Mississippi will limit non-residents to two turkeys rather than three per season, and to only one turkey before April 1 beginning in the 2027 season, wildlife officials recently ruled.
Mississippi’s commission on wildlife, fisheries and parks approved rules earlier this month with the intent of further regulating non-resident spring turkey hunting pressure in the state, which opens its season March 15, somewhat ahead of all neighboring states. In fact, only Florida, which opens the same day, is open as early.
The additional hunting competition for the state’s wild turkey resource brings significant economic good along with it, however. While a precise, stand-alone figure for the economic impact of non-resident turkey hunters is not available, it’s easy to see anecdotally they are a significant portion of an irreplaceable pie. On average, a total of 304,000 residents and visitors spend $561 million hunting in Mississippi each year, making an overall economic impact of $1.3 billion annually economywide. Mississippi’s relatively early spring turkey opening date and a wealth of public and private hunting land have been attracting hunters for years, and spring turkey hunting is the nation’s fastest-growing consumptive outdoor pursuit. In fact, Mississippi’s non-resident spring turkey license sales have doubled since 2019. In an effort to balance that influx, state officials instituted a draw for non-resident spring turkey hunters beginning in 2022 and limit such sales to 800 for public land. Guests, non-resident owners, paying clients and others may still buy non-resident licenses in unlimited quantities to hunt private lands in Mississippi though, continuing to help skew hunting pressure toward the early weeks of the season.
“In the past, 70% of our non-resident harvests came before April 1,” Caleb Hinton, wild turkey program coordinator for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, told a reporter from the Clarion-Ledger.
Resident and non-resident spring turkey hunters alike are drawn by the state’s robust wild turkey population, estimated at 250,000 to 270,000 birds, one of the largest in the nation, behind only Missouri and Texas. While these numbers are down from an absolute peak of as many as 400,000 in the late 1980s, the statewide flock is currently on an upward trend. A strong hatch was recorded in 2025 and officials describe its numbers now as being at one of the highest levels in a generation.
The peak number was achieved after decades of restocking and protective efforts to reestablish the birds here. By the 1930s, turkeys had been completely wiped out in a great many areas of Mississippi, and a number of counties had no wild turkey population or corresponding hunting season whatsoever. Private and public concerns worked for many years to reintroduce wild turkeys to landscapes that had not heard a gobble in living memory, and thriving numbers were achieved. The current figure of roughly a quarter million birds is believed by officials to be a healthy, robust and sustainable figure.
The new restrictions are intended to balance hunting pressure in better favor of residents. A number of other states have done this for the same reason. Nebraska, for example, limits non-resident spring turkey hunters to 10,000 total tags. Nebraska sells an overall non-resident license, then turkey tags individually, up to two per hunter. There, a total of 10,000 tags are allotted for non-residents, specifically to balance the availability of the resource for the residents whose tax dollars and overall economic and cultural commitment manage the land.
In Mississippi, regulations approved earlier this month will cut the non-resident bag limit from three to two birds, and allow only one of those to be collected before April 1, beginning next season.
The goal is to affect the overall population subtraction without eliminating the opportunity entirely.
The total license cost for a non-resident turkey hunter in Mississippi is $200 for a seven-day license, $230 if they’ll be hunting on a state wildlife management area, $350 for a full season license or $380 if they’ll be hunting on a WMA. License price alone is just the beginning for the average non-resident hunter though. Lodging, food and travel expenses promptly come into play, not to mention outfitter and guiding service fees where applicable, magnifying the economic contribution non-residents make. Their spending represents important money for the state. Broad research on hunting in Mississippi indicates a one-percent increase in non-resident license sales goes on to increase tax revenue by an average of more than $14,500 per county.
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