Unless Winchester changes things with the hunting ammo they plan to release, .350 Legend will NOT be legal to hunt deer with this fall-the blasting ammo they're selling is loaded with .355" bullets. People have been claiming the hunting rounds will have proper .357" bullets but even Starline mentions on their brass page that it uses .355". Hate to see someone get a fine for an illegal deer rifle!

from the Winchester website:

350 Legend
Straight-Walled Cartridge Specs
Bullet Diameter: .357 inch
Shell case Length: 1.71 inches

and the SAAMI spec says .3570
https://www.nssf.org/saami-announces-acceptance-350-legend-cartridge/

not sure why they would deviate from the saami spec.

I know that's what they published, but so far it's not what they've been loading. One person in GD has posted that he's gotten the hunting loads and they shoot better than the cheap stuff, so maybe they did load it right.

ETA-Per Easy_E over in GD, they are loading .355" bullets in the hunting loads too. Said if loading with .357 they won't chamber.

ok
just got off the phone with the IDNR and the official word is 350 Legend is NOT legal at this time.  The law enforcement dept has tested and found that some of the ammo is slightly under SAAMI spec.  IDNR have been in contact with Winchester and the IDNR said they will make an official ruling soon.

Ironically, the automated chat software on the IDNR website still says 350 is legal.  They are going to correct that.

So, I guess we wait and see.

In the mean time, I can still shoot hogs with my 350 Legend AR-15.  

Glad I went with .357AR. .358 bullets. Guess I better have calipers in my pocket.

published specs are published specs.  there is no reasonable expectation a person use calipers or a micrometer on their ammunition.  let's not ever start the discussion.

quit making things more complex than they need to be.

i'll do you one better than that...  if the dnr resorts to using micrometers to find something two fucking thousands undersize as if that were prudent or proper, i'll personally invite them to kiss my ass on main street and give them 20 minutes to draw a crowd.

quit asking for extra layers of permission for things that are already legal.  this is how we get into trouble.

Not asking extra permission at all, just figured I'd pass on that it's already known that it's being loaded with undersize bullets, and keeping calipers close would be a way to prove that the .357AR I have(if checked) is not the legend.
The way I understand it, someone was disappointed in how a .350 legend was shooting, measured a bullet, found it was undersized. The claim at the time was the hunting ammo was going to be loaded with proper diameter bullets-and it's not.

I get better consistency when I roll my own, and I know what size bullets I'm using. Don't have a 350 though.

Just got word from Septic, .350 Legend is officially OK for deer in IA, and DNR has changed the listed caliber requirement to say .357" or larger as stated by the manufacturer-allowing for things like sloppy QC and loose tolerances. Can't get the official letter to copy from my email but it's also posted on IFC's Facebook.
ETA-got the file to copy. Attached File

Yay! Now if they would just legalize all the regular cartridges!

At some point, the legislature will figure out that the reasearch shows centerfire rifle hunting is actually safer that deer drives. At that point, the bow hunters will scream bloody murder, but they will loose out to the car insurance industry, and all rifle cartridges of a suitable caliber will become legal.

I've never been deer hunting, but really wanna take my lever action 30-30 out sometime.

I know Shack357 would take me out.

Any time. Weve got plenty of deer to shoot, small property or not

Actually got pics on the way to work today of an 8 point that is showing real potential.

The idiot part of me wants to go Rambo and drop out of a tree on one and get it with a knife. Hog hunt style.

The buck I mentioned earlier. Considering he's got a couple months of growing before the velvet comes off, and he looks young to have a rack like this I see a lot of potential in him. He's on posted land so if a car doesn't hit him he should be a big one in a couple years.

Nice looking buck for sure!

