The best state to live in for hunting

[Where's Bruce?]

The best you say? That would most definitely be the STATE OF FINANCIAL WELL-BEING. Then you can travel to any place you wanna hunt for any species you like. Live wherever the money is...hunt where you want. That's my advice.



I wanna be the first on my block with a red stag shoulder mount on my wall.

 

[timekiller13]

In order for me
1. Alaska
2. Montana
3. Colorado

 

[JWP58]

Depends on what you hunt.

Chukar? Probably NV.
Variety of upland birds? MT or ID
Hunting every day all year? Texas
Elk? CO
Sheep? AK

Just depends, but one thing is certain, Wyoming sucks.

 

[Midwest.Bushlore]

It really does depend on what you want to hunt, or if you're just a one-sport person or if you also like to fish. I grew up in SD and it's excellent for deer, pretty good for antelope, superb for pheasants, good for grouse, great for walleye, bass and panfish and there are very few predators (aside from coyotes and of course some lions in the Hills).

It also depends on what you do for a living. Do you have to be in a large city to do it? MT where I live now has no large cities and the in the larger towns the COL is way out of proportion with wages, especially in the west.

It also probably depends a little on politics and lifestyle. I've found MT, CO and ID to be pretty right wing except in the bigger towns which are fairly left leaning.

I wouldn't discount ID at all. You need to know the area but there's still elk and moose in the panhandle. Great fishing, too.

 

[Jc213]

The best you say? That would most definitely be the STATE OF FINANCIAL WELL-BEING. Then you can travel to any place you wanna hunt for any species you like. Live where the money is...hunt where you want. That's my advice.

Good advice

 

[Jc213]

It really does depend on what you want to hunt, or if you're just a one-sport person or if you also like to fish. I grew up in SD and it's excellent for deer, pretty good for antelope, superb for pheasants, good for grouse, great for walleye, bass and panfish and there are very few predators (aside from coyotes and of course some lions in the Hills).

It also depends on what you do for a living. Do you have to be in a large city to do it? MT where I live now has no large cities and the in the larger towns the COL is way out of proportion with wages, especially in the west.

It also probably depends a little on politics and lifestyle. I've found MT, CO and ID to be pretty right wing except in the bigger towns which are fairly left leaning.

I wouldn't discount ID at all. You need to know the area but there's still elk and moose in the panhandle. Great fishing, too.

True, I love fly fishing as well. Definitely something to think about.

 

[Midwest.Bushlore]

There's some great fly fishing in Montana! I'm not a big fly fisherman myself, more into spinning gear or bait, but the streams here are chock full of trout. The Black Hills of SD have some good fly fishing spots but not nearly as many as MT.

MT has a state income tax which thanks to Trump won't be deducted from your Federal taxes. It's also extremely expensive to license your vehicle here ($400 for my four year old car!) and it has some of the highest insurance rates around due to deer collisions. I got kind of spoiled in SD as they're one of just a handful of states with no income tax. On the other hand MT has no sales tax so that's a bonus.

 

[HOT ROD]

Its hard to beat Wyoming if Ur a resident... A Wyoming resident can receive several elk deer and antelope tags a year.. Fishing is pretty good all around the state...

 

[Midwest.Bushlore]

Note: I suppose CO has a lot of that but I've lived in MN, SD, ID, and MT and spent a lot of time in WA, so those are the states I know the best. Only set foot in CO once IIRC.

WY is nice if you can find work there. I have relative in Cody and Cheyenne so I guess I've spent a fair amount of time there. As a chef I didn't see much for FT work there; the parks hire a lot of staff but that's mostly seasonal. Of course I might be the only chef here so it would depend on the kind of work you do. I don't think WY has any large cities at all.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

Why hasn't Hawaii made this list? One can island hop to hunt Axis Deer, Black Tail Deer, Feral Pig, Feral Sheep, Feral Goats etc. Then at the end of the day you are still in Hawaii.

 

[bowtech840]

Iowa


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[Idaho_Potato]

The best you say? That would most definitely be the STATE OF FINANCIAL WELL-BEING. Then you can travel to any place you wanna hunt for any species you like. Live where the money is...hunt where you want. That's my advice.

An alternative take on this......you could spend your most able-bodied years wasting away in front of a computer screen chasing a career in suburban hell.

