Condors or Lead Ammunition? (2015)
theecologist.org
theecologist.org
Also, one of the biggest improvement in hunting cartridges are the 'wads' which used to be plastic, and now are wool or fiber, in any case, biodegradable -- the steel cartridges don't have these as they need a 'cup' to protect the barrels as the shots go out, so you leave big pieces of plastic all over, to be ingested by /other/ wildlife, potentially.
So no real perfect solutions so far; Legally you can't shoot lead anywhere near waterways so we have to use steel, but for example last year I shot a duck, fair an square, nowhere near "out of range" -- this was a 'dead duck' -- we looked for it for 20 minutes to discover it had gone to ground and was NOT dead, it had been broadsided, but some pellets had gone thru the poor bird, and some of the pellets were in the feathers, because they didn't have the energy.
As much as I like hunting my supper -- and I hunt to fill the freezer so I don't ever have to buy chickens -- I really hate to be in that situation where I inflicted undue pain for no reason other than some city environmentalist (who probably sit at his desk all day) making wide ranging decisions like this.
It's going to be difficult to find a metal as "good" as this job as lead; I would love for steel to work really, perhaps we could somehow devise a 'steel shell around a lead pellet' -- that would allow 1) killing power 2) protection for lead leakage and 3) loads of time to use magnets to recover it from pretty much anywhere... I realise a good part of the energy of lead hitting a target it when it splatters, and the steel shot won't do that, but it ought to be better...?
Anyway, that evening we had duck, and we toasted the duck; unsuitable apology as it is.
There's also no practical reason you can't have biodegradable plastic cups for steel shot.
I grew up hunting, mostly bigger animals, I never bought meat until I moved away from home. We didn't use shotguns at all, mostly because it's been clear that lead is bad news for ages, and you couldn't really get steel shot where we were. And a bonus of hunting bigger animals is that if you do it right the projectile doesn't exit. The whole post above just sounds like a bunch of entitled whiny "I want to have my cake and eat it too" bullshit.
No need to respond to the rest of your post, as you didn't bother reading mine anyway. Go back to hunting stationary target with 50mm rounds, it's perfect, you'll never find the carcass anyway.
> There are no biodegradable plastic cups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic - Why not?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/2/lead-ammunit...
I'm not an expert, but a quick Google search suggests that they may be more expensive, less easy to find, and more likely to pass through targets. I found at least one article that claimed they may have greater stopping power since they do not break up in the target as easily. However, I have heard anecdotes about steel shot having less stopping power than lead.
Lead Free ammunition exists in various forms and the terminal ballistics can be different than lead ammunition. So many compositions are possible and this is a massive topic that is quite hotly debated and studied in the firearms community.
Most "stopping power" debates are talking about rifles that are vastly capable with or without lead bullets, and with the bans that have happened, the tech has moved forward. e.g. Barnes Bullets (which are copper) are considered a premium round, not just a premium non-lead round. And they aren't really overpriced.
WRT shotguns, I don't know this end as well, but the ammo market could use some forced innovation (the firearms market in general lacks innovation).
Source: https://www.hunter-ed.com/alaska/studyGuide/Two-Major-Differ...
As someone who is subject to the California Safe Handgun Roster[0], the amount of innovation in the handgun space in six years is frustrating.
[0] tl;dr: normal people can't buy a handgun released after 2013 new from an FFL.
As long as lead remains legal to use at the shooting range (where the vast majority of rounds is spent, and most lead is subsequently recovered and reprocessed), it's not a big deal.
If I wasn't eating the meat, I could see the argument for lead, but it's a weak one at best. In my own experience copper bullets do not go all the way through large game. And I don't believe in hunting for purely for sport.
Shotgun rounds are a different thing. Here in Minnesota, they eliminated lead for waterfowl hunting -- which is a fair thing to do. I'll shoot many, many more rounds at birds - and cleaning the shot out can be tricky. Best not to be spraying the land and/or lakes with lead bbs.
That is very cool to me as a fellow outdoorsman.
Surely you mean copper-jacketed lead, right? I don’t think that solid copper bullets would travel very far or carry much of a punch …
Rifle bullets are mostly either lead, which leaves lead residue on the machines parts and causes jams as the tolerances decline. Thus lead coated with copper is superior technology and more reliable but more expensive to boot. It doesn't mushroom as much but the velocities are higher. Plus rifles aren't used around water do they are much less likely to end up in the food supply and this legal for hunting.
They offer residents in the area with one free 20-cartridge box of condor safe ammunition per year.
In Finland, shooting ranges are among the most common activities causing soil contamination. According to our study based on questionnaires and previous regional surveys, the total number of Finnish outdoor shooting ranges is between 2000 and 2500. Most of the ranges are small and only ca. 5% exceed 20 ha. Almost a third of the ranges can cause a groundwater pollution risk, while only few cause an immediate health risk. In the first instance, 50-60 shooting ranges identified as being high-risk areas should be investigated in detail. At present, the risk management options at Finnish shooting ranges are very limited. Hence, soil excavation combined with disposal is the most common remediation technique. Some of the remediation methods used in other countries have been proven unsuitable in Finnish conditions. Therefore, new, feasible, cost-effective and economical remediation technologies are needed. To exclude future contamination, a total ban of lead shot would be the most effective way.