That is a nice looking buck. Iowa is full of them and some of them are really big, world class in fact. This state kind of sucks for a lot of things like weather, recreaation, wages, until recently a lot of NFA stuff. Hell even most of our women are corn fed and big. The one single thing that Iowa is known for in the outdoor world is our deer, world renowned and people pay over $500 for a tag to hunt here and wait years for the opportunity. I know I will get labled a fud for saying this but there are two basic reasons why we have the best deer hunting in America... #1 is that we have great soils which grow great crops which feed the deer well year round, and #2 is because of our restricive deer hunting laws. We cant't gun hunt in the rut and we are restricted to shorter range weapons during gun season.
I'm all about expanding our 2A rights, I see no reason we shouldn't be allowed to own MG's here. I'm ok with the straight wall cartridge law because slugs suck and arent accurate and result in more wounded deer, my 450 is much more accurate than any slug gun I ever owned. But I think we should stop there.
Yeah i'm a trophy bowhunter... and a shotgun hunter, and a muzzeloader hunter. And I take my kids hunting and let them shoot whatever they want. But I'm lucky enough to live the the worlds greatest deer hunting state and I have expended countless hours and enourmus amounts of energy trying to grow and kill big deer. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose but the fact that those big deer are out there is what makes it fun.
Just as we rightfully claim that the 2nd amendment has nothing to do with hunting, we should also remember that restrictions on hunting are not neccesarily restrictions on the second amendment. Sometimes they are for our own damn good!
Flame away....

Edit: I didn't mean to quote Slims88 and this has nothing to do with the .350 legend (might buy one for my kids for low recoil) other than the nevereding quest to allow all rifle calibers, but the constant attiude on this site that anything the DNR wants to restrict is evil seems very shortsighted to me. Once the resource is gone we won't get it back, be careful what you wish for.

Seasons are already restrictive enough. Some of the southern states are allowed to shoot a deer a day. Allowing .30-06 won't cause deer to stop getting big. If that was the case it would have already happened. Poachers use whatever they want.

That, and we need the deer population knocked down. When I can drive gravel and see 65 deer in one field, with another 20 in the ditch, there are too many.

County by county quotas are there to regulate the deer population on a very local scale. If a population is down in a county the quota is decreased. If the population increases the quota is increased. There is your population control. What caliber of rifle a hunter can use will not have any effect on the population as it is being well controlled.The population in the area where I live over the last 21 years has been brought under control by this method. I used to see quite a few deer daily in my travels to and from work (mostly) and other travels. Now I don't see near as many and haven't for several years, even before straight wall laws. Actually if anything the DNR may be issuing a few too many. Legally hunters can only shoot what they are allowed to shoot. Calibers of rifles will not have a lasting effect for more than maybe a year or two as the county quotas are adjusted to meet the harvest. So the argument of using longer range calibers as detrimental is a useless argument.

My issue isn't really with caliber regulations. It just seems to me that our current regs have resulted in a winning combination, even if by accident, but every year there are a bunch of new proposals to screw with everything.

When deer are shot at 1.5 that stops them from getting big I definitely dont think it should be a any thing goes when it comes to centerfire deer blasting

ETA and I love killing the crap out of deer

A different gun doesn't cause deer to get shot while young either. I know a LOT of people who already shoot the first deer they see...some so small I think they blew the spots off.

you do realize there are already firearms capable of being 400+ yard lethal totally legal in iowa right?

yeah....  there's a lot of illogical and untrue ideas being considered as valid in this thread.

i wonder how it is in a state with triple our human population per square mile, like missouri, they've taken their deer herd from abysmal to fantastic DURING the rut WITH HIGH POWER rifles over the last decade?

...it must be magic.

or, maybe they actually employed CONSERVATION techniques instead of bullshit and mystic notions.

some of you guys are making this out to be hocus pocus.  not so.

Wow. Just wow. I don't even know where to begin with how failed and flawed your logic is.

Yep, I have one. A custom smokeless MZ that will do sub MOA at 200 yards and I'm sure it would kill a deer no problem at 400 if you spent enough time to figure that out. But it's heavy and expensive and a pain in the ass to set up and practice with. I'm sure a well built and carefully loaded 45/70 would do the same in the right hands but it's nothing like grabing a 7mm Mag off the rack at the local gun shop. Again, it's not that I think that new gun regs are going to ruin everything, they won't. I just don't like the annual assault from every direction on the regs, season dates, out of state tags, NR landowner tags, crossbows, baiting, kill em all because my wife hit one with her new car, it never ends.

