Tom Roster did a fairly extensive study shooting steel at pheasants. Blind in the sense that the shooters did not know what shot size they were using. (2's, 4's, and 6's were the choices.) They were all 1 oz loads. That study is 15+ years old, and there are certainly better steel loads now than were available back then. (And steel loads are also less expensive than they used to be, to the point that cost is really no longer a factor if you're talking good steel vs "premium" lead loads for upland hunting.) But the wounding loss rate in Roster's study was over 12%, which I consider unacceptable if you're hunting over a decent dog. And those were preserve birds, which are easier to recover in my experience than wild ones. Perhaps not surprising given the loads involved. But it would still be valuable to do a similar blind study comparing good lead loads to good steel loads. Roster's shooters got very good results with steel inside of 30 yards, but lost a lot of cripples on birds hit at longer ranges. If steel is shown to be less effective than lead, that would seem to be one good reason to contest any moves to mandate nontox in the uplands, given that the ingestion of lead shot and resulting mortality does not appear to be an issue with upland birds.
Franchi, the truth regarding the potential danger of spent lead shot to upland birds (or, for that matter, other species of wildlife) is pretty hard to come by, given the nature of upland hunting. Shot fall, other than on areas heavily hunted for doves, is far more dispersed than it is on heavily hunted waterfowl areas.
