That is the first time in my life I ever heard of any state that required a lever action with a plugged magazine. Frankly I'm calling B.S. on this one. The need to plug a mag tube is for a shotgun when hunting migratory birds. Its a federal law and not a state law. Plugging the mag tube on a lever with a side gate would force you to have to disassemble the rifle to remove the plug later. A skill that would be beyond what some shooters might be able to do. And you wouldn't be able to just slide a plug through the gate. You would have to take the rifle apart to install a plug and then reassemble the tube. Pure crap.
Checking the Alabama game laws where the OP lives shows that hunters are limited to 10 rounds in a hunting rifle. No plugged lever action tubes required.
I have not always lived in Alabama (I currently do the majority my hunting in Tennessee by the way, no magazine limit at all) but it is reasonable for you to doubt my story, but it is true none-the-less.
I grew up in Ohio that until 2014 was a slug (and handgun and muzzleloader) only state for modern deer gun season. It was a state hunting regulation that, like Federal regulation that requires water fowl hunters to plug their shotguns to 2+1, we also had to plug our shotguns to 2+1 during deer and turkey hunting.
(Even as of 2014 when rifles using straight-wall cartridge are legal in Ohio, capacity is still limited to 2+1, but a physical magazine plug/block is no longer required. It is an honor system)
I had always wanted to hunt deer with a lever-action but being in a slug only state that was not easy to do since there are very few lever action shotguns on the market. That was until 2002 as a gift to myself for finishing grad school I bought myself the relatively newly released Winchester 9410, a lever action 410 shotgun.
My 2002 Winchester 9410 with the factory plug (18.5 inches long) and three Brenneke 2.5-inch slugs
A close up of the muzzle end of the plug. To install it requires only that you remove the single screw retaining the end of the magazine tube. The plug goes into the magazine spring. The flared end ensures that the plug stays at the muzzle end of the magazine to reduce the chance it causes a feeding issue.
I had bought the gun primarily as a bunny/squirrel gun but it was in the back of my head to maybe make a slug gun of it and playing with slugs showed the gun to be very accurate with slugs despite the smooth bore. It was shooting 2-inch 5-shot groups at 50 yards which compared to my 12 gauge slug-gun was pretty good and the recoil was non-existent.
A quick look at Ohio hunting regulations showed that 410 slugs were legal for deer and thus my desire to hunt deer with a lever-gun was finally going to be realized.
So opening day, 2003, for the afternoon hunt I was slowly stalking a dense crab apple thicket with my "mighty" Winchester 9410, with is glorious lever, and quintessential side-gate loaded full length magazine tube (with that silly long plug) when I cross an old buck chasing a doe. This was the first time I had ever had a buck in my sights. Buck fever no doubt set in and I rushed the first shot that ended up being a hit but behind the diaphragm. In full buck fever I snapped off the other two shot from the magazine very quickly, missing with both shots as he was moving. I dropped a fourth round direct into chamber and snapped that one at him in a rush, missing again. At that point the buck fever was turning into panic and anger. But I calmed myself and deliberately loaded the 9410 through the loading gate focusing on calming myself while loading and cycling a round into the chamber. Then at a fair distance (~70 yards) for that that little slug, I took careful aim with my fifth shot (now having calm myself and confident with spare rounds also in the magazine) and put it through both lungs and the blood vessels just above the heart. He fell at that last shot.
Yours truly, his mighty Winchester 9410, and his very first buck.