Lived in Chicago. Escaped to Oklahoma. Haven’t been back to Chicago once.
Yeah, I never fit in there.
Sure there are prettier states with four distinct seasons and with weather that isn’t a full-blown sport in itself. (There was one day last year with wildfires, snow and a tornado, all in the same 24 hours. True story.)
But I absolutely love it here. Wonderful place to raise a family, buy land and do whatever you want with it without permits or environmental impact studies or any of that yank nonsense. Awesome place to enjoy Constitutional rights.
True, for as small as it is, Tulsa has way too many murders at 55 or so a year and is generally run by idiots . But my gosh, so many instances where the intended victim pulls a gun and lives to tell about it, something that pretty much NEVER happened in the Windy City.
There is TONS of natural diversity here, much of it already mentioned. Beautiful pine forests and rolling hills (Oauchita Mountains) in the SE, hardwood forests and crystal clear streams in the NE, Wichita Mountains in the SW, 4500’ high prairie in the Panhandle. We border AR, NM, CO and other states too.
Ridiculously abundant game with whitetail, mulies, elk, pronghorn, bear, cougar (not supposed to shoot these though), turkey, feral hogs. I think you can harvest six deer a year in most areas? As mentioned by others though, not a lot of LR varminting unless you know where to look.
But the best part is the people. I was in a horrific accident, should not have survived. It was on a highway that I thought didn’t have much traffic. EVERYONE stopped to help. People jumped into action to help a dying complete stranger. True Good Samaritans. Had the same wreck happened in Chicago, I’d have been left for dead.
I say go for it. Move to Oklahoma and look up some of us. We’d love to meet you and show you around.