doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lead shot increasingly under fire

From what little I have seen of lead in gun piles and carcasses, it is high-velocity lead that is the issue. Lead fired in rifles that exceed 2000 fps or some such speed. Lead from shotguns slugs and slower (blackpowder) rifles seems not to fragment much or at all as I understand it.

BrentD,

I'm certain that is true. I'm also certain that people that varminters are the ones most interested in frangible ammunition.

Further, I'd suggest that shotgunners are different than varminters in that we are reclaiming all our downed quarry whereas the long range rifle folks may be making no attempt to collect animals they kill.

For purposes of hunting large game with rifles, the goal is to have massive deformation of the bullet without any franging. The desired result is that the bullet expands to a maximum size possible causing a larger wound channel while retaining maximum weight. The aforementioned design spec leads to humane, quick kills for centerfire rifles.

Rook,
the shotgun slug hunters do remove their kills (at least the meat portion) when the recover them. ARound here, they tend to not recover a bunch of wounded ones. But be that as it may, what I was referring to specifically was a study done by the MN DNR showing that slow moving lead when fired into dead sheep as test targets did not fragment, whereas the higher velocity lead from bullets designed to expand did put fragments of lead throughout the carcass and not just in the gut pile. This was a concern to some folks that were worried about eating lead-laced meat. Of course, for all practical purposes occasional ingestion of lead metal by humans is not terrifically problematic anyway such as it is for raptors.

As I recall the differences in fragmenting between shotgunners and muzzleloaders on one hand and rifle hunters on the other, was quite substantial. Simply plucking the rifle slug out of a gut pile was not going to get the job done particularly well.

I get bilious reading some of the crap written by so called experts on lead and its effects. Raptors dying because of eating lead in Prairie dogs? Has this fool ever seen a prairie dog? Over the years we have hosted hunters here who have killed prairie dogs in the thousands. I have YET to evidence a prairie dog big enough to retain a bullet traveling at 2400 ft secs plus.Since I am OUTSIDE every day in the field every day, some of the experts should try getting out more, I have never seen a dead raptor that hasnt clearly been killed by some other means. Power lines and cars being the most common. When working fields the tractor, any tractor is followed by raptors in fairly large numbers eating bugs worms and mice served by their friendly farmer host. We have more than ever. They all quote "read the papers" Bullshit, get out and look..

$ you are part and parcel of the problem. Because you don't look carefully enough to know. Nor have you ever x-rayed a pile of prairie dogs for lead. Try it sometime.

Meanwhile, keep farming for those worm eating golden eagles. Glad to know now where they REALLY come from.

I concur. Considering I've spent the majority of my lifetime studying raptors and reading relevant journals on the topic, I know a thing or two. As a Federally licensed raptor rehabilitator I've seen more than a few cases of lead toxicity as well. As a student of western eco-systems and their raptors I recognize the volume of Ferruginous Hawks, Rough Legged Hawks and Golden Eagles that depend upon prairie dog towns for a symbiotic relationship, I know the raptor's feeding tendencies.

Lastly, I know from x-rays and from marketing literature provided by Hornady, Remington, Barnes, Nosler and others that the frangible, fragmenting ammunition does just what it says...it fragments violently, often causing an awesome explosion with the prairie dog / ground squirrel rocketing into the air out of its hole to dramatic fanfare. That is what the varminter wants...shock and awe. Last time I was at a gun show they had a video for sale called "Exploding Varmints" that showed tumbles and spins of prairie dogs getting knocked out of their holes by frangible/fragmenting rounds.

It seems for most imbeciles, Full Metal Jacket clean kills aren't enough, it has to become a spectacle. Taking delight in the most gruesome death possible for an animal that has intrinsic value to the wild and for which has no value to the shooter is sociopathic behavior. If a kid did the same thing to the animal with a machete they'd lock him up certain he would become a serial killer next.

This coming from a lifelong hunter and NRA Life Benefactor Member mind you. Just my opinion based on real data and formalized study of the problem.

Clean up your gut piles and stop leaving dead varmints in the fields, maybe, just maybe, we can retain the right to use lead in various forms of hunting.

What's symbiotic about the relationship between Hawks and Prairie Dogs? What do the Prairie Dogs get out of the deal??

I'm torn between gun rights and a natural (I think) revulsion at the idea of exploding ground squirrels. Whatever happened to .22 rimfire rifles?

I know that scientific data sometimes over-rules intuition from first hand observation, but I think all of us have developed a healthy suspicion regarding scientific data that we're told is irrefutable, when common sense says something entirely different...Geo

GEO.
There is a vast difference between healthy skepticism and reflexive
complete denial.

Common sense is something we all have to a greater extent that everyone else. The math for that doesn't work out, but math is a science and thus it must be a lie too I suppose. Meanwhile, there are several things about predator-prey relationships that are pretty quick to contradict "common" sense.

Brent

Brent, I've always respected the ecological knowledge you seem to have. I never implied that science was a lie.

I just said symbiotic was an odd term for raptors and squirrels, and that some "science" might ought to be questioned when the "mathmatical" results seem off base.

While science is not a lie, some scientists have a bias which may lead them to lie to us (by 'fixing' the science) to achieve what their idea of "common sense" dictates the answer to a question should be. In the case of lead shot and upland bird hunting, I think the bias may be gun control...Geo