landowner must be drawn to hunt elk, including on their own land.
  • Land qualifies as farmland only if owned by no more than one individual or a family, so it fails where unrelated persons own it jointly - a narrow first-cousin exception applies to small game only. Family means kinship within the third degree.
  • Nonresidents do not qualify for the farmland exemption: owners, spouses and children must be bona fide residents, and tenants must reside on the land.
  • There is no enrolment, but the hunter must complete and sign the Farmland Hunting Exemption statement and carry it or complete it on demand.
  • Tennessee issues no purchased per-animal deer or turkey tag at all - harvest is recorded by electronic check-in.
  • Nothing says whether the exemption waives the Supplemental Big Game licences: TWRA's digest, its exemption list and the fee rule 1660-01-28 that prices those licences are all silent, so do not assert either way.

Sources

  1. 1. Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency · TWRA deer page (Deer Management Units and bag limits) · retrieved 2026-10-20
  2. 2. Tennessee Secretary of State · Rules of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, chapter list for 1660 · retrieved 2026-10-20
  3. 3. Tennessee Secretary of State · 1660-01-28, Rules and Regulations Governing License and Permit Fees · retrieved 2026-10-20
  4. 4. Tennessee Secretary of State · Fish and Wildlife Commission proclamations archive · retrieved 2026-10-20

This page summarizes agency rules for orientation. The statute, commission rule and the current year's application booklet govern; check them before buying land or applying.