Lead shot is controversial subject in the world of upland hunting and shotgun shooting. In 1991, the federal government banned the use of lead shot for us in all types of waterfowl hunting. Today,many people thinking that lead shot needs to be banned for all types of bird hunting, from pheasants and quail to grouse.
Ted Williams (not that one, the outdoor writer, conservationist one) wrote a piece in a recent issue of Audobon magazine that I encourage you to check it out. I don’t agree with all of it, but there’s definitely some food for thought there.
Bad Shot, by Ted Williams
“Despite cheap, readily available alternatives, most American sportsmen are still using lead ammunition and fishing tackle. Because of this, some of our most majestic birds, from eagles to loons to condors, pay a terrible price…”
Sorry.
There’s too much rhetorics in it, even in the abstract.
As Goethe once said on a different subject, you don’t write so elaboratly, if you only want to deliver a simple message based on fact.
By the way, did you know that in Britain there are shooting preserves, where lead shot is used repeatedly at the same small areas for generations; the first pen-raised pheasant shoots date back to early XIX century if I’m not mistaken, making it about 200 years of collective exerience of what lead shot can do to wildlife. These preserves’ owners ban or strongly discourage the use of… plastic wads. Experience told them that plastic wad littering had a very negative effect on the grounds. They are also strongly against… the ban on lead shot.
I have yet to read an article with enough hard science backing the “ban lead” notion, and I have yet to read as much as a mention of a European study thereabout (when the problem is real, it is usually researched globally, and when a problem is for a number of years discussed in just one or two countries… it’s almost surely another Don Quihote slaying another windmill giant).