Paradise Found

How we determined the rankings

Months of research went into compiling our list of the top 200 towns for sportsmen in America. We started by combing through every population center in the United States with more than 4,000 people. We gathered comprehensive data on the overall quality of life the towns offered. Some of the factors we considered were the growth rate of the local economy, the unemployment rate, the degree of taxation, the time it takes to commute to work, the crime rate, housing prices, median household income and even the variety of cultural opportunities within easy driving distance.

Then we looked at how the towns stacked up purely from a sporting perspective (the grades for some of the categories are listed with each of our top 10 profiles). We rated them on the fishing and hunting opportunities each town offers, the trophy quality of the sporting opportunities, proximity to public land, the restrictiveness of the gun laws and whether the fishing and hunting is good year-round.

We put all this into a massive database and developed a formula that gives slightly heavier emphasis (60/40) to the sporting opportunities than to the quality-of-life rankings. -John B. Snow

Click HERE to view the top towns.