Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Relocation to : Hamilton, MT, Salmon, Idaho, or Cody, WY

We want a town of 3-10k not to big or too small .

Maybe you have reasons for the three towns you listed but if I had unlimited choices I would be moving to Lewistown, Montana.

Why do you prefer Lewistown?

Great location. Easy to get to Billings. Still a small, laid back ag town sitting amongst a few mountain ranges. Good fishing and hunting. Great community.

Thanks for all the input got a few more ideas Leaning toward Montana

Thanks for all the input got a few more ideas Leaning toward Montana

I'd recommend listening to VarmintGuy. I moved from Wasilla to Rigby, ID (between Idaho Falls and Rexburg), and moved to the Bitterroot Valley 2.5 years ago. (I'm half way between Hamilton and Missoula.)

We moved here to be by family. It is gorgeous, but it is too congested and housing is really expensive compared to some other places. If it were me, I would look really hard at Dillon.

Salmon people drive to Idaho Falls or Missoula to shop a lot of the time. I wouldn't live there, esp. with kids.

They aren't as pretty, and are windy, but Idaho Falls and Rigby have CHEAP housing. They also have great hunting and fishing within an hour. The fishing is minutes to the South Fork.

One warning about Montana and retirement taxes: I'm retired, my wife still works. We made 10K less here last year than the year before in Idaho but we paid 4k more in tazes than we did in Rigby. (Jefferson county is considered rural which has some benefits.) I know the sales tax helps, but Idaho was good to us for taxes and housing.

However, the view out of my bedroom window is really, really amazing! (9600' St. Mary's Peak.)

Hunthard,
I have spent time in all the places on your list and i would lean towards Salmon of those three.

Cody is nice, too windy and touristy for me.

Hamilton as others have said too congested and expensive, and liberals have discovered it.

Heard Lewistown mentioned and my take on it is the locals are very leery of outsiders, it's not really on the way to anywhere so few outsiders pass through.
Most of the surrounding area is private land and without contacts you have to drive a fair distance to hunt.
Fishing is limited to streams, it is excellent though.
Bird hunting is first rate if you have a place to hunt.
It's centrally located so if you are willing to drive a bit you can have excellent hunting and fishing.

Dillon is great for the reasons Varmint guy mentioned.

I am in the Flathead area and we have excellent fishing, scenery, trees, lakes and little wind.
The downside is cost of living, liberals and fair hunting.
We also have many grey days during the winter.

Have you considered Lander Wy. nice town and would be worth a look.

You mentioned Sheridan's lack of trees Salmon, Cody and Dillon also lack trees.

Just south of Sheridan is a tiny town called Story and it is nestled at the base of the bighorns and has a lot of trees.

Good luck on your search.

Timber is a must need trees . Does Dillion area have much?

In the northeast Buffalo, Story , etc.. The California crew has found it.. It is mostly private ground and access difficult.. Guides have hogged all the ranches, tough going in that respect..

What's the word on Libby or Thompson Falls?

Also, Brad:
What are your objections to or your perceived downsides to Dillon? Just asking because I'm curious.

Libby, while beautiful, with plenty of trees, has had some serious issues... Health issues, cancer rates, etc... Caused by the mine. Property values are pretty cheap though.

Good hunting and good fishing nearby.

My family has a house there that might be for sale someday. Nice old place.

Guy

T-Inman, I'm two miles east, in Stevensville itself. I have a friend who lives on South Kootenai. (Bryan S.)
I'm loving the area, but the taxes on my retirement hit us hard compared to Idaho. Lots of nice people here, but it is too crowded for me. I'm just amazed at all the private property compared to SE Idaho.
'
The OP said he had kids. Look at Dillons schools and see how they do with academics and sports and how Salmon's schools do. I was in Salmon Saturday night. Town seemed slow except for the bars. I guess you could go stand shoulder-to-shoulder and fish for steelhead in Shoup with everyone else. (I don't know how to insert a smiley face here.)
In Idaho you about a 50/50 chance to draw a cow tag down there (IIRC), or can put in for a 1 in 4 bull tag, or hunt spikes for a week. Or, if you live in Montana, you can hunt branched bull or cow with an over the counter tag for five weeks west on Dillon.
Don't get me wrong, I really like Idaho. But...

