This repeats something I posted in the "Steel In Vintage Doubles" thread, but I think it helps explain what is at stake in the the Foxhall situation:
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In the lead vs steel debate, I think we get too narrowly focused on how a lead ban might affect certain guns and hunting targets. One of the issues that gets overlooked too often, is that beyond the question of how steel affects the gun, how would it affect the sport of clay shooting and our access to it?
As gunwriter Michael Yardley points out, "We might also consider the implications to clay shooting. If lead were banned, sporting clay shooting would become a very different game. The challenging, rangy, birds seen at today’s shoots would have to go – you just can’t hit them consistently with steel. Some forms of trap shooting would be severely affected too."
To Yardley's point that banning lead would change the sport of sporting clays, it would not only change the guns & targets, it would also change the courses.
One of Marty Fischer's comments to Stan on the Foxhall situation is: "Some have suggested that steel loads are unsafe because of pellets richocheting off of trees and coming back to the shooter. When I designed the course at Foxhall, that was taken into consideration, and no targets are presented where any trees will be shot in the normal course of fire"
Marty is one of the most respected course designers in the country, and I don't know if the "no trees" policy is a set in stone rule at all "steel only" courses, but if "lead free" means "tree free" - and I'm sure the lawyers for resort developers, anti-gunners and enviros will say it should be - I know most of the venues and targets I like most would be ruled out. I suspect flat surfaces such as rabbit targets and pond targets might be ruled out in many cases as well.
I think of most of the courses I shoot at: Hausmans, Deep River, Homestead, Orvis Sandanona, M&M, Lehigh Valley (which also shoots at old stone buildings), Old Forge, Dover Furnace (which has rocky hillsides) my two local county courses, and most resort courses; all except possibly Pintail Point (which does have water and flat surfaces) have lots of trees, as well as ponds and flat surfaces --- the very things that make them interesting places to shoot. I wonder what the impact on them would be if there were a national lead ban and if they could continue under a steel mandate?
For me, trees and terrain are what make these courses most interesting to shoot, asthetically pleasing, and frankly, cooler in the summer.
If that were all gone, it would be a much less interesting sport, and I suspect in much of the country, particularly along the east coast, a much less accessible one as well.
