What Cartridges are Legal?
So, what’s legal? Straight-wall cartridges like:
- 350 Legend
- 400 Legend
- 44 Magnum
- .45-70
Doc notes that these straight-wall cartridges are excellent for hunting – he successfully used the 350 Legend last season.
Here is the picture of Legal Illinois Deer Calibers that Doc refers to in the video. The Illinois DNR website has this image with more details.
What will get you in trouble?
Traditional neck cartridges like your grandfather’s .30-06, .270, or .30-30 are prohibited. While some hunters may be disappointed, the good news is that manufacturers are responding with many new options in legal straight-wall cartridges, providing effective choices for Illinois deer hunters.
Single-shot Rifles for Deer Hunting in Illinois
Every rifle must also be single-shot configured. Smokin Gun Worx demonstrates several ways to modify your existing firearms legally:
- Plugging magazine tubes on lever actions with wooden dowels
- Removing magazines from bolt actions
- Using manufacturer’s single-shot sleds
- Switching to purpose-built single-shot rifles
The key takeaway?
There are plenty of legal options available, and Smokin Gun Worx wants you to have a safe, successful, and most importantly, legal deer hunting season.
Watch the video above, or read the full transcript below.
Interested in other key requirements for the 2024 Rifle Deer Hunting Season? Check out our second video on the topic.
Video Transcript
Doc: Folks, it’s Doc from Smoking Gunworks, my sidekick Keegan. We’re here today to talk to you about Illinois rifle firearm regulations.
There’s a lot of controversy on what rifles are legal to use in Illinois and which ones are not. This will be posted on our website and it will show you all the legal cartridges that can be used in the state of Illinois for deer hunting.
We don’t want anybody in trouble, that’s why we’re doing this. The new legal ones are going to be examples like a 350 Legend, a 400 Legend, a 44 Magnum. What we don’t want you to do is to go out with your .30-06, .270, or a .30-30.
These are neck cartridges and you can see they’re quite a bit different than the straight wall cartridges and these will get you in a lot of trouble. So we’re here to help and hopefully avoid that situation.
At the amount of cartridges, it was a little bit surprising. Some of them are even old elephant gun type of firearms that are cartridges that you can use in the state. Keegan’s going to show you how to render your bolt action or lever action legal in the state of Illinois, because they all have to be a single shot configuration.
Keegan: It can be as simple as buying a single shot firearm, whether it’s a break barrel or a locking, a falling block type rifle or anything like that. There’s a whole new wave of these things coming out in these straight wall cartridges. A lot of people might already have a lever gun. We’ve got a .45-70 1886 here.
Doc: Well, there are a lot of them that are used even in cowboy action shooting. You can use them for a deer rifle too, as long as it’s a straight wall cartridge that you’re going to use. And we have an example here, like you said, of a lever action. This one with the magazine tube in here, you can use something like a dowel rod.
Keegan: A lot of you guys might already own a lever action type firearm in a caliber that’s already predetermined to be legal in Illinois. A lot of your bolt actions are going to be in, like the calibers we talked about, 308, 243, 270. A lot of lever guns out there in .30-30. Unfortunately, we can’t use those yet in this state but .45-70, 44 Magnum, 357 Magnum, like I said, those are going to be more common than your lever guns.
Plugging a lever gun to make it a single shot is as simple as plugging the magazine tube. If you have a box magazine fed lever gun, you’re going to want to get something like the plug, at least you’re with the magazine. But yeah, we just take a simple wooden dowel, like a 5/16ths or 3/8ths, cut it to length. So you’ve got a little bit of room, but not enough for a full cartridge, maybe a half inch or so.
Bolt gun, like we said, a lot of the common ones that are coming out in the straight wall cartridges are coming with single shot sleds that are available from the companies. There’s also some aftermarket third party stuff coming out for other bolt action guns.
And then single shots, there’s a whole new kind of resurgence of single shot carbines, straight wall cartridges, 44 Magnum up to 45-70, 444. A lot of stuff kind of of all power ranges. We get asked this all the time and we get a lot of people that are hopeful to hunt with their grandpa’s 30 out six or their 30, 30 they’ve had for 20 years.
Doc: Sorry. We can’t let you do that. We don’t want you to wind up in jail. Another neat trick on these bolt actions is you can literally hunt with them in a straight wall cartridge without any magazine at all. As long as it is a single shot only and you cannot use a follow up shot, you’re legal to use it.
Keegan: Correct. These Savage Access Ruger Americans to name a few, they’re a wide variety. Almost any straight wall cartridge within reason that you can think of the industry is kind of jumping on this. It’s not just Illinois, it’s a few other states now too.
Doc: Exactly. They’re great hunting rounds too. The 350 legend I used that last year very successful hunts. We want you all to be out there have a safe deer hunting experience with a straight wall cartridge rifle, not a tapered one.
Keegan: Correct.
Doc: Thanks for listening we’ll talk to you soon.
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