Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Billings MT

A possible job transfer opportunity might come up in the near future for a position in Billings, MT. I hunt and fish quite a bit in MT and have Driven through Billings a few dozen times.

Any input on quality of life in Billings? Home prices in good areas, etc? Decent airport to fly out of to other cities?

I know gets cold in winter and hot in summer.

Airport is good/large.

Not familiar with housing.

Weather down that way is not bad IMO. I wouldn't hesitate to live in Billings.



Travis

Thank you.

I have noticed that Billings has really grown the past decade. I bird hunt around Billings and enjoy fishing up in Ft Peck and fly fish the Big Horn. Would prefer more trees but seems like worse areas to live.

Egads!! You and Travis BOTH in the same state???

Call the Chamber of Commerce in Billings, ask for a relocation pack, you will get a large envelope stuffed full of info on the city, real estate, things to do, etc. If for some reason they don't have such item, any real estate office will be glad to send you one.

Trees are overrated.

One thing about MT (and you obviously know this) is you are going to have to drive no matter what. Texans think they drive a lot? They ain't got schit on the people in MT.

So you have to ask yourself, does Billings have MOST of what you want? Because very few places in MT have it all.

In my opinion Billings is a pretty good launching point for doing most anything. And that is what I would consider more than anything else.



Travis

Personally, if you want to live in the west, just take the transfer and don't look back. I don't know where you live now, but there really isn't much that you can't get/do/find in Billings that would be worth traveling somewhere else for. Unless you live for professional sports or have to attend a concert every other week or so. That, and it's a little short on beaches. It's got a decent enough airport to get you to those things.
Housing is probably the most reasonable there of the "cities" in Montana, and if you want to live on the outskirts, it's not much of a commute.
Can get a little warm in the summer, but doesn't have as harsh a winter as a lot of the rest of the state. Neither cold nor hot lasts very long.
As far as getting out of town, a 2 hour drive can get you from lakes to mountain top to high plains to wherever (except a bigger city).
Bring a truck, bring a boat, bring a good attitude, and you'll enjoy it.

Coming from someone that lives in Havre...

All you snobs in Bozeman are the same.




Travis

I keep sticking my toe in the Montana water with my wife to see if she'll go for a move. The latest was last week when a job I'm well qualified for popped up on Manhattan, Montana. Pics of the area look nice, if a little thin on trees and I see it's near Bozeman, which I understand is a college town and probably fairly liberal.

Yeah. I remember driving down from Calgary about 30 years ago to do some fly-fishing in the Bighorn and some spring creeks down thataways. Stopped at a convenience store in Billings to get some whiskey and the little gal looked at my driver's license and chirped, "It must be a treat for you to come to a big city, isn't it?"

I had to smile at that.

Scott-
Yeah it's a college town. Keep in mind that fairly liberal in Montana is probably fairly conservative most other places. There is that element to it though.
I will drive to Manhattan (or Logan, or even Willow Creek) for a good steak, though. Better than most anything you can get in Bozeman.

But that dig aside, I looked really hard at Billings when I moved back west in 2011. My decision came down to where I'm at now and Billings, and in fact if the hospital there had come up with a just a bit more scratch, I'd be living there now instead of here in butt-phuggin-Egypt west Texas.

Like Travis said, anywhere in that part of the world you're gonna be driving to get anywhere... but the anywheres you can drive to from Billings blow anywhere else outta the water. Provided you like to hunt & fish & recreate outdoors.

I'll never understand the fixation people have on trees.




Travis

I know. You'd think they'd never heard of planting a shelter belt... sheesh...

You'really not doing very well in your assumptions..

Yep. I grew up in Bozeman, and while it is more liberal compared to back then, there are still a LOT of conservatives, partly because even many of the Californians who have moved there are conservatives who grew weary of their state's politics.

As for Billings, I could be pretty happy living there rather than any place else in most other states, because as Travis and others point out, you're still going to end up driving a ways to do a lot of the outdoor stuff anyway. Having said that, I prefer living in smaller Montana towns because uncrowded fishing and hunting is only a few minutes from my door, instead of most of an hour. Left Missoula in the mid-1980's not only because of the increasing number of airheads (once got called out by a hippy when dragging a legally harvested Christmas tree back to the pickup) but grew weary of fighting traffic both at the beginning and end of a day of fishing or hunting.

But Billings sure beats Denver, or even Boise.

You could seriously do a lot worse than Manhattan.

Wife and I lived in Santa Cruz, she's even lived in Berkeley and Boulder.. We always laugh when people call Bozeman liberal.

I have no personal experience with Billings other than driving through a few times. My son has been there a couple of times to play music, and he likes it. But, when I see posts like the ones above, I certainly take note.

Unless a person is independently wealthy and can write checks to live in his personal concept of paradise, living within strike distance of the amenities one holds dear is about as good as it gets. The ability to go somewhere on the weekend that others have to plan a vacation to visit is a tremendous quality of life benefit for a person who has to work for a living.