I have lived in St. Louis for my entire life but live in St. Louis County. The rough parts of the city are North City. When you hear about bad shit most of the time its from that area. There are some cool areas in the city to live though. As far as living goes look into all the suburbs in the county. There is a mix of Liberal and Conservatives people all over the city. The further out of the city you get the more conservative it gets.
Fishing and hunting you are looking at a minimum 1 1/2 hours out of the city heading West but there are some closer opportunity's if you cross river into IL. The Ozarks has incredible access for fishing small streams and big lake access. Plenty of conservation land for hunting as well. North of I-70 has the biggest deer. 4ish hour drive south to Arkansas has insane trout fishing on White River along with Norfork and Bull Shoals Lakes. Current River and Upper Meramec make for some incredible floats and fishing. Feel free to PM me with any specific questions and I will answer them if I can.
Deer hunting in Michigan blows. While I dint know about MO hunting I do know your close to some top states and about 6 hours closer to western hunting.