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Top 5 Hunting Towns in America

By Amy Hatfield

Man, you hate to rank stuff sometimes. Take college football, for instance. What makes one team better than another — TV time, a killer schedule, wins and losses? Rankings and choices concerning numero uno lend themselves to loopholes, weak arguments and plenty of opinions.

So what exactly qualifies a town as one of the BEST hunting towns in America? To find out, I polled hunters who frequent the woods for work and play. Here’s what they said:

1. Every great hunting town needs a variety of game.
2. It needs cafés, hole-in-the wall restaurants, inexpensive hotels and meat processors.
3. Tons of public hunting land within an hour’s drive.
4. Interesting stuff to see when you tag out early or get tired of hunting.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

New Mexico’s scattered peaks are notorious for growing monster bulls. A retirement plan for elk lovers? You bet.

It sits at the southern end of the Rockies, so there’s an unusual interplay between native mountain species and desert game. There’s no shortage of public land, either, and the quail population rocks. Within a two-hour’s drive, hunters can find elk, bears, bighorn sheep, mule deer, wild turkeys, ducks, geese and pheasants.

Nearby Public Land:
Cibola National Forest
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/cibola
Santa Fe National Forest
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/sfe
San Juan National Forest
http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/sanjuan
Rio Grande National Forest
http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/riogrande

Local Finds:
After dark, restaurants and bars bathe the area in neon. On Central Avenue, the old strip of Route 66 offers vintage establishments like the Stardust Inn and the Standard Diner. The road eventually passes by the University of New Mexico and several blocks of cheap eats.

Recreation:
If you tag out early, take a hike, ski, mountain bike or rock climb.

Fave Eats:
Gardunos http://www.gardunosrestaurants.com
Ask for a hand-shaken margarita.
Frontier Restaurant http://www.frontierrestaurant.com
Everything’s served with a hot tortilla, and there’s honey on every table for sopping. Try the huevos rancheros and breakfast burritos.

Crosset, Arkansas

The cypress sloughs in Arkansas set the stage for a forget-me-not waterfowl hunt.

Crossett is nine miles north of the Arkansas/Louisiana border and its old mill town is seven miles from Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge, the largest green-tree reservoir in the world. Hunters go after gators, bears, wild turkeys and ducks. Lots of ducks.

“It’s typical Southern hunting country with a hardcore Southern hunting culture,” said James Powell of Plum Creek Timber, a company that manages timber and hunting land in the area. “You can hop in a boat or canoe and easily get lost out here.”

About Felsenthal http://www.fws.gov/felsenthal

Near Crossett, you'll find Felsenthal National Wildlife Refuge, a popular hunting and fishing destination. Because it lies within the Mississippi Flyway, ducks are the main attraction. It’s also home to the largest population of endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers in the state and some of the region's richest cultural attractions, with more than 200 known archeological sites.

Fave Eats:
Abe’s Old Feed House http://www.arktimes.com/Articles
Expect a classic buffet and typical Southern food, including fried chicken, although crab cakes rank high on the gotta-have-some list.

Baker City, Oregon

Any outdoor enthusiast who lives to cast a fly or chase game through luscious landscapes should consider Oregon an option to call Home.

Established by emigrants traveling west during the 19th century, Baker City is best known for the role it played during the gold rush of the 1860s.

Nowadays, it’s famous for its neighbor, Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, an oasis of wildlife, wildflowers and national parks, which offer tons of recreational opportunities.

At the top of that list is the Snake River in Hells Canyon. Everything about the river is big. Big waves, big views, big cliffs. The canyon is the deepest gorge in North America, several thousand feet deeper than the Grand Canyon.

Oregon also offers prime real estate to big game hunters who favor elk, deer, bighorn sheep and antelope. Pheasant, chucker, quail and grouse keep upland bird hunters busy, and because Oregon sits on the Pacific Flyway, there are ducks and geese galore. “The waterfowl hunting is awesome,” said Scott Vance, a wildlife biologist for the National Wild Turkey Federation. “It’s some of the best in the United States, and the Canada goose hunting is some of best in the world.”

