Regional Firearm tastes....North-vs-South-vs-East-vs-West

If I had a friend with a job flying a Robinson helicopter near the Brazos River in Texas, I would own Any rifle which could send Feral Texas Pigs to “the land of twenty five virgins”.

—-Even if this required me to buy my First Scope (never owned a gun scope).

The preferred gun in rural areas of south TX seems to be any decent quality .223 AR?

New Jersey is a shotgun only state for deer hunting, no varmint hunting that I know of, the steady growth of the last 40 years has eliminated backyard shooting. But at the indoor ranges I go to plenty of AR based designs.

.22lr and 12G are standard. I have done my best to establish the .410 as a handy addition! Kids prefer .223/5.56 and .243.
Anything goes, though, from .30-30, to the venerable .303. No discernible trends in North Qld, its a rimfire, shotgun, and long rifle set-up. With different sub-groups going for a lever gun, or a long range gun.

BLACKHAWKNJ said:

New Jersey is a shotgun only state for deer hunting, - - -.

Click to expand...

IL-ANNOY is also shottie only for deer. As I don't have a CC permit, I'm not sure about this but IIRC, when deer hunting, you aren't allowed to have a handgun unless you have that "permission slip". You can carry for other hunting activities. I used to carry my Ruger Single Six when rabbit and squirrel hunting as there were times when it came in very handy !

JTHunter said:

IL-ANNOY is also shottie only for deer. As I don't have a CC permit, I'm not sure about this but IIRC, when deer hunting, you aren't allowed to have a handgun unless you have that "permission slip". You can carry for other hunting activities. I used to carry my Ruger Single Six when rabbit and squirrel hunting as there were times when it came in very handy !

Click to expand...

That's not true. We've been allowed muzzle loaders and handguns for a long time now (it's an archery meca as well, though now includes crossbows). You can carry your personal CCW with a permit while hunting in most places. You cannot have a rifle or other non-game firearm while out hunting so no open carry of you favorite semi auto pistol while deer hunting. You can certainly have your 357 or 44 revolver along for the trip during the season.

Reinz said:

We are a smaller world now. With the internet having so many facets; email/promotions, YouTube, forums, and tweet face insta book. With the exception of heavily controlled areas like CA, MA, NJ, NY, etc I just don’t see regional differences. There may some hunting gun differences due to region because of lack of, or abundance of certain game animals.

Click to expand...

You can say that again. National uniformity is the rule.

Where I live is overgrown scrub with no hills whatsoever, yet 6.5 Super-Sniper type stuff is a fad.

If anyone in my county has EVER seen ANY object at a distance of more than 500 yards away in their entire lives, it would surprise me.

one regional difference that I’ve seen is that some FL good ol boys protect their piece of State wildlife land the way LA dope dealers protect a street corner. But the FL boys are running more than a Lorcin with 5 mismatched 380 rounds in the mag.

MatrixReality said:

My experience as a native Texan: depends on where you live. Heavily forested areas such as the eastern part of the state: “brush guns” such as 30-30 are popular. The rest of the state you can find almost any caliber/rifle/pistol you can imagine.

Click to expand...

In my area, you can run into anything from 25 yards in heavy brush, to 1200 yards from ridgetop to ridgetop. You just never know where the animals will be, and that varies depending on time of day most of the time.

This was on an elk hunt two years ago. Early morning, we are glassing open clear cut areas with shots out to 800 yards and temps at about 15 degrees, Fahrenheit....



By midday, it is 65 degrees and the animals are in the dark and cool timbered draws where you can barely see 25 yards. There is a hunter 25 yards away in this pic...



Like a rain forest down in these draws. Amazing the different species of plants found by walking 100 yards...



Then by the end of the day, we are back to glassing the clear cuts and edge of timber stands in anticipation of the elk stepping out of the cover of the trees.



There is no way a lever-action .30-30 would be adequate here, or a heavy-barrelled 10 lb rifle set up for 1000 yard shots. You need something versatile, and that is usually a bolt gun in a flat-shooting caliber with decent glass at 8lbs or under.

Sure, you can bring a rifle for a very specific terrain and hunt only that type of terrain, but you are at a disadvantage to those that have more versatile set-ups.

Of course, when I was younger, you carried a bolt-gun with a 3x9 scope in .30-06 or .270, that was sighted in at 100 yards. If you spotted animals at 400+ yards away, you figured out how to get closer to them. These days, guys just want to blast away at ridiculous distances. My brother is one of them, lol.

