Minnesota shotgun zone changes??

[spur60]

I've never seen public lands crawling with coyote hunters. Traffic and human presence in "rural" areas isn't multiple times higher for a weekend during "coyote opener".

I'm not a staunch advocate of maintaining slug only season but i can certainly see some positives.

Might be more people out on deer opener vs a random saturday in the winter, but most everybody is just sitting in stands now. There are very few big family/friends groups left doing post/drive hunts all day long like 20 years ago. I know first hand because I've watched the decline in group sizes and I've watched the corresponding reduction in traffic and mid day deer movement due to hunting pressure. Where as take a February Saturday when there's three or four predator hunts all scheduled for the same day and there's guys all over the county running from one slough or farm grove to the next with rifles either post/drive hunting it, or just ripping off 15 shots into the cover to see what runs out. What's less safe? If a rifle is safe for coyotes it should be safe for deer in the same township.

 

[wind gypsy]

Might be more people out on deer opener vs a random saturday in the winter, but most everybody is just sitting in stands now. There are very few big family/friends groups left doing post/drive hunts all day long like 20 years ago. I know first hand because I've watched the decline in group sizes and I've watched the corresponding reduction in traffic and mid day deer movement due to hunting pressure. Where as take a February Saturday when there's three or four predator hunts all scheduled for the same day and there's guys all over the county running from one slough or farm grove to the next with rifles either post/drive hunting it, or just ripping off 15 shots into the cover to see what runs out. What's less safe? If a rifle is safe for coyotes it should be safe for deer in the same township.

Fair point. I've never been around the type of shit show you describe but it certainly sounds unsafe. "We already do other stuff that's less safe" is a pretty bad reason to change things.

Edit to reiterate: I'm not strongly opposed to rifle state wide, but do lean towards favoring existing laws. The deer get no damn break as it is so i tend to like the idea of anything that doesn't give hunters an even bigger edge than we already have.

 

[spur60]

Fair point. I've never been around the type of shit show you describe but it certainly sounds unsafe. "We already do other stuff that's less safe" is a pretty bad reason to change things.

It's not that I'm trying to use that as a reason to eliminate the slug zone, but I do find it ironic that I can shoot a .50 bmg at a coyote on our land if I wanted to, but I can't shoot deer with a .357 pistol caliber lever action on the same land.

 

[03mossy]

Bumping this back up for this year. There was a vote last Thursday and I heard it passed but can’t find anything to confirm that online???

 

[Scottyboy]

Bumping this back up for this year. There was a vote last Thursday and I heard it passed but can’t find anything to confirm that online???

I haven’t heard or read anything, and like you cannot seem to find anything purposefully looking for it.

 

[spur60]

HF864 and SF3808 are the 2024 bills in MN legislature to eliminate the shotgun zone all together.

Also, SF5108 and HF5047 are bills this year that would alter the shotgun zone, moving the northern border of the shotgun zone from the current "I-94" line down to US hwy 12. I'd be all for that since our hunting land is just north of 12, but I'd still have to bring the shotgun with since a lot of land we party hunt on is just south of 12.

 

[wind gypsy]

Deer drives with semi auto 12s are about to become deer drives with ARs.

 

[spur60]

Deer drives with semi auto 12s AR pistols are about to become deer drives with AR rifles.

Fixed it for ya.

 

[wind gypsy]

Fixed it for ya.

haha, guess that goes to show how long its been since ive hunting in slug/deer drive zones. Didn't even think of the "pistols".

 

[Macintosh]

What did you folks see with regard to the crossbow season this year? I live in VT—which has a management strategy that sounds exactly the same—so curious how it worked out so far. We have the same thing (crossbow now = vertical bow) as of 3 or so years ago, I have my take on it which is mixed, but curious how its working out there so far?

 

[wind gypsy]

What did you folks see with regard to the crossbow season this year? I live in VT—which has a management strategy that sounds exactly the same—so curious how it worked out so far. We have the same thing (crossbow now = vertical bow) as of 3 or so years ago, I have my take on it which is mixed, but curious how its working out there so far?

Super hard to generalize impacts as I'm sure they vary widely based on location. I don't have a good handle on if there was even much for crossbow hunting immediately adjacent to my hunting land. I'm sure some public ground saw increased localized pressure during archery season, others probably didn't.

Total archery harvest (including crossbow) was flat year to year. Crossbows made up 43% of total archery harvest which seems like a lot in their first year of legality. Total overall harvest (for all weapons/seasons) was down about 8%. We had just come off of two terrible winters that had really hurt the population in much of the state going into last season.