I posted something similar in Deer Hunting. However, I figure y'all might be interested in gnawing on this as well:

From the Ohio Hunting Regulations Webpage, new this year, the requirements for what constitutes a legal whitetail deer rifle:



Given those specs, what would you envision as the ultimate Ohio deer rifle?

Mind you, I'm not looking for anything except good conversation. I moved all my hunting 10 miles south of the Ohio River into Kentucky. I'm perfectly happy with my collection of 30-06's and 308's. However, my first 20 seasons were spent in Ohio lobbing 12 GA Remmie Sluggers at the little boogers.

Bonus Question: Indiana had its 35 Hoosier, developed during that state's flirt with Pistol Cailiber Rifles. Given the current regs and your own wildcatting imagination, spitball the 35 Buckeye.

I'll be sticking with my tried and true Winchester 94 Big-Bore in .375 Winchester that I've been using the last few years. Bought it three years ago and it's taken three doe so I have no complaints. It doesn't have the range or level of accuracy my Savage 10ML-II muzzleloader offers, but it weights about half as much as the Savage.

Rossi 92 in 357 Magnum???

357-204 wildcat???

450 Bushmaster???

The first things that came to my mind were 357 Max and 375 WIN as well as 45-70

Someone else suggested 9.3X72R. I don't know much about that round, but it looks interesting.

Poorly worded / researched law. I guess a 458 Win Mag or 458 Lott would be legal. Or does it say rimmed cartridge or no belts?

I was excited to see the new regulations to be honest, I was never a fan of slug guns.. more than likely due to my love affair with rifles. I have a Contender Carbine with a 21" MGM .357 Magnum barrel. It works just fine on deer in the terrain I'm used to hunting on and around my place.

The rewording opens things up for a few more cartridge options (the old wording had a specific list of permitted cartridges), but it still makes little sense. The fact that one can use a .45-70 but not a .30-30 makes no sense when the underlying premise for the restrictions is a concern for safety due to the potential distance the bullet could travel on a miss. As Mike points out, the wording is very vague and raises the question as to whether belted magnums (.450 Marlin, .458 Winchester, etc) would be legal.

I'd go 458 Lott then, just because you can and your neighbor won't.

I'm using a .44mag, and a .45-70 this year. Definitely happy about the law change. Shot a little doe with the .44mag last year.
-Jake

The old law was far more capricious. It was a laundry list of specific chamberings, and it looked like somebody had gone to the closet and cherry picked their favorites. By my read of it, 450 Marlin and 458 Magnum are in.

These rules only make sense when you figure in the underlying conflicts. On the one hand you have folks that don't want deer hunting at all allied with bowhunters. Farmers are split. Some see anything that reduces the deer herd is good. Others don't want high-powered rifle bullets coming through their walls. I've been following this fight since I started hunting Ohio in the early 80's. This is one of a series of baby steps the ODNR has taken over the years to move to allow all centerfire rifle, but they've had to manoeuvre a lot through each step.

When I got started it was just an accepted catechism that Ohio was too densely populated for anything but shotguns, and if it was not that way, there'd be a massacre. Even today, there is a major contingent of deer hunters who think this way, or else think Ohio hunters are somehow superior because they hunt with shotguns.

If I lived in Ohio, first thing I'd do is build a 450 Marlin on an M70 WSM action.

Hunting with a Ruger no.1 in 45-70 wouldn't hurt my feelings either.

Pretty dopey legislation all the way around...

You want to hear dopey?

In Louisiana you can hunt the "Primitive Weapon" (Muzzleloader) season with a single shot rifle and any cartridge .35 caliber or larger. Most choose .35 Whelen, and, you can use telescopic sights!

I've been using the Marlin 1894 .44 mag I bought just a little before Ohio opened up to "pistol cartridge rifles" a few years ago. Had I known then what I know now, I may have gone a different route, probably to either the Ruger 77/44 or a Contender carbine. Were I to choose a cartridge strictly for deer hunting under the new rules, I'd probably choose the .357 Maximum (which is already good under our existing "pistol cartridge rifle" rules), for a good balance between flat trajectory and low recoil, although I've never yet owned one.

As an aside, I did own a Contender in .358 JDJ in the early 90's when I lived in southern Indiana to acquire what I thought would be the ultimate handgun legal, deer hunting cartridge under their regulations at the time. What I discovered was that while I could hit really good off of a benchrest, my long range handgun shooting skills sucked. I really needed something to stabilize both ends of the gun. That's why I sold it, but if it could have used it as a "rifle"... I may have still had it. However the .358 JDJ is bottlenecked, so not legal in Ohio and therefore a moot point.

If I didn't go .357 Max, but wanted something with a little more long range pizzaz than a .44 mag, I might also consider a .445 super mag in a Contender carbine, or the .454 in the Rossi/ Puma/ Braztech lever gun, or a .450 Bushmaster in the Ruger American.

Seems to me Marlin rifles in .444 could be in high demand in Ohio.

I'd be on that like white on rice.


Okie John

ya 35 whelen muzzle loader. i am in

There'd be a lot of rifles in demand right now if they were made (or still made).

The big bore Winchester 94 in 375 WIN
The Savage 99 in 375 WIN
The Marlin 1894 in 375 WIN
The Ruger 44 Mag semi-auto Carbine

The problem is these are all in the rear-view mirror now. Ohio has managed to pick a list of orphans with few exceptions.

