
Condors or Lead Ammunition? (2015) - brudgers
https://theecologist.org/2015/jan/21/condors-or-lead-ammunition-we-cant-have-both
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buserror
Lead or "non toxic" ammunition is a big problem. I only do shotgunning, but
for these the empirical evidence is that the lead is a better tool to "kill
humanely" than for example, steel. Steel doesn't have that "stopping power"
that lead has, and requires a lot more, and bigger, shots, and will also have
a shorter range than lead...

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.

~~~
_tulpa
This whole argument is pretty weaksauce. Learn to use the non-toxic stuff or
stop doing it and just buy your meat. Either way don't go spraying a bunch of
toxic heavy metal all over the show just because it's "humane" \- lead
poisoning is pretty inhumane.

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.

~~~
buserror
There are no biodegradable plastic cups -- ask McDonalds.

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.

~~~
_tulpa
My point is 'out of range' is different when you use steel. The subtext of the
OP is that you'd totally use lead if it wasn't illegal. Which exactly the same
backwards 'hurr durr desk-sitting city environmentalist ruining everything'
mentality that nearly every single 'hunter' I know has now.

> There are no biodegradable plastic cups

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic)
\- Why not?

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bradleyy
While I advocate for non-lead ammunition, the story is a little more complex:

[https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/2/lead-
ammunit...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/2/lead-ammunition-
ban-passed-after-feds-withheld-key/)

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harimau777
It seems questionable to me that the article doesn't discuss differences in
performance or other drawbacks of non-lead bullets.

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.

~~~
slacka
Hunter here. For big game like deer and moose, I actually prefer copper ammo.
With lead shot, if I hit the shoulders or haunches and my family or I eat that
meat, there's a very good chance we're eating bits of lead. Most Lead bullets
disintegrate on impact, while copper bullets rarely fragment and penetrate
deeper.

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.

~~~
eadmund
> For big game like deer and moose, I actually prefer copper ammo.

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 …

~~~
nkurz
Given his concerns about feeding lead to his family, almost definitely he
means solid copper. Modern lead-free solid copper bullets work quite well for
many animals. Here's a sample article comparing them against traditional
copper jacketed lead: [https://www.guns.com/news/2017/03/18/do-copper-bullets-
offer...](https://www.guns.com/news/2017/03/18/do-copper-bullets-offer-the-
same-performance-to-hunters-as-lead-bullets)

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nkurz
If you live in the California condor range, and are concerned about the cost
of non-lead ammunition, you might want to know about this program:
[https://www.ventanaws.org/ammunition.html](https://www.ventanaws.org/ammunition.html).

They offer residents in the area with one free 20-cartridge box of condor safe
ammunition per year.

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emilfihlman
This lead ammo ban, especially the European one, is a thinly veiled attempt at
blocking guns ownership, which somewhat failed two years back. Lead ammo is
already prohibited in wetlands in Yurop (at least in Finland it is) and the EU
ammo ban would have banned lead ammo pretty much everywhere even though lead
does not enter the wildlife from a shooting range.

~~~
mopsi
There's more than wildlife.

 _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._

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16458952](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16458952)

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sunkenvicar
Gun owners love condors too. But we fear this issue will be used as political
cover to restrict our rights.

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blarg1
just use depleted uranium

