Greg, I'm a Jersey Boy myself. My wife is/was a "piney" girl. We are both originally from Burlington County, NJ. We left NJ back in 1979 and never looked back. Since then we lived in Arizona, upstate New York, and Michigan. My job transferred me around. I retired in 1999 and we moved down here to Tenasi in 2000. Yeah, I'm old.
For the most part, we love it here, except this town, Cleveland, is not the pleasant small town it was when we first choose to move here. It has boomed and the population has increased excessively. Thousands of yankees moving here, and even some coming up from Florida. We moved here from Michigan to a nice, quiet place, but now the traffic, at times, is almost as bad as Detroit.
Regardless of what others may tell you, here in southeast TN the hunting is rather poor when compared with some northern states. Sure there are black bears, feral hogs, deer, and turkeys in the mountains but they are widely scattered and the steep terrain makes hunting difficult. Other than squirrels, small game is scarce. I have not seen a ruffed grouse here in years. Nor a quail. There are no pheasants. There used to be plenty of rabbits around my house, but they seem to have disappeared too. We do have plenty of coyotes and raccoons. Maybe they are what is getting the deer fawns and small game. Waterfowl hunting can be fairly good if you have the equipment and know where to go.
I can't speak for further west in Tenasi, but I have heard there is more game out that way.
Fishing is fairly good, with plenty of variety.
Taxes and the general cost of living is quite a bit lower than most northern states.
In the 21 years that we have lived here I have only had 3 encounters with backwoods a-holes that didn't like my yankee accent, but those types are getting scarcer. The stereotypical southern accent is fast disappearing.
I have even learned to tolerate grits. ():~)
