Deer hunting Suffolk County: what you can actually use
No centerfire rifles. Shotgun slug or muzzleloader, a 500-foot setback and a town permit. What Suffolk County rules mean for the gun you buy and the slug you shoot.
Every fall somebody comes in wanting a deer rifle because a cousin upstate hunts with a .308. On Long Island, that rifle is not legal for deer, and the conversation has to start there.
The rule that shapes everything
New York’s special Suffolk County deer season regulation names the legal implements exactly: a shotgun using a single ball or slug, or a muzzleloading rifle or pistol shooting a single projectile with a minimum bore of 0.44 inches. That is 6 NYCRR 1.24, and centerfire rifles are simply not on the list.
So for the firearms season here, your options are a shotgun or a muzzleloader. That single fact explains most of what a Long Island deer hunter ends up buying.
Archery is the other season, and it runs far longer. Under the rules adopted for the 2025 season, crossbows may now be used in the same seasons and places as a vertical bow, Suffolk included — which was not true before, and is the change most local hunters ask about. Note that discharge setbacks here are stricter than upstate: 500 feet in Suffolk and Westchester, against 250 feet in most of the state.
The permissions matter more than the ballistics
This is the part that catches new hunters, and it is worth saying plainly: on Long Island, where you may hunt is a harder problem than what you shoot.
- Firearms hunting on private land requires a signed landowner’s endorsement from an owner controlling ten or more acres.
- Several towns — Babylon, Huntington, Islip, Smithtown and Southampton — require their own town permit, issued against a quota.
- State land in the January firearms season runs on reservations.
- Tags, Deer Management Permits and bonus DMPs for unit 1C are their own system.
Season dates, tag rules, permit deadlines and reservation windows all change, and we are not going to publish them here for somebody to find in three years and rely on. Get them from the DEC Long Island hunting page and the current hunting guide, and get the town permits from the town.
What to actually buy
Match the slug to the barrel. This is the most common mistake and it costs accuracy and money.
- Smoothbore barrel: shoot rifled Foster slugs. These are the inexpensive ones. Through a smoothbore with rifle sights or a red dot, they are entirely adequate at the ranges most Long Island shots happen at.
- Rifled barrel or rifled choke tube: shoot sabot slugs. This is the accurate combination, and it is what gets you out past a hundred yards with confidence.
Putting a sabot through a smoothbore wastes the sabot’s whole reason for existing. Putting a Foster slug through a rifled barrel leads the rifling up. Both work well enough that people do not notice they are doing it wrong — they just assume slug guns are inaccurate.
20 gauge is not the beginner’s compromise anymore. Modern 20 gauge sabots are effective on deer, and the recoil difference over a day in a stand is significant. For a smaller-framed hunter, or anyone who wants to actually practice with the gun before the season, it is often the better choice.
Muzzleloader: a .50 caliber inline is the standard here, and the 0.44-inch minimum bore in the regulation is the legal floor, not a target. We keep 209 primers, Pyrodex and pelletized charges, and sabots on the shelf, and there are usually used muzzleloaders on the rack — a Thompson Center or a Traditions in .50 is a lot of gun for the money.
Sights
A slug gun kicks, and eye relief is not a detail. A low-power scope with generous eye relief, or a red dot with none of that problem at all, is the right answer. A standard rifle scope mounted where it feels natural on a bench will find your eyebrow on the second shot from a stand. Get it set up before opening day, not during.
Practice actually matters here
Slug guns are not zeroed at the factory and they are not all zeroed the same. Every slug gun shoots a different slug to a different point of impact, sometimes by a lot. Buy a box of whatever you intend to hunt with, confirm your zero with that load, and then buy the rest of the season’s worth of the same lot if you can.
Because the shots here are short and the cover is thick, most people over-invest in the gun and under-invest in knowing where it hits. Reverse that.
What we keep
Rifled and sabot slugs in 12, 20, 16 and .410, buckshot across the same gauges, muzzleloader primers and propellant, sabots, and both new and used slug guns and muzzleloaders on the rack. Bring in the barrel question — smoothbore or rifled, and what choke is in it — and we will sort out the ammunition in about a minute.
Nothing here is a substitute for the current DEC regulations. Check the DEC Long Island hunting page and your town before the season. Long Island Gun Source, Medford, NY.