It must be nice to use a high powered rifle in your states. Here in Ohio, we have an option to take a muzzleloader (*which can reach out to max of 200 yds.*) or a shotgun for deer. I was just thinking of how nice it must be to get to use fancy scopes, heavy loads, and more than 3 cartridges in the gun at one time... I guess what I'm trying to say is you all actually ought to consider yourself lucky.... lucky that you have the privilege.... Good hunting, and I'm outta here.

Avid_bowhunter2005
Taylor

If you don't like being so limited on your choice of hunting tools then rent a U-Haul and move.

yup lucky indeed.
In my state, about 1/3 of the state is shotgun only- unfortunately that part of the state is mostly huge corn and hay fields where a shotgun is pretty much useless[:@]
The area where I hunt is dense forest, where you cannot take full advantage of a rifle.

If I were forced to hunt in an area that didn't allow rifles, I'd buy a TC Encore in a heartbeat. Handguns are legal in the shotgun zones, even chambered in rifle calibers.

There is very little rhyme or reason to our state's hunting rules.

You know avid, I was thinking the same thing being here in MD and hunting shotgun counties. But I love my 12ga slug gun. In fact, I used it in WV, Ky and even the eastern Shore for the past 2 years, all which you can use a rifle. I rarely in my life found the need to shoot over 150 yards. The only time I need to is at varmits or Moose hunting. And I have well over 10 different rifles that are deer capable.

I am more of a thicket hunter. Always have been. Where my friends like field hunting. And need the rifles.

I love my rifles, but I would adapt if limited to muzzle hunting or shotgun only. I have taken a few deer with muzzleloaders....and most were taken at about the average distance I've taken deer with my rifles. In the hunting I do in Michigan i rarely shoot beyond 70 yards. I have (shot beyond 70 yrds), but not often. If I had friends who were farmers I could have a lot of fun on their fields. But alas, I hunt swamps on public land...mostly.

Gotta leave my state to do rifle except for yotes. Here we have bow, handgun, blackpowder & shotgun for deer. But local legislators are idiots so what's new?

Serious rifle hunters go out of state, and take their cash with them.

Having lived in shotgun-only places, such as certain counties in VA, in some of which you have to use BUCKSHOT (ugh!!!), I agree that I'm lucky to live in a place where rifles are legal!

Yep, it is darned nice.

EKM

I can't imagine not using a rifle. Not that I couldn't make a shotgun do, but I would prefer a rifle. If our legislature came up with a "shotgun only" rule, millions of Texans would make a "legislators only" exception.

Much of Maryland is shotgun, legal handgun or muzzle loader only for deer. My fraternal grandfather was among the last of the subsistance hunters in Maryland. He had 14 kids and when he picked up a gun, there was no sport in mind. Everything went in the pot, especially during the Great Depression, when even the smallest kid trapped animals to sell the pelts and help out. Pop-pop, to my knowledge, never used a rifle. He had an old pre-War Model 11 Remington in 20ga that one of the older boys gave him when his double barrel 12ga broke. He killed everything to include white tail deer with that humped back semi-suto, which he loved. Of course, here in Maryland there is a lot of thicket hunting, especially on the western shore. Someone gave him half a box of duck loads that were 2 3/4" Magnums! Pop-pop didn't know anything about Magnums, but he liked those that were given to him because he told me that they, "hit hard on squirrels and shucked out the hulls real fast!"