The turkey hunting isn’t bad, either. In recent years, Oregon has become a sleeper turkey state. Hunting them has grown ten-fold since the first spring season opened in 1987, and with good reason. Although wild turkeys aren’t native to Oregon, healthy populations of Merriam’s and Rio Grandes live here, the latter haunting, national forests in huge numbers, Vance said.

Over-the-counter archery elk tags for either sex are available for about $300, and pronghorns — we’re talking world-record — play here, too.

Nearby National Forests:
Wallowa-Whitman National Forest
http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/w-w
Umatilla National Forest
http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/uma
Ochocho National Forest
http://www.stateparks.com/ochoco.html
Hells Canyon National Recreation Area
http://www.fs.fed.us/hellscanyon
Cold Spring National Wildlife Refuge
http://www.stateparks.com/cold_springs_umatilla.html
Nez Perce National Forest
http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/nezperce

Fave Eats:
Baker City is hardly a classic tourist town, but that's its greatest appeal. There aren’t trendy restaurants; even the Geiser Grand Hotel’s acclaimed dining room serves mainly meat and potatoes (although the place is packed for special culinary events, which include lobster weekends featuring fresh seafood flown in from Maine).

St. Joseph, Missouri

Turkeys. Whitetails. Ducks. The Show-Me State will definitely show you the lore of its hunting paradise. Pun intended.

Recent estimates lift Missouri’s white-tailed deer population to more than 1 million. Translation: Killer success rates. Try more than 120,000 deer taken in 2006 during opening gun weekend. But the fishing is pretty hot, too. So hot that Field & Stream magazine proclaimed it one of the best fishing spots in the Midwest, especially for heavyweight flatheads.

Along with the start of modern firearms deer season, the spring turkey opener is one of the most anticipated days in the state.

All this excitement is well warranted because Missouri is one of America's top turkey hunting states. With a wealth of public ground to boot. “You could spend a lifetime hunting different spots throughout Missouri, and every outing would be the trip of a lifetime,” said outdoor writer Bryan Hendricks.

Recreation:
Missouri is best known for its backyard river, the mighty Mississippi, granddaddy of them all. But that's just a drop in a bucket considering the many opportunities for outdoor fun. The plains and hills of Missouri overflow with some of the clearest waters in the heartland.

Although the state is mostly rural, Kansas City and surrounding suburbs offer big-city fun with numerous tourist attractions, big-league sports teams, museums and historic sites of national importance. North of Kansas City is the Missouri River Valley, a major flyway for waterfowl, bald eagles and songbirds.

Mark Twain National Forest
One of the most popular haunts for chasing turkeys, this public land hot spot is a must on the lifetime to-do list. http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_national_forest/mo/mo_mark_2.htm

Historical Note:
April 3, 1860, marked the beginning of St. Joseph's most romantic adventure. That day the city became embedded in history books when the Pony Express sent its first daring horseback rider to Sacramento, Calif., carrying mail to the Western frontier. Outlaw Jesse James also met his demise in St. Joseph. The house where a gang member shot him in 1882 still stands.

Pittsfield, Illinois

Few deer hunting counties register in the minds of bowhunters across the nation like Pike County. It just so happens that this Illinois county makes them drool.

Bowhunters know the odds of taking a trophy whitetail are better here than almost anywhere in the United States. It doesn’t get much better than hunting in the No. 2 county in the country for monster bucks that grace the pages of the Boone and Crockett and Pope & Young record books. But the fun doesn’t end there. Pike County has a long tradition of hunting ducks and bobwhite quail and working with bird dogs.

Great River National Wildlife Refuge
The Great River National Wildlife Refuge takes credit for much of Pittsfield’s attraction. It is the central refuge within the Mark Twain National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which stretches 350 miles through Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.

The refuge provides several public use opportunities including hunting, fishing and hiking. Get quick facts about hunting regulations at http://www.fws.gov/midwest/greatriver/hunting.html

Fave Eats:
The Red Dome Inn and Lounge: Order prime rib and check out the adjoining Wine Nook that features 130 different wines including Californian, German, Italian, French, Australian and Chilean varieties.