The most game rich country my eyes have ever seen is the Texas hill country. 31,000 sq miles, whitetails, turkeys and exotics running in every direction. I'd guess more corn has been fed to there wildlife than anywhere in the country for the last let's say 30 years. There doing just fine.
In addition to the before mentioned differences in TN's vs. TX's circumstances,
I suspect there are also currently more corn feeders per acre in the average TN county than in the TX hill country.
Land ownership patterns are much different in the State of TN vs. TX.
Do you think the large TX ranches (average is
many times larger than the ave TN "farm"),
have more feeders per acre than the average rural area of TN, where in addition to what's on the average small TN farm, there are "wildlife" feeders in the backyards of many the homes along our roads?
Yes, rural homes in TX also have wildlife feeders behind their homes.
Just saying across the states, we are a lot more "congested" in TN, a lot more homes per acre in the average county.
One other difference, although it may have little to do with the aflatoxin issues, supplemental feeding is actually considered more a necessity in Texas (not necessarily the hill country) statewide due to the arid climate not producing a consistent food supply to support their desired deer density, which is generally much lower statewide than is TN's.