 

[Felix40]

NM is one nobody seems to think about. There are several species here you cant hunt anywhere else in the US.

 

[Where's Bruce?]

An alternative take on this......you could spend your most able-bodied years wasting away in front of a computer screen chasing a career in suburban hell.

My "able-bodied days" are decades behind me. Heck, I took my first hunt when I was 49...ten years ago. Yeah...I pound a computer in suburbia but I wouldn't call it hell. I live at the beach, am two hours from mountain lakes and streams (or hunting & skiing), the desert, and one hour to big cities (LA & San Diego) or Mexico (not that I go there anymore) or an offshore island. So Cal isn't so bad except for the libtards ruining the state politically. Can't beat the weather or the opportunity to play outdoors.

Having the bucks to hunt places like Canada, Africa, or any other darn place is nice. Beats being broke and only having your backyard hunting grounds to stomp. Chasing different species in new places is the best. If you haven't experienced destination hunting then you cannot understand what you're missing. It'd be like trying to explain sex to a virgin. There's nothing wrong with hunting your backyard but doing the same thing all the time and seeing the same country over and over gets old. Watching the Northern Lights while you barbecue dinner just after dark at 10:30pm is something else altogether.

 

[Midwest.Bushlore]

My "able-bodied days" are decades behind me. Heck, I took my first hunt when I was 49...ten years ago. Yeah...I pound a computer in suburbia but I wouldn't call it hell. I live at the beach, am two hours from mountain lakes and streams (or hunting & skiing), the desert, and one hour to big cities (LA & San Diego) or Mexico (not that I go there anymore) or an offshore island. So Cal isn't so bad except for the libtards ruining the state politically. Can't beat the weather or the opportunity to play outdoors.

Having the bucks to hunt places like Canada, Africa, or any other darn place is nice. Beats being broke and only having your backyard hunting grounds to stomp. Chasing different species in new places is the best. If you haven't experienced destination hunting then you cannot understand what you're missing. It'd be like trying to explain sex to a virgin. There's nothing wrong with hunting your backyard but doing the same thing all the time and seeing the same country over and over gets old. Watching the Northern Lights while you barbecue dinner just after dark at 10:30pm is something else altogether.

Money does enter into it unless you're a trust fund kid. Most of us will need to live somewhere we can make a living. For a plumber or electrician that might be almost anywhere; for a paleontologist maybe not. I liked SD a lot except for the conservatard government and the fact that the only forests are in the extreme west with little pockets in the east.

 

[Jc213]

An alternative take on this......you could spend your most able-bodied years wasting away in front of a computer screen chasing a career in suburban hell.

Man I think about that all the time too, I have so much more studying and work to do for engineering but all I think about is hunting! Hoping it’ll be worth it and I’ll have more time shortly here in the future and financial freedom.

 

[FlyGuy]

Yeah great draw odds for residents and tons of general season opportunity. You can hunt bull elk, mule deer and antelope every year.

Don’t forget, as a WY resident you get to hunt all that wilderness that us non-res hunters can’t venture into alone...


You can’t cheat the mountain

 

[Saunch33]

Alaska

 

[Idaho_Potato]

There's nothing wrong with hunting your backyard but doing the same thing all the time and seeing the same country over and over gets old.

It's not out of reach to live in the rockies and make a living.

As far as seeing the same country over and over again or getting tired of your "back yard", I don't know how that's possible. I live at the base of the Sawtooth's in Idaho. Within a few hours of my house there are more ridges, basins, lakes, and trophy trout streams than I will ever visit in my lifetime. Any and every weekend, holiday, or vacation I can be in a new spot scouting or figuring out the elk trails in an old spot. I spend more days in the woods than is probably healthy. I and have a cool job to pay for that hunt in Canada or AK if I ever get the itch.

Seriously, if you're young and love hunting and that high-dollar California salary comes calling - just imagine yourself sitting in traffic at 5 pm on a Friday wishing you were somewhere in the mountains. I did my time in California - 2 years. Even living close to Tahoe was not worth it.

 

[Gobbler36]

I would say Nevada is pretty dang good
If your dead set on moving
AK or Wyoming seem to be the only places not being inundated with Californians, or granolas from elsewhere wanting to “live in the outdoors”