St. Peters is fine.

It's a safe, clean area.

If you like shooting, hunting and fishing fresh water, you're going to love Missouri, all of that is light years better than Virginia.  We even have beaches of a sort if you use the sand bars in the Mississippi above Alton.

St. Peters is mostly a bedroom community that started building up in the early 80's.  Before that it was more farm than town.  A look at a map will show you that eastern St. Charles County along I-70 is a contiguous urban community from the Missouri River to Wentzville, and the region between Wentzville to Foristell is building.

Industry in St. Charles county is light industrial.  The Missouri and Mississippi River bottoms are row crop farms.  The terrain north of I-70 is the prairie remnant after the last ice age, south of I-70 is hilly all the way to the Missouri.  South of I-44 you'll find the Ozarks hills which are a mix of second growth hardwood and hay fields.  A little farther to the southwest to the Current and Jack's Fork rivers you'll find this at Alley Spring:



or this on the North Fork at Topaz near where I grew up:



Here is the shooting club where I belong:

http://www.shootingstl.com/drupal/

I shoot sporting clays here in a Wednesday night league:

http://blackhawkhuntclub.com/

Here's a nearby trap and skeet range:

http://www.gatewaygunclub-stl.com/

There are five ranges on Conservation Areas not too far from where I live, at Reifsnider CA, Busch Wildlife Area, Logan CA,  Whetstone Creek CA, and Ranacker CA.  There are others scattered around the state:

http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/places-go/shooting-ranges-and-outdoor-education-centers/unstaffed-ranges

You should spend time in the Department of Conservation's site to help you understand what we have.  Note that the Dep't of Conservation and the Department of Natural Resources are different organizations with different responsibilities.

I haven't begun to scratch the surface of the availability of shooting in the St. Louis region.  Fishing and hunting are abundant across the state for anything you can dream up except for brook trout or salt water species.

Social stuff such as restaurants are exactly like you'll find in any other city.  The St. Louis region is under the damned gateway clean air rules which means smog "inspections" of cars in nearby counties, but you'll love the safety inspections and tags here compared to Virginia.

St. Charles County is politically conservative and elects conservative representatives to the US Congress and the Missouri House and Senate, and is mostly socially conservative.  The St. Louis region is heavily Catholic, and St. Charles County also has a large Lutheran presence due to the original German settlers in this region.

Life in Missouri is pretty much what you make of it.  If you want to wash your car and cut your yard on Saturday mornings, then you can do that.  If you want to float the Current river and fish for smallmouth (and trout in parts), you can do that.  The KATY trail is a great place to ride bikes or walk.

There are good public schools in St. Charles County, Lindenwood University (the top shotgunning college in the nation), and St. Charles Community College which continues to grow.  St. Charles County has an extremely strong public library system.  The county also has an extensive and growing park system.

Housing in the county ranges from low rent to as expensive as you could stand to spend.  Same with neighborhoods.

When you come here, look over the county, not just St. Peters, the communities all run together.

Night and day difference between the City of St. Louis and St. Charles County.  They aren't all that close in distance, either.

The City of St. Louis and St. Louis County are separate political entities.  In other words, the City is not part of the County.  St. Louis County has areas that are as bad as the city, but for the most part it's safe, especially outside the I-270 loop.

St. Louis got misrepresented with those figures.

The actual City of St. Louis is a pretty small area. St. Louis County surrounds the city, and is where the vast majority of it's population comes from. Crime statistics really only account for "city" of St. Louis. Given that the population there is low, a few murders inside the city suddenly puts us at a very high per capita rating. If the county were to be included (which would be a much more fair assessment of the city overall), then our per capita crime rating would be significantly lower.

I think everything is more reasonable than NoVA

As soon as you get just a bit west of STL, property and homes can be had for very reasonable prices.

Here are some photos from my morning hike on Mother's Day along the Mississippi 3.5 miles above Winfield Lock and Dam.  This is located about 20 miles by road from St. Peters:

North end of the trail:



A tow idling in the slow current waiting her turn at the lock.  The vessel is the Sierra Dawn:



A look upstream.  A tow in the far distance just coming down stream is hiding in the shadow of an island to wait its turn.  Calhoun County, Illinois on the far bank:




Early Spring:

Here's a shot up the Jack's Fork River Valley in South Central Missouri looking to the southwest:



The river is about 500 feet just below where I'm standing.  Much of southern Missouri looks like this and at locations not far from St. Peters.


A flying squirrel:




One of my favorite places on the planet, on the upper Gasconade River in Wright County:



Shooting Sporting Clays:

Had to add an edit for clarity.

Is the company near I-70 or I-64 / Highway 40?

If it's closer to 40, you can find some great places to live south of the highway.  However, there are great places located all over the region.  I live North of O'Fallon in a secluded area with low traffic; there's a house in the subdivision that is coming onto the market, and that is a rare occurrence here.

If he's working in Arrowhead industrial park off Highway 79, he can have that and a 10 or 15 minute commute, or less from a subdivision in town.

I'm curious about the after action report.