How do I know if my Stevens is a center feed or staggered magazine?

Sorry for the dumb question but I'm a bird hunter who recently got into big game hunting.

How do I know if my Stevens is a center feed or staggered magazine?

If it's feed lips are about the width of the mag opening in the bottom of the receiver, it's staggerfeed. If the feed lips are about as wide apart as the cartridge's diameter, then it's centerfeed. The centerfeed mag is attached to the stock, whereas the staggerfeed is attached to the action. The centerfeed feeds cartridges straight up in the center of the receiver; staggerfeed does what it implies.

You'll know when you try to load it. Just got a Stevens 223 centerfeed, not as easy to load with a scope in the way and trying to push ammo into a narrow opening. Every
bolt gun I've had before was staggered and the opening was twice as wide as the ammo.

Another dumb question, but what parts are interchangable between the centerfeed and staggered? Can one receiver be changed over to the other? Are the stocks completely different?

The LA have the same bolt spacing. The centerfeed stuff fits in a LA staggerfeed stock just fine. The other way around requires a little dremeling in the mag well area. The actions can't readily be converted from one style to the other, or at least a centerfeed to staggerfeed conversion would require lots of millwork and you'd be going backwards anyhow. I think all the bolt stuff and trigger stuff will swap though, at least on my LA they did. SAs are a different animal though.

Thanks for the info. It's a short action 7mm-08.

The reason I'm asking is because I want to put a Boyds featherweight thumbhole laminate stock on it but they don't make one for the newer centerfeed short actions.