Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Iowa moves one step closer to allowing rifles for deer!

The bill is going to Branstad's desk. Granted, it's only straight-walled cartridges, but it's an improvement over the current shotgun slug/limited handgun choices/muzzleloader regulations. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...tridge-rifle-deer-hunting-iowa/99989680/

Keep pushing and soon you will have all cartridges ok'd by the powers that be.

Points we used in Wisconsin:

*It is a lot easier for the young hunters shooting a lower recoiling rifle to be good marksmen than with a heavier recoiling shotgun*

*Better marksmanship will lead to more practice, cutting down on wounded deer*

*In Wisconsin it appears to have cut down on the excessive gunfire in the areas that were previously shotgun only* (Eliminating the empty the pump gun syndrome)

*It will be easier for the female hunter to participate if she doesn't have to flinch under the heavier recoil of a shotgun*

*One can purchase 20 rifle rounds at a good price vs 20 rounds of sabots*

*Since there will be "no illegal" use of rifle rounds in a shotgun area, conservation wardens will be free to follow up on other pressing problems that crop up*

There are many other points that can be presented as to why rifles of all calibers should be ok'd such as the Lehigh Valley study etc.

Good Luck in Iowa in your quest to have rifles ok'd for hunting.

I think a bigger point is that you can hunt coyotes with a 50BMG in Iowa, but you can't use a 30/30 for deer.

Your first two points are my primary arguments, especially as a reloader. My daughters LOVE to hunt - but are NOT fans of the recoil of even a 20 gauge slug gun. I'm already working on loads for my .357 Max in a carbine for them to use on deer that have much more manageable recoil and put the bullet where they tell it to go. They both can hammer rabbits at 50 yds offhand with their .22 LR rifles, so I'm not concerned about their bullet placement skills.

A-freaking-men

"We don't allow rifles for deer hunting because they aren't as safe as shotgun slugs. The projectiles travel MUCH farther from rifles." BS

Handgun cartridges currently legal

It will be interesting to see if the list is expanded beyond these cartridges to include options such as .45-70 or .38-55.

45-70 is listed already. A 375 Winchester in an Encore......handloaded with spitzers....would work for some extended range.

So is the 450 bushmaster legal?

Good question. I don't know the answer.

450 Marlin is also a great straightwall case cartridge, though I dont see it listed.......Hb

Funny that the .375 is listed, but not the .38/55.

Funnier still that anyone working on this had ever even heard of the .401 Powermag!

Here in Minnesota about 1/2 the state is handguns/muzzle loader/shotgun only. I am of somewhat mixed feelings about that. I can do almost anything with a muzzle loader or handgun I can do with a CF rifle.a few years back I killed four n my neighborhood with a ML rifle. Worked to perfection. But... When you are working with an over population situation what would be ideal is legal baiting and a down loaded .223 with a suppressor. That's something already being done by the people commercially reducing populations in the metro area.

The last three years I have killed four/year with a crossbow. That's handy because you can start n mid-September. The year II killed four with the ML I did it in December and it was really cold. I had four hanging frozen solid all at once. Skinning and butchering frozen deer when it's below zero is not fun. In about an hour I can zip them out of the hide and have them in pieces in a cooler and on ice. So, doing four in a week with a .223 would be easy enough.

I down loaded the ML so that it was quieter and the neighbors had no idea. With the crossbow, I had two out of the lot that made it onto someone else's property. Getting permission to recover them was no issue, but I don't like to bother them.

Just legalizing rifles in the shotgun zone won't do it for me. Cutting the noise alone could. Cutting the noise and legalizing baiting in over population situations is the right thing because not bothering people who may not appreciate what you are doing is only being neighborly and considerate of them.

A few years ago all of southeast Wis. went from shotguns to rifles. The hunter numbers are extremely high in most of that area. When rifles became legal, most thought accidents would go way up. They did not go up, they actually went down. ( Athough they went down where rifles were always legal but they dont need to know that) . Some of the theories are : many shotgun slugs are 365 gr. of lead. The ave. rifle bullet is 1/3 that . There is 1/3 the shrapnel flying around with a rifle bullet. Also , as time goes on, rifle bullets are actually getting smaller. A 100 Gr .243 Win. is plenty , even an 80 TSX is plenty. It also seems reasonable that with a rifle , you may be a bit more cautious than using a shotgun across a 1 mi. wide open area, but a shotgun is still just as dangerous .

It is done.

Governor Signs Two Fireams-Related Bills Into Law

I didn't see anything listed about action type. Will you guys be able to use semi autos?

Praise be. I put this together years ago to comply with Iowa's irrational laws and not have to use a front stuffer.

I'll just get a Pro Hunter shoulder stock and carry on.
This set-up was an easy 200-yder as is and should be even better fired from the shoulder.

Oh yes, and a different scope.

Although, as I understand it, of the four different deer seasons a rifle firing a straight walled cartridge is only legal for two of them, the 1st and 2nd so-called "shotgun" seasons, both in December.