I did not intend to say steel is or is not as good as lead, although the study would suggest that. I am saying that is what we will use when (not if) lead shot is banned and quoting a study that indicates we will still be able to shoot doves when it happens. Lead shot is banned now in California, and any cancer that starts there seems to spread across the country. The anti-lead (not necessarily anti-hunting) people consider the use of lead shot a process of mining heavy metals and distributing them evenly across the surface of the Earth. While I consider things like single-use plastics to be far greater factors in our poisoning of the planet, they are not entirely wrong.
We manage to drive cars without leaded gasoline, and we will manage to shoot without lead ammunition.
Rick Bin, the moderator of 24-Hour Campfire, is a California quail hunter. He is loading steel/TSS duplex cartridges (steel shot with a sprinkling of TSS, like a sundae) and reporting more effective, longer-range kills than with lead. Maybe that's what the future holds. Rick is, of course, not shooting Damascus barreled antiques.
Maybe we will shoot doves with TM. I started out scraping up the cash for a few boxes of cartridges when I was a teenager, maybe I'll be doing it again. If I can find any to buy.
