Streams of Thought: Minnesota hunters, don’t sell your deer shotguns just yet

With deer seasons winding down, it seems not a bad time to revisit, briefly for now, the matter of Minnesota’s shotgun (or slug) zone, which remained in place in 2025 but could become a thing of the past in some new places early next year – could being the operative word.

Discussions with county officials lead me to believe by the time hunting rolls around next season, we’ll see a hodge-podge of shotgun zones and the others, where “all legal firearms” are allowed for firearms deer hunting.

At this point, it’s clear that the matter is arousing plenty of interest in southern counties, where commissioners may follow 2025 state legislation that allows the use of rifles in what would then be a “former” zone to take effect, or pass an ordinance to keep shotgun use only (or muzzleloader) in place, as has been the rule for many decades.

Brian Martinson, environment and natural resources policy analyst for the Association of Minnesota Counties, has made his way around the state recently for district meetings (there are 10 such AMC districts), including some in southern locales. As discussions turned to firearms deer hunting, Martinson said, county commissioners oft asked what their neighboring counties might be doing, and opinions varied – among counties as well as among commissioners.

Those opinions, he said, “are not uniform in any way.”

But the level of constituent interest seems clear: Some commissioners have told Martinson that the issue is “something they’ve heard more about than anything else in recent history.”

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To an extent, county officials’ thoughts on the subject vary regionally. Take Otter Tail County, for example, one of several counties (Douglas, Clay, Chisago, and Isanti are others) that have in the past had both shotgun and all-legal-firearms zones – and where, theoretically, a rifle zone could become a shotgun zone.

OTC Commissioner Dan Bucholz said the shotgun zone includes merely a couple of “slivers” of that county, and that he anticipates the board of commissioners there will simply follow the new state statute. “It won’t really affect Otter Tail County much,” he said.

The feedback to my questions was quite different in Cottonwood County in southwestern Minnesota, where the city of Windom serves as county seat. Wayne Maras, a commissioner as well as a hunter of deer and other species, said he came away from a recent AMC district meeting with the impression that commissioners from “about 80%” of counties in that southern district oppose eliminating the shotgun zone, and, after getting public input in one form or another, likely would adopt an ordinance that would reject rifle use during the season.

“It’s been a hot-button (issue) for the past three months,” Maras said, adding that safety is his primary concern – for other hunters, the general public, livestock, and residences, when inexperienced deer hunters use high-powered rifles.

Maras said he expects Cottonwood County commissioners to act quickly once, per statute, county authority is granted Jan. 1.

In the meantime, DNR Enforcement has issued to shotgun zone county officials correspondence regarding the particulars of the law, as well as a model ordinance that counties might adopt to retain shotgun zone status (for the sake of consistency).

All that said, I’d encourage shotgun zone hunters to share their thoughts with county folks and, again, to hang onto that shotgun. There’s a chance you’ll be using it again next year, and beyond, for firearms deer hunting.