Lead free ammo

[jlanger]

With all the current studies about lead in deer, Here's the study that has me worried, I have a 3 year old and a 4 month old, since lead is proven to be a very bad toxin for little ones and the amount of lead in shot animals hasn't been realized until recently, the wife and I have decided to go lead free for our ammo this year.

So far I've looked at the various barnes versions from Federal Black Hills, and Remington. Federal is by far the easiest to find.
I've also seen this by Winchester Not sure which to try out, my current plan is to try a Barnes version and the Winchester E tip and see what I like best at the range, though for nearly $50 a box I thought it might be useful to see what others think.

The vast majority of my deer are shot with the .308. I use my model 94's for driving and close quarter woods stands, unfortunately I can't find any lead free alternatives for them, so any shot with the Winchesters will most likely get turned over to other members of the party without little ones.
I know that for years we've hunted with lead ammo, but we also used lead paint for years before realizing the problems associated with it. I figure why risk it?

Any thoughts?

 

[tgarza]

Lead or no lead it'll still kill em dead.

 

[Noebie]

out here we use slugs for deer, not buckshot

we use steel shot for waterfowl though

 

[krissy]

I remember hearing about that. Weren't the deer in question also processed at a meat market/butcher? So why wasn't the shot up meat area cut out and thrown out? Which is the only place where the lead could have come from.


We process our own deer (2-3 a season) and we have yet to find any of the bullet (lead) in our meat. We don't use the meat around where the bullet entered or exited or went through the animal.

IMHO it's the processing that makes a difference if you are going to find lead or not in the meat. If you take it in to be processed talk to your butcher about your concerns and give him instructions on how you want your animal harvested. If you do it yourself, then toss out the meat where the bullet went through. Pretty simple.

 

[jlanger]

Problem isn't the actual bullet, it's the fragments from a high velocity round.
Pretty crazy but after the MN DNR processed it and cleaned the carcass thoroughly it still showed fragments all over the deer, none could be seen via the naked eye but they lit up the xray.

We process all our own deer too, never can trust that hte butcher is actually processing ur deer, not some schmuck who picked up a road kill deer that'd been sitting for 3 days.

I'm more curious if anyone's had experience with the copper and other lead free type rounds, how they shoot, etc. Not too much information in the shooting forums about em yet.

The study seemed pretty thorough, in short the MN DNR took a large number of deer and sheep carcasses and shot .308, slugs, and .50 muzzleloader rounds at them, butchered the carcasses, then xrayed them. The results were pretty eye opening. Lead fragments were found throughout many of hte carcases, the spread was even worse for the ones that were cleaned and washed more thoroughly.

 

[Unknownsoldier]

TBH, unless the animal is hit by someone inexperienced and either limps off to survive for another day, or get scattergun'd across it's total body then as long as you cut out the lead fairly quickly it won't seep further than the area (veterans have been known to have lead fragments floating around their bodies for years and suffer no ill effects). So, don't eat the area you shoot and you'll be ok I don't buy what the study is trying to say personally, you'd need to eat a lot of lead (without noticing it), before you got any serious problems, the typical amount found in a 32gm size 6, 12 gauge shell, wouldn't kill you unless you got git by it......

I think as long as you eat your meat and not bought meat, and you do the excision of the shot area yourself your safe. Although if you want, you can use many of the steel alternatives available on the market, but be warned I find them louder, and with more recoil. Also check your barrels are steel proofed as many chokes arn't, my Rizzini 12g O/U certainly isn't, as the choke tubes arn't "steel proofed".

Tom

P.S. Just had thought if there were a real danger, would not hunters everywhere be dropping like fly's from lead poisoning......

 

[Unknownsoldier]

Problem isn't the actual bullet, it's the fragments from a high velocity round.
Pretty crazy but after the MN DNR processed it and cleaned the carcass thoroughly it still showed fragments all over the deer, none could be seen via the naked eye but they lit up the xray.

We process all our own deer too, never can trust that hte butcher is actually processing ur deer, not some schmuck who picked up a road kill deer that'd been sitting for 3 days.

I'm more curious if anyone's had experience with the copper and other lead free type rounds, how they shoot, etc. Not too much information in the shooting forums about em yet.

The study seemed pretty thorough, in short the MN DNR took a large number of deer and sheep carcasses and shot .308, slugs, and .50 muzzleloader rounds at them, butchered the carcasses, then xrayed them. The results were pretty eye opening. Lead fragments were found throughout many of hte carcases, the spread was even worse for the ones that were cleaned and washed more thoroughly.

Sorry, do Americans not use a metal detector for cleaning their kills? Many of my friends have a small hand held for cleaning their Red Leg and Pigeon.

Also remember unless you are eating the animal every single meal and day of the year, the effects are negligible, The Brits have been drinking through lead water pipes for nigh-on 150 years

Tom

 

[toucanlamp]

I can't understand why someone would want to eat some bird with lead pellets inside of it. Here in Canada lead shot has been banned for over ten years. It's really awful for the environment too. You think of how many hunters are out there going after waterfowl and all the lead getting deposited into these bodies of water over years and years, and that all goes into the water table and contributes to why we all have more lead in our bodies than we should, and who knows what it could be responsible for with all the different diseases and such which are becoming more prevalent.

 

[_JP_]

The lead controversy in hunting is misunderstood is misunderstood as far as how it affects humans and wildlife. The ban on lead shot for waterfowl hunting in the U.S. was based on a huge study of thousands of birds. The purpose was to find out if they ingested shot while bottom feeding. Well, that study found shot in the digestive system of exactly two birds out of the many thousands. The ban came about based on that.

As far as human consumption of shot game goes, it is easy to avoid the lead pellets by carefully cleaning and inspecting the shot game. People have been eating meat that way for hundreds of years with no obvious health effects.

 

[jlanger]

This is for rifle shooting. The MN DNR did a pretty extensive study, listed previsously, after a large amount of donated meat was found to have fairly high levels of lead in it. Since the dontated meat was professionally butchered they wanted to see what caused the high amounts of lead as no one has ever really tested venison shot with high velocity bullets before for lead.
Here's what they did, they took a large number of deer and sheep carcasses, shot them with various types of rounds ranging from .308 to shotgun slug to blackpowder bullet. The results that they determined were that there was a signficant amount of the high velocity bullets that were fragmenting microscopically into the carcass. For example with Remington core-lokt rounds they were only able to recover about 50% of the bullet during the tests., washing some efect but may spread the fragments all over the carcass.

I do shoot .308 ammo and it is concerning especially as I have little kids. Lead has been determined to cause many defects and cognitive issues if they have exposure to it at young ages. If it was just me, I really woulnd't care, but I do have the littleun's to think about.