King Brown:
Good point above. And I appreciate the kind of response you gave earlier to "Keith" when he went off on his rather frightening tirade.
Larry and Rob and All:
Many of you have been more than accommodating in reading this string over 2,800 times. Many of you have made many great points. Some have made other points. Some of you are just pointy.
Many other contributors to this string initially asserted there was no science supporting my notion that lead kills non-target wildlife in the uplands. Well, I’ve now presented volumes of that data, and many of you now are switching your argument to the case that this mortality doesn’t cause population level impacts. Essentially this argument has gone from “there is no non-target mortality” to “I don’t care if there is non-target mortality”.
Maybe this is good enough for some past generation or ethics sets. But some of the tenets of modern Hunter's Education are "know your shot’s destination,” "become proficient with your weapon," “never waste game” and "leave only footprints." Roster’s experiments prove that selecting the correct steel load for pheasants minimizes waste to levels below those observed for waterfowl shot with anything including lead. Larry, you note that 30% of live male pheasants at the end of regular hunting season are packing around lead pellets in their flesh. Data like this about lead and other studies many other people have collected and interpreted over the years in many countries and parts of the U.S. support my hypothesis that many bird hunters using lead shot today can't meet the fundamental tenets enunciated above. Hunters are causing primary and secondary poisoning of wildlife days, weeks or years after lead shot is fired. Not because they are bad or ignorant people, but because they are using antiquated ammunition materials, mostly because it is cheap and abundant. Unfortunately many hunters using steel shot can't meet the standard either, because they haven't practiced with the ammunition they take afield because they don’t know they need to, or their traps clubs prohibit it, and they are thus not proficient shots with it.
But today's non-toxic shotshells, even relatively inexpensive steel ones, in proficient and practiced hands have been proven again and again to be as lethal as any lead ever made. More expensive Heavy Shot may be the most lethal projectile ever dropped into a shotcup, and is non-toxic. Bismuth is better than it used to be, and Eco-tungsten is excellent; I use all four. They can't all be used in the oldest, tightest choked smokepoles, but unstated by any of you “experts” here is the fact that the barrels of many fine old fluid steel guns can also be bulged or ringed by even mild loads of large lead shot run through them. Why aren’t you warning shooters of vintage guns to not ruin their barrels with large lead?
I think the type of extreme responses I’ve seen here, and the omissions from the discussion like the one immediately above, can only be explained by fear. Fear that vintage shotgun collections might become less valuable or their firearms transactions less lucrative if older guns become more expensive or geographically restricted. And fear that their wives will find out they are playing with poison in the garage and collecting extremely expensive toys, ahem “investments” that may turn out to be as valuable as buggy whips to Model-T drivers. As we all know, if Mama ain’t happy, nobody happy.
Well gents, don’t fear. Lead isn’t about to be banned across Montana, or probably even in the limited Wildlife Management Areas in Montana as the proposal is currently written, even if it does make sense in my mind in places where there is high volume shooting for upland game. For those who don’t pucker everytime they spend money on quality modern ammunition, there are safe alternatives at your fingertips in the common gauges for your old guns. Others need to learn to reload non-toxic for the scarcer gauges or do that painful bend-over and grab your wallet to create the market by paying for someone to load it commercially. Come on, Capitalists!
I suspect most of us on this board don’t fire a box a year at wild game. Rob’s health is so poor he can’t even hunt some years. I understand why he is so frustrated. For those of us who can still climb a hill, is $10 in ammo too much to pay for the privilege of shooting a limit of roosters on a premium public hunting site? What do we pay for gas, the motel, the boots, the shock collar, the dog food, or the cocktail and steak afterwards? In my mind, the cost of non-toxic ammo is the cost of doing our hunting recreation responsibly.
But I’ve also just bought a pre-war Winchester double with full choke last week. Really. Does that sound like the rational behavior of a man that believes lead shot is about to be banned? It doesn’t. I’ll be running Eco-tungsten or Bismuth through it when I’m hunting afield on the local Indian reservation where lead shot is already banned (and has been for a generation… hundreds of us are used to it). I’ll be practicing with it using lead on a range where it will be reclaimed. I won’t be running any lead larger than #4 through it, because I don’t want to damage it. I’ll sleep well at night believing many things… that my health is protected when I eat these tasty birds, that the health of the land and our amazing quarry is secure, and that my investment is a sound and sustainable one.
Damn, my gal just figured out I bought a new shotgun last week. I got some ‘splainin to do…. “Honey, I’m pretty sure the dimensions are just right for you!”
