I'm retired Navy, I lived in Maryland (Annapolis) from 1996-2000 while still on active duty, retired in 2003 (from my last duty station in Hawaii) and settled in central Iowa. Finding hunting property here is easy I've found. The key is to make friends (quite easy in Iowa). Once you find a farmer with decent hunting property, they usually say, take as many deer as you can. If you look on the DNR website, you'll see that there are still about 10,000 antlerless tags available in southern Iowa (where they allow rifles during this current January antlerless season).
My brother-in-law lives by the river south of Des Moines, we were there the day after Thanksgiving and there were 22 turkeys under his back deck (unfortunately he is in the city limits)

Here in Iowa, I don't lock the door of my house; in Maryland I had wheel locks on my car.
Don't even get me started on the commute.
Last year, I had a meeting in DC in the afternoon. I left my house that morning, drove 40 miles to the Des Moines airport, flew to Reagan National, took the Metro to Crystal City, and I beat a guy that left his house in Annaplis an hour later than I did and got stuck in traffic driving in to DC.
As for quality of life, quality of people, availability of affordable housing.....can't beat flyover country.