DILLON (AP) -- A national publication ranks five Montana towns among the nation's top 30 for hunting and fishing.

Outdoor Life magazine in an article titled ''Paradise Found'' recently named Lewistown the sixth best town in the country for hunting and fishing, and ranked Dillon No. 8 in a total ranking of the top 200 communities nationwide.

The magazine also noted the incredible opportunities for hunters and anglers elsewhere in Montana: Livingston is ranked No. 13 and Helena came in ranked No. 16. The four Montana towns in the top 20 were more than for any other state.

Butte also made the list with a ranking of 30.

Writer Andrew McKean noted that Dillon is surrounded with ''public-land elk sharing space with moose, mule deer, mountain goats and bighorn sheep.''

And the Beaverhead River and other area fisheries make up some of the best trout fishing in the West, the magazine touted.

The article said in looking at towns with a population of 4,000 or larger, it factored in quality of life measures including housing prices, median household income and commute time. Then it took into account the sporting opportunities such as trophy potential, access to public land and whether hunting and fishing is possible year round.

The sporting opportunities were given a higher emphasis when the measures were fed into a database to get the ranking, the magazine said.

The rankings were not a surprise to Bill Forrester, owner of Carriage House Realty and a Dillon native. He said in recent years about half of his sales to out-of-state residents have been to people who've said they're coming to Dillon to hunt and fish.

''It definitely has been a driving factor in the real estate market for the last five to 10 years,'' he said.

Most of those people have sold a home for a substantial price somewhere else and then buy in Dillon. Forrester said he's seen retirees, as well as people in their late 40s and 50s who bring their jobs with them and telecommute.

McLaughlin said that most of the people who do move to Dillon from elsewhere are older because good paying jobs are hard to come by.

''You better bring your money with you,'' he said.