Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire RETIREMENT. Texas or Florida?

I really like Texas, but hunting here is tough unless you want to pay.

Expat

I have to say that Apalachiacola sounds vaguely like home...Been looking at some stuff around Gilchrist county.

Texas is the only choice...Florida has beeen invaded by Blue-hairs. I don't think the Mrs. would like to be lumped into that category.

Besides, Texas is, well, TEXAS!

Ed

I was just in Florida... thought I'd died and gone to hell.

From a tax point of view Florida taxes you a lot more than Texas. Both of them have no state income tax but Florida milks you pretty good for property taxes, and with the hurricanes of the last few years the property insurance rates have gone through the roof. Florida ranks 31st in the nation in tax burden, Texas is 45th.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/27063.html

That's what I've always heard and why I don't consider Texas to be a retirement option if hunting is important unless you have enough money to buy Rancho Grande and have your own spread.

From the OP's opening post I sort of doubted that, being able to buy Rancho Grande that is. Me, I'd endure some harsher weather just for the more available outdoor opportunities.

Biker

Cheers!

-Bob F. [img]http://www.bunduki.com/bob/emoticons/texas-smiley5.gif[/img]

Mexicans or Cubans

I'll never find a place to retire... I want to retire where I don't have to have the friggin government in my face, and robbing every penny I make...

I want to spend my remaining years in life...taking care of my fellow veterans in the medical world...and thanking God for the life he has given me and the time on this planet...

We don't get many hurricanes in Texas if that matters.

Come to Texas.


I like west of Houston better than east.

But east is not bad either, cause it's Texas


Snake

Hunting in TX is great and you don't have to own a ton of land to hunt some here. My buddy has 40 acres and he shoots pigs and deer off it every year. Two issues though his property is situated "just right" and I'm not inclined to have the expense, taxes and workload that come with owning even 40 acres if I don't live on it.

Expat

Unfortunately Texas will most likely have a state income tax within the next decade. Demographics are dooming this state to Dem leadership in the near future, as are court drawn districts. There was a major push by the big state papers to push for an income tax after Bullock passed, and the Dems still had some control in the legislature. That and most of our recent wave of transplants have been overwhelmingly Dems, unlike what happened during the 1980's and 1990's.

'Tween those two I think I'd go Florida panhandle. South Florida?........... No way.

There's a whole lot of mis-information on this thread, all the way around.

Right...only on the coast.

As an aside, I live 415 miles from Pensacola...830 from El Paso.

yep - it's farther from where you live in SE Texas to El Paso than it is from El Paso to Los Angeles,CA (approximately 820 miles from LAX to El Paso International Airport). El Paso is roughly the midway point for people traveling from Southern California to Houston on I-10.

A lot of great things to be said for Texas (I think Texas is a great state), but if the invasion from the south continues to go unabated, there are going to be increasing problems with corruption coming in from Mexico with the drug cartels and the illegal immigrants (yes, there is a certain level of corruption associated with just being where you aren't supposed to be and feeling like you have a right to thumb your nose at the law just because you feel like you're "entitled"). Corruption among government officials and law enforcement along the Texas side of the border is already being witnessed (and apparently widespread in some counties).

If a full-blown civil war breaks out in Mexico (and the water in the pot is simmering even now), Texas is going to be even more inundated with illegals than it is now. Being on the border with Mexico is the one downside I see with Texas. Texas is a large state, but it still shares a border with Mexico, and if things got really bad in Mexico, I don't think the Hill Country and Houston or even the DFW area would be immune from the impacts. There was a drug cartel (Zetas) killing in Houston in November that gave the sense that the cartels may be getting a little bolder on this side of the border - a truck driver who was both a police informant and a drug courier was gunned down by four Zetas (at least three of which were Mexican nationals) on the street while he was under police surveillance (see link below). In Texas, you're that much closer to the source of that type of violence and corruption.

Zetas attack in Houston area

Wetbacks ain't roachs. They don't creep across the border and stop at the first food source. Statistically, Texas ain't getting any more "Mexican" than the rest of the country, probably less. Of course, Texas WAS Mexico not all that long ago and the Mexican culture is strong here.

I already have a place in South Florida. I want me some Hill Country!