I'm sure I'd have plenty of use for a .17 out where you are. I've been all over Montana and seen that you've got plenty of open ground there. I bet you'd get positively claustrophobic hunting here in the Catskills and would be much less interested in such as long range rifles, flat trajectories and high BC bullets. Such things are of little practical use to me unless I go North to hunt the farmland, which I never do anymore except for a few trips each summer to shoot woodchucks. For that I generally take my .223 or .243 and leave the rimfires at home.