I almost wish I lived there. It is the perfect excuse to get a 458 Lott. Go big, or go home move to a different state.

There is no need or (need) for a long range cartridge in Ohio. This state is very crowded and the deer basically run a gauntlet after the morning volley then hide like rabbits. I use a Marlin 44 mag and/or Savage 220 bolt, and surely don't want the excessive recoil of a 458 or even 45/70 to shoot a 100 lb deer. We have some nice bucks here but they seldom go much over 200 lbs.

I'd love to be able to use my rifles just because I love a svelte rifle, but we are certainly not handicapped w/o them.

.458 x 2"

I hunt SE Ohio in the gun season. It seems to me that there are fewer gun hunters every year. I hear fewer shots every year. I think a lot of gun hunters are going to the crossbow. Longer season, better weather & beable to hunt the rut.

Naw, we're just stacking them up so we can use less ammo. Ammo costs are still too high......

Same here in the NW part of the state. Most guys are filling their tags during the archery season, and hunters are few and far between during gun season. There are a few "hot spots" in most areas where you will run into other hunters or groups, but if you avoid those areas chances are you might not even see any orange other than your own the whole week. Deer hunting has changed quite a bit in Ohio in the last 15-20 years. Far fewer groups out doing drives in the more open farm country as more and more have taken to sitting in a ground blind or treestand hoping something comes along like the stick chuckers. I only bow hunted a couple years back in the early 2000's as I never had the patience or the desire to practice year round as one should for bow hunting. At this point though I'm most likely going to be buying a crossbow in the next month or two for the very reasons you state - much longer season with better weather and get to hunt the rut. Being a gun nut though it's a very bitter reality to swallow.

I used to hunt down in Crawford county in a section just north of a very popular river bottom along the Old-n-tangy River. Hunted that same area for 25-30 years. When I was a kid we used to count how many shots we would hear come out of that bottom every day during gun season. Opening day it would usually be somewhere between 50 and 75 shots before noon. The last couple years I hunted down there if you heard one or two shots for the whole day on any day it was considered a busy day in the bottom. As you can imagine, that significant change in pressure also resulted in a significant change in our success rate in the next section as we didn't have all those hunters stirring them up out of the bottom and pushing them to us.

That is not consistent with what I have seen here in central Ohio. Public lands are always too crowded. The largest public access lands are the Mead Paper plant, I believe. We were out in a heavy fog, opening day at Mead a couple years ago. We had GPS to find our climber stands, and could barely tell we were still on our proper path. We walked in about 3 miles, and waited for the weather to lift. When we could finally see, I could see about a dozen orange wearing hunters in view and too close. I will not hunt the ground on public lands. Too many people and too many fields of fire.


"Ohio Hunters Harvest more than 182,000 Deer during 2016-2017 Season

2/7/2017 Division of Wildlife
COLUMBUS, OH - Hunters checked 182,169 white-tailed deer throughout Ohio’s 2016-2017 deer season, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR). Last year, 188,329 deer were checked during the 2015-2016 season.

The ODNR Division of Wildlife remains committed to properly managing Ohio’s deer populations. The goal of Ohio’s Deer Management Program is to provide a deer population that maximizes recreational opportunities, while minimizing conflicts with landowners and motorists.

Deer hunting regulations over the past two seasons have been designed to allow for moderate herd growth throughout most of the state. Herd growth is achieved by reducing harvest and protecting female deer.

Hunting Popularity

Ohio ranks fifth nationally in resident hunters and 11th in the number of jobs associated with hunting-related industries. Hunting has a more than $853 million economic impact in Ohio through the sale of equipment, fuel, food, lodging and more, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Hunting in America: An Economic Force for Conservation publication.

Find more information about deer hunting in the Ohio 2016-2017 Hunting and Trapping Regulations or at wildohio.gov

ODNR ensures a balance between wise use and protection of our natural resources for the benefit of all. Visit the ODNR website at ohiodnr.gov."

http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/wildlif...han-182-000-deer-during-2016-2017-season

When I first started hunting south central OH in the early 80's, it was NOT uncommon to count 500 shots on opening day. This was before the max of 3-rounds-in-the-magazine limit though; but if you heard shooting start, it was generally 5 to 8 as fast as they could pull the trigger followed by a couple more people doing the same. Last year, I don't believe I heard 50 shots all day, opening day.

.444 Marlin

Somebody needs to make the 35 Ohio. A 357 Max stretched to 30-06 length (or longer)!

375Win would be a great choice if the cartridges were more available (I know they made a batch this year, but they sold out quickly). 45-70 and 450Bushmaster are good choices, and available factory ammo. For handloaders, a 300gr Barnes TTSX or TSX can be pushed pretty fast in a 458 American, 458 Win Mag, or 458 Lott.

.444 Marlin

I hunt in Wayne Nat Forest the south area. I use a .444 Marlin. The area I hunt used to have at least 100 hunters in there on opening day. Same with the areas acrossed the roads. Over the last 15 years there are less and less hunters. The last two years i have been the only hunter in that area. I used to hear shooting every minute but now only hear a few shots an hour. With less gun hunters to keep the deer up and moving and and more bow hunters in the woods prior to general gun I see fewer deer and harvest fewer. We stay up near Jackson where we used to see thousands of deer hunters now we way see fewer. More guys are Bowhunting closer to their homes and filling their tags there. We used to have 30-40 guys from NW ohio who would come down. Last 5 year we have had 5/6.