People are all over on public, usually two shooters and one camera man ! Everyone wants to be a star. Ran into that twice now
Wow, just crazy!
I'm fortunate to have enough private in TN to not have to hunt public, so no input on public inn TN specifically....
That being said, I heard far more shots the first 4 days of season while hunting private than normal.
As far as south MS goes, there was even less pressure on the public places I hunted. In fact, only had to move from my morning plan A once this entire season after being beaten to the pull off spot. And I wasn't arriving more than 20 min before legal shooting time. Now that being said, I've only heard 1 bird gobble since I started scouting Feb 23rd (killed him), and that's with 19 days in the field in MS. In fact, I've only found 1 set of gobbler tracks since season opened Mar 15th. Haven't heard a SINGLE shot either. So that might explain why the spots I picked to check had no pressure.
If I had a crystal ball, I'd suspect overall pressure on public in TN to be a bit less than past couple years early season (simply because so many other states are open now as well), but late season (May 15 thru 30) will have a bit more pressure than the last 2 weeks of season compared to years past. But pressure on public last 2 weeks will still be very light compared to first 2 weeks of season.