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This is an interesting thread to follow. I'm 59 and retired and live in No Va. My wife won't move because she's comfortable in the house and comfortable in the small town we live in. The good news is from my front door I can walk to the town office and see the Mayor if I want, walk to a 7-11 type store, walk to two restaurants, the bank, the Post Office and the auto repair place. That's what retired folks want she says. Even if you can't drive you can do pretty well. The house we live in is circa 2,000 square feet, 1/4 acre fenced yard. Market value is probably 400K currently. That doesn't matter because we aren't leaving.

Good health care, three big chain grocery stores 3 miles away max and of course more restaurants there. From my wife's optic why would we leave.

From the Sportmans aspect it pretty much sucks for upland. I can do preserves at $20 bucks a pheasant within about an hour. A few grouse attempts within 2 hours. Have the Shenandoah River nearby, but you can't eat any fish out of it because of Mercury and other bad things. Also, any place you go that's public is slammed with people.

I've dreamed about having a small cabin in Maine because I have dogs and the dogs need to hunt. However, I think the wiser course of action would be to find a place and rent for a month in October and hunt till I drop. Easier said then done.

I do think the look before you leap applies and one has to fully consider a crap load of factors before making the plunge to move. If it was just me, I'd move to the Midwest in a heartbeat and during the late winter snowbird to South Texas and chase waterfowl and Quail. However, there's more then me to factor in and I appreciate my wife's common sense approach to things and also certainly have to factor in what would happen to her if we moved and then I was suddenly out of the picture. Wouldn't be fair to her for sure.

Good thread and certainly like to read all the responses.

PS. I like NH as its a lovely state. However, I bird hunted last year in the Pittsburg NH area and I would never ever want to hunt in an area that had that many hunters pounding the same covers over and over again. Only saving grace was the food was pretty spectacular as was the scenery.

I can say that the fantasy stage of pre-retirement planning is the fun part.
Our investment consultant encouraged us to to what is called "Imagineering", to create a loose picture of what we desired retirement life to look like. Write down as floridly as you are able. Fantasize to the limits of your imagination.
Then, block out the time pieces. Then make personal estimates of what resources they require.

Then, and here's the hard part, look at your wife's sheets, and then she looks at yours.
It is entirely possible the life you want and the one she wants are incompatible.
That's when the reality of a relationship enters the picture.

Blending the two different views of the next third of your lives is what the consultant gets paid to help with.

Im in Wisconsin..Retired a little over a year ago....61 yrs old.....

Nice grouse hunting up north if you can deal with the tics....ok grouse in western part of the state with less bugs....waterfowl pretty decent all over the state if you know where to hunt....Pheasant hunting pretty much put and take since the 70s, unless you know someone with acres of prairie land in the southern part of the state , then you can find some wild ones.....turkeys now all over the place....woodcock if you know where and when migrating....overall decent upland and waterfowl hunting...

Large game...Deer all over the state...Bear up north ....

The best area to live in my opinion is around the southern/central Lake Winnebago area, a variety of fishing and hunting close by and just a short drive to the tic infested north if you like.......

CrapperZapper, before you retired, did you pay Social Security taxes, Workers Comp, and Unemployment Insurance for all those Illegal Aliens you told us you employed at low wages in Misfires yesterday, and enjoyed Lording over?

Or did your consultant advise you to continue to break the law?

I am 74 and retired 25 years ago and never looked back.In my part of Georgia only a few doves,turkeys and ducks.Mr Bobwhite is all but gone.I need to move but never will. Bobby

I never worked a day in my life. Work to me is unwanted activity. You guys are talking about something that doesn't exist. We move from one stage to another stage of our lives after a series of employments. The alternative is following a woman around the house telling her what to do---after her lifetime of raising a family, cleaning our shirts and shoving us out the door. My guess is we fill out our lives with more than hunting and fishing: family, hobbies, community activities, volunteerism. There's more picking and choosing. (There's the rare exception of those who live such miserable lives they've always got to be picking on someone!)

You won't move, Bobby, because you knew that success is doing what you want to do where you live.

King Brown, champion of the oppressed, you don't seem to be concerned about the miserable lives of the Illegal Aliens that CrapperZapper told us he employed:

I retired in WY 20 years ago.
Pros:
Outstanding fly fishing, great upland bird hunting and world class big game hunting. The kids are polite and respectful, neighbors are friendly and the state is very gun friendly. In my part of the state traffic is close to nonexistent.

Cons:
Mall shopping is a 2 1/2 hour drive

The thing about pre retirement, is most people mis manage their time off when it's availablity is at it's peak. Call it "Job Scared". Consequently, they don't ease into retirement, they abruptly drop/fall/are pushed, into it. Immediately losing the social support of having a place to be and something valued to do. It kills many people. They are set adrift. And start hanging out at McDonalds. It's a terrible way to enter the next third of your life.
Work shorter hours. Take more time off. Make holidays into 3 day weekends. Train a replacement. Hand off projects and responsibilities. Ease toward the gate.
Replace work stuff with extra curricular stuff. Let others be the boss.

Earlier I mentioned fantasy and reality.
Hunting and fishing every day is gruelling. I would not encourage anyone to attempt to adopt that lifestyle as a permanent change post retirement.
Better to rent places, try it a little bit, then move on.

Oh, and don't think a guy in his sixties has the same ligaments, tendons, and joints as a forty year old. They don't.