My oldest boy Friday, west of Dillon, OTC tag: (5x2 non-typical.)

British Columbia or Alberta, Canada: Good schools, average (but free) health care, amazing hunting and fishing, great culture and family values.

Thompson Falls MT is nice and in Idaho anything south of Coeur d Alene down to Grangeville is nice. I really like where the Palouse area meets the woodlands and also I like the St Maries area and little settlements like Deary, Bovill, and Fernwood along the Whitepine scenic drive.

what's your price per kilowatt hr, VG?

My wife and I left Missoula 30 years ago because just day-floating the Bitterroot River was getting to be a PITA, especially fighting the traffic on Highway 93 to get back home, and the hunting was crowded anywhere on public land from Missoula to Hamilton.

On the occasions when I have to drive through the area now it's obviously far more crowded. But then I was born and raised in Montana when it had less than 2/3 the people it has now, so my perspective may be a little skewed.

Two choices that may have been already suggested. Mountain Home, Idaho, and Twin Falls, Idaho. TF is pretty. MH isn't. But both have excellent access to the out of doors. Good hunting, fishing, white water, hot springs, and camping nearby.

For clarification, Mountain Home is NOT in the mountains. It's on the Snake River Plain and is windy and mostly butt ugly. But go in any direction and it soon gets beautiful. Plus its under an hour drive to Boise for shopping, entertainment and the airport.

It's original name was Rattlesnake Station. But that wasn't conducive to selling land sight unseen.

Both towns are Southwest Idaho where the predominate weather is off of the Pacific. So winters are comparatively mild for Idaho.

TF is higher in elevation and colder than MH. If you include the population within thirty miles it may be fifty thousand souls. TF is a favored refugee resettlement city. So is Boise. If that bothers anyone, don't move there. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Best is to move to the general local you are interested in and rent for a year

Visiting at different times of year, or renting for a year, are both very good ideas. A friend of mine who, by accident of birth, grew up in the Los Angeles area eventually decided to move out 20-some years ago, partly because his young son was about to start school. He'd spent considerable time hunting in various parts of the West, and decided to build a house on the outskirts of Sheridan, Wyoming.

Choosing Sheridan was due to several factors, but one was locals describing the climate as "mild." He'd been there several times in October and the weather always had been mild, so he bought a chunk of land on top of a hill outside of town, typical of a Los Angeles native where the higher-up you live the better the view and social status. The house had picture windows all along the south wall, so he and his family could admire the superb view of the local mountains.

By the time the house was finished it was early winter. The moving van with his family's furniture could not make it up the steep and ice-covered "driveway" to the hilltop house, so they had to offload everything at the bottom of the hill into my friend's brand-new 4WD pickup. Shortly after that a "cold snap" dropped temperatures dropped lower than -20 several nights in a row, and my friend's pickup would not start even when kept in the unheated garage, because he hadn't had an engine heater installed.

A few months later the sunlight through all the south-facing picture windows heated the house considerably, because the other sides of the house had very few windows that could be opened, in order to save heat in winter. He hadn't had air conditioning installed when the house was built because, obviously, Wyoming is cool during summer--but by the end of that summer he did.

He'd moved to Wyoming to avoid Montana's income tax, but discovered the Wyoming sales tax was enough to make shopping in Billings (Montana doesn't have a sales tax) worth it at least once a month, despite the 250+ mile round-trip drive. He was traveling a lot then for his job, and also discovered driving to the Billings airport was more practical than flying out of the little local airport--which often only took him to Billings anyway.



He still lives in Sheridan, and of course far prefers it to the LA area. But on more than one occasion he's wished he'd done a little more research before the move, especially about the local definition of "mild."

I consider anything south of the Yellowstone River as mild(winters).

Why can't they resettle them in Baltimore or Chicago or some other such schithole and keep the West unsullied?

When I retire I am moving to Wyoming. They got their head on straight in Wyoming.