Basically what I said before is that I like the straight wall law because they are much more accurate than shotguns and friendlier to low recoil folks. That's a good change and personally I hope they stop there. And like I also said I didn't expect it to be a popular opinion here because this is a 2A gun site and not a trophy deer hunting site, I get that.
Trophy hunting in general just pisses some people off and I have friends like that too so I get it. But they fiip out like everyone else when they see a real monster because that's part of the magic that makes deer hunting fun.

nevermind

Missouri hunting is nothing like iowa

ETA Why do you think all the tv wannabes hunters buy land in Iowa?

and nothing like kansas, or nebraska, or indiana, or wisconsin, or texas, or...

although the southern tiers of counties share an important thing with missouri - an imaginary line called a border.  somebody should clue the deer in that line exists so the regulations will apply fairly to them.



when we make the statement, "All I know is..." and then fill in the blank, it isn't ever true or helpful.  iowa doesn't do much in terms of true conservation in regard to the deer herd.  we regulate deer numbers by deer tag availability.  i'd rather see us regulate deer numbers by healthy practices.  this way the practices are based on nature and balance rather than $$$...  at some point we're going to have a problem with the herd and the money will thrown out of whack, and the dominoes will fall.  we'll all lose then.

why is it we resist common sense practices like a 4pt rule?  i can't understand why everyone says no to that when they claim to have the best long term interests of this practice at heart.

i suspect that is truly lacking even though we don't admit it.

I think you'll find a big difference in the quality of deer in Van Buren County Iowa vs Scotland County Missouri

I have both a 450Bushmaster and a recently acquired 350Legend.  All I can say is I am going to stick with the 450.  I have been doing some test shooting and while I think the 350 will be decent enough, especially for recoil sensitive shooters, I personally prefer the knockdown power of the 450.

Factory loads? Reloads? How about a little more info on that? I'd bet that the right reloads would put a fair amount more pep in it.

i'd agree with that, but not because of the imaginary line...  rather, the land topography is different, as are the uses of the land.  get over a bit to the west and you can't tell a difference where that line is between putnam/mercer and appanoose/wayne...

we shouldn't split hairs.  no logical person says a hit with a slug is 'better' than a hit with a centerfire rifle projectile.  the silly idea that iowa's 'BIG GAME' will be altered is the lore of myth and the people who are frightened of their own shadows.  for some reason the dnr has had rifle hunting in iowa at various times over the years when i suits their fancy.  have you all forgotten that?  ...and by the way, it was almost chiefly in the southern counties like van buren and the likes.  you guys always seem to forget that.  all you have to do is control the herd with various season dates, implementation of a four point rule, and then vary the available tags based on numbers if need be.  no problem.  hell, maybe you'd get some people interested in the outdoors again if it wasn't such a bullshit hassle with a complex list of calibers, here-tos, and there-fors...

Yep. They're allowing any rifle caliber above .24 caliber in several counties for January antlerless season this year. I've been asking around looking for land to hunt, Slims wants to get a deer with his .30-30 and I want one with my M1.

When I can use anything I want for coyotes, in the same field as where I hunt deer, being restricted to straight wall is ridiculous. Regardless what the deer are killed with, you'll ALWAYS have deer hunters who shoot whatever's legal, hunters who specifically want a fat doe because "You can't eat antlers" and trophy hunters who want a monster. You'll always have poachers too. I've already seen one big doe with an arrow in her side this year.

There isnt much difference between those border counties of iowa and Missouri but the deer hunting is vastly different I dont think rifles are more dangerous I like big deer I like to shoot big deer I think free for all rifle cartridges would reduce the amount of big deer.

The only reason it would reduce the amount of big deer is by reducing the amount of deer because there are more hunters.(if 80% of 200,000 get their deer, and rifles attract another 20,000, yes, 80% of 220,000 is indeed more dead deer)

Similar concerns were raised over 20 years ago when they first allowed handguns for deer(IIRC 1997ish). I haven't had a bit of problem killing deer in the past 5 years, and have seen more monsters in the past 3 than in the previous 20. Saw the biggest 8 point of my life last year near Elma-so wide until I counted I thought he was a 12.

We have a lot of Amish/Mennonites in my part of the state too(said to be terrible game hogs). Still a lot of deer for the taking.

If a buck is killed at 2.5 he'll never be big  I could definitely smash a lot more trophy deer with my 06 or 7mag than I do now and I think many would.

How is a buck more likely to be killed at 2.5 by a bottleneck round than by a shotgun?

Because he can be shot from farther away which puts him within reach of a lot more hunters? Whether or not that matters to you depends on the individual but the answer seems pretty obvious.
To a certain extent that probably applies to straight wall too because dummies believe their .350s or .450s really are reliable 300+ yard guns (= more wounded deer), but dumb people are gonna be dumb. IMO the ONLY good thing about slugs is that pretty much every moron new they were only good to about 150 yards max.

