Edward,
You are not just "relatively young", but actually embarassingly young to be going toe-to-toe with waterfowlers having three, four, and five decades of experience under their wader belts. But with that said, know that I do respect what they say about opinions and fundamental orifices. I just ask that when you do spout forth, you try to remember that some of these guys here have had the opportunity to shoot several types of shotgun pellets over many, many years and assess their relative performance .....from lead, to steel, to bismuth, to tungsten-matrix, to ad nauseum, and there is some substance to what they are 'negatively' saying about steel.
As for me, I switched from lead to steel two years before it became a requirement, thinking that I may as well embrace the stuff and learn to make it work for me. I shot it a lot of days each season here in Montana and Utah (like 40+), and as you say, it does knock down the ducks and geese. Problem was, that is all it was doing in a number of instances..... just 'knocking them down'.
I'm primarily a decoy shooter who used 1-1/8 oz. of #3 steel on mallard-sized ducks. That's surely adequate, don't you think? If the quarry was further out than my 40 yd. perimeter decoy that I always set, it was a safe duck for that day.
Did I actually kill some of the birds outright? Well, sure I did, but there would also be others at times with as many as 6-8 multiple body hits that the dog would bring in....their heads still swiveling around in bewilderment.... and in need of dispatching. And this occurred significantly more often than it ever did in all the years I gunned with lead. (and if you're about to repeat that nonsense of yours about just making head and neck shots vs. body shots on mallards at thirty yards, then I can leave you with a response lacking in patience - as you truly showed some naivete' with that one).
So, just as soon as another non-tox came out like bismuth, which was several years later if I'm remembering correctly, I switched to that and have never looked back. I was actually 'killing' more ducks outright again like I did in the days of lead shot. Why? Because their elemental properties are much the same.
'Crowshooter' told you right when stating that steel shot can, at close range, penetrate body parts clean through without expending much energy and thus knock a bird to the ground that has to be dealt with. And I know you know this to be true yourself, having shot more than a box or two of steel shells at them.
Maybe it's a matter of you understanding that many of us here care far less about the number of birds we bring home at night in contrast to 'how' they are brought to bag. I hope that makes some sense to you, especially when you are out there ringing a neck or two on a well-perforated duck. And as Larry Brown has pointed out, virtually all of us here consider the steel shot mandate for waterfowl to be a dead topic. So, how about we bury that one for now?
What is at issue, especially for those of us that like using our vintage guns not only on gamebirds, but particularly for clay target shooting, is this emerging sentiment for a nation-wide lead ban when there is so much more scientific work to be done to corroborate these early, often hysterical assumptions.
As Yogi Berra once said, "It's like 'deja vu' all over again" for those of us who've been at this for awhile.
BTW, Yogi Berra was a famous catcher for the New York Yankees -even before steel shot became a requirement!
All Best,
Rob Harris
Last edited by Robt. Harris; 01/29/08 07:17 AM.