Trey Veston said:

There is no way a lever-action .30-30 would be adequate here, or a heavy-barrelled 10 lb rifle set up for 1000 yard shots. You need something versatile, and that is usually a bolt gun in a flat-shooting caliber with decent glass at 8lbs or under.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm gonna agree with Trey here. When I hunted Northern and Upper Michigan, .30-30, .30-06, ..308, 270, .243 were common. When I got out here in the PNW, I first questioned all the 300 Win Mags (and all the other 300 magnum calibers, 7mm Rem Mags (and all the other 7mm calibers) plus the various .338s, etc., but then I saw some of the ranges guys were shooting at... in the upper MidWest, we took a lot of whitetail at 40 to 100 yards -- out here, nope.

Trey Veston said:

Of course, when I was younger, you carried a bolt-gun with a 3x9 scope in .30-06 or .270, that was sighted in at 100 yards. If you spotted animals at 400+ yards away, you figured out how to get closer to them. These days, guys just want to blast away at ridiculous distances.

Click to expand...

Yep, 3-9 was considered high-powered back in the day, I grew up in the era of fixed 4x optics (if one used 'em).

As far as handguns, I left the MidWest when it was all .38s, maybe .357s (two brands, S&W or Colt) and for those guys who'd served, Gov't Model .45s. Now, as others have noted, these days regional differences are seemingly more negligible -- except for pricing on used guns. Up here in the PNW, classic S&W revolvers go for a premium; last time I was back in the MidWest (and visited a gunshop, pre-pandemic), used revolver prices were way more reasonable. I've noted that in my region these days, the closer one is to a population center, the more popular the black guns, while the more rural, still seems to be more of a market for nice bolt/lever rifles and revolvers...

Rather than regional differences, I'd look at the differences between popularity and pricing between urban areas versus more rural areas.

As a Hillbilly living WAAAAYYYY back inna' woods of East KY...I see a grab bag of firearms from traditional muzzle loaders to the latest semi-auto's and everything in between.

Nebraska. Many shotguns. Our gun club has a shotgun area with skeet, trap and five stand. Most common shotgun seems to be 12 gauge on competition ground, 12 has a goodly number of hunters in favor, but other guage are not ignored.
Second seems to be hunting rifles, suited for deer sized game (some Elk, negligible Moose). Some hunting done with handguns, including single shot types. ARs, AKs have a following.
Handguns seem to be predominately self defense with a number of recreational shooters. Autoloaders predominate all uses, but some old timers still carry revolvers. Most of the autoloaders tend toward 9x19mm. Along with national trends (from what I see) numerous handguns of lesser than 9x19mm are also carried for self-defense; a number of .380 ACPs. .22lr for recreational target shoots.

Fair (not universal) number of reloaders.
This is only my observation and not intended as the ultimate truth.

Trey Veston said:

In my area, you can run into anything from 25 yards in heavy brush, to 1200 yards from ridgetop to ridgetop. You just never know where the animals will be, and that varies depending on time of day most of the time.

This was on an elk hunt two years ago. Early morning, we are glassing open clear cut areas with shots out to 800 yards and temps at about 15 degrees, Fahrenheit....

View attachment 987504

By midday, it is 65 degrees and the animals are in the dark and cool timbered draws where you can barely see 25 yards. There is a hunter 25 yards away in this pic...

View attachment 987505

Like a rain forest down in these draws. Amazing the different species of plants found by walking 100 yards...

View attachment 987506

Then by the end of the day, we are back to glassing the clear cuts and edge of timber stands in anticipation of the elk stepping out of the cover of the trees.

View attachment 987507

There is no way a lever-action .30-30 would be adequate here, or a heavy-barrelled 10 lb rifle set up for 1000 yard shots. You need something versatile, and that is usually a bolt gun in a flat-shooting caliber with decent glass at 8lbs or under.

Sure, you can bring a rifle for a very specific terrain and hunt only that type of terrain, but you are at a disadvantage to those that have more versatile set-ups.

Of course, when I was younger, you carried a bolt-gun with a 3x9 scope in .30-06 or .270, that was sighted in at 100 yards. If you spotted animals at 400+ yards away, you figured out how to get closer to them. These days, guys just want to blast away at ridiculous distances. My brother is one of them, lol.

Click to expand...

Pnw ftw

South Mississippi.

Pre 2004 - SW revolvers in 357 or 38, Marlin 30-30’s, Remington 700’s in 30-06 or 270, and Remington 870 or Mossberg 500’s

Post 2004 - Similar as above for hunting. Explosion in popularity for AR 15’s, Glock 9/40 cal pistols, and a host of single stack ccw type guns.

The sunset of the AWB is a clear line of demarcation and social acceptance of defensive weaponry in my opinion. At least where I’m from