I've never asked the DNR but I'd bet the reasons they allowed bottleneck rounds in some of the doe only season are:
1. Novelty of shooting a deer with a bottleneck cartridge helps to attract people to the problem areas. (I'd bet this was the #1 reason)
2. More effective accuracy and range.
3. The problem areas are hilly, heavily timbered, and sparsely populated, so safety is less of a factor. I don't live in far southern IA but I've hunted a lot of those counties and there is definitely fewer people/houses down there.
The downside to those late late "doe" seasons was the number of shed bucks that got shot because they were the biggest "does" in the field, which happened fairly often from what I hear.

4

point

rule

problem solved...  everybody wins and wins big...

The range at which an average hunter can kill is greatly increased I've killed plenty of game out west at 4-500 yards most people that shoot wouldn't even consider that very far.

It might help but the amount of little 4pts I see shot every year is staggering

Just picked up a 16" AR Stoner 350 Legend barrel for ~ $85 on Midway with their birthday pricing. Decided not to get too fancy since was planning on just making a cheap freezer filler with all of my shots being <150 yards. The rest of the AR was from pieced together parts I had laying around.

Went to the range this weekend and sighted it in with 145 gr Winchester FMJ, then tried both Winchester 180 gr Power Point and 180 gr Federal SPs. Very impressed with how this cheap barrel shot after putting 50 rds though it. 3 round groups of Federal 180s were a cloverleaf at 50 yards and about 1.5" at 100. Winchester 180s were about 1" at 50 and 2.5" at 100.

Still have some work to do has the rifle tended to short stroke. But the final 4 shots of the day all cycled fine so hopefully there was some sort of small break in required. Also have a few things to change out on the rifle, #1 being a dedicated low power variable scope (I have an old 1.75-5x Redfield on it for the time being). Also would like get a nicer trigger on there to replace the factory mil-spec. Thinking a LaRue MBT?

Overall impression: The 350 is a pretty nice round for the small niche it's meant for. Have no doubt about its capability for deer under 200 yards. As far as the barrel? I knew I'd be rolling the dice with AR Stoner. When the discount was applied and it went below $100 it was bittersweet knowing how cheap I was going. But hey, sometimes you just get lucky. I might have got 1 out of every 5 they make that can shoot reasonably well, but I won't complain.

Excited to possibly get out deer hunting this winter for the first time since around 2000.

Good luck. Love seeing people getting back into hunting. As for the short stroking, my BCA .450 Bushmaster did the same thing(BCA makes AR Stoner). Opened the gas port to the next size up, still below the advertised port size, and it runs like a champ.

Thanks for the info! I wondered if it might be a gas port issue. Was going to disassemble and check that along with port/block alignment. What is the process of opening up the port if you don't mind me asking? As simple as using the correct bit and slowly working though it? I'm also guessing I'm looking for a 0.065"-0.07" port?

Not sure what port size should be for a Legend, but BCA advertises .085" for the .450. Mine as received was .062" IIRC. And yes, that's all I did was use a drill bit and a lot of care to not hit the bore on the other side of the barrel.

@AHC222 that's super encouraging.

One suggestion: reach out to DNR's leadership and let them know how you intend to hunt for the first time in nearly 20 years because of this new option.

It's a known fact that the number of hunters is dwindling, and the DNR needs to be shown that when Iowans have more options on how to hunt, more Iowans end up buying tags/licenses/etc.

Here's a DNR PDF with the Natural Resources Commissioners contact info

Regardless of all this, I hope you make it out and enjoy your time in the field this year.

Great point, I'll be sure and do that.

wrong.  4 pts on ONE SIDE minimum.  that completely changes the game.  that only takes a year or two of lower yields in order to let those basket racks to make it through into nice 8 pointers and beyond.  it's simple and highly impactful.

Yes I knew exactly what you ment . I know all the big groups around here there is a semi load of basket racked 8s killed just in my small neck of the woods every year.

you need to think larger than the supposed groups around you filling their semis with basket racks.  the states that have implemented this simple rule have built a well managed herd in most cases and greatly elevated their 'big buck' standings.  why you believe iowa would somehow become an anomaly i don't know...