Read on yahoo a large push for non-lead ammo to be used in hunting. I feel like anti's have been pushing this issue for a while but a larger movement is happening it seems.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/bald-eagle-crosshairs-us-fight-over-lead-bullets-095601272.html

Im not so sure its an "anti" issue as much as a health issue. I was all for the lead ban on waterfowl hunting because I do fish and would rather not have lead in the water that I am eating fish out of. Now banning lead on hunting animals on land I am not so sure about. Not sure if this is a widespread problem.

I actually tried searching for fast steel buckshot for HD but doesn't look like it exist. There are fast steel birdshots

The concerns about lead poisoning are legitimate, but my understanding is that steel shot is much more expensive then lead.

And some guns can't shoot steel.

It's largely a bogus argument regarding lead bullets. Lead birdshot is different because waterfowl will pick up the lead shot along with other grit to fill their gizzard. With a bullet, you are basically dealing only with random chance on scavengers. Heck, even with their poster bird form the article, and their claims of 10% of the eagle population lost due to lead (which probably comes right out of someone's kiester with little in the way of research behind it), you have a species population in recovery.

 

The whole lead scare thing I put in the category of eco-idiots instead of rational ecological concern. Much like a lot of "environmental" issues, it is based on a completely irrational notion that there is some natural utopia where nasty stuff like lead wouldn't exist except for us evil humans. I put it right up there with the idiots who think that nature is static, and every critter would walk around happy and in perfect unchanging balance with their environment if it just weren't for us people.

 

Then you have legitimate issues like nitrogen compound runoff form agriculture and waste reprocessing, and you barely hear a peep from these idiots because they can't pass moral judgment on you over these issues.

^ this.

 

Lead is a huge concern in our environment. Hunting would be inconsequential . I can see the birdshot , but for land animals , ridiculous.

 

Why don't they work on the copious amount of lead in our products that come from China and the old water pipes in a good number of communities. Want to scare the cr&p out of yourself if you have kids ? Buy a surface lead test and run it over some of their nice brightly colored toys and bibs. Yep bibs. Linoleum on your floor , the majority of brightly painted toys , eating utensils , bibs , any nick knacks in your house that your kid likes to put in his mouth , all have serious unsafe lead levels. Not to mention unsafe plastic compounds leaching into your food.

 

Look up articles about kids having ridiculously high levels of plastic compounds in their urine and heavy metals in their blood tests.

 

Any concern over hunting land animals with lead shot is a smoke screen for groups with a different agenda. If they really cared they would be way too busy with all the other sources of contamination to be concerned about hunting season.

It's about gun control first and foremost.

 

"This is the last unregulated, widespread distribution of toxic lead into the environment," said Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity, which is seeking US federal rules to require non-toxic bullets in hunting and shooting sports.

 

Shooting sports sells more guns, and uses more ammo that hunting. Eliminate lead based ammo, and you eliminate ALL shooting sports.

 

And remember, there will be an exemption for LE agencies.

I believe the army phased out lead in 2008.

 

You know, it's a miracle life can survive on this toxic planet, where lead, uranium, cyanide, sulfur, mercury, and other toxins can be found naturally....

 

But seriously, I understand for duck hunting, since lead would end up in water there, and due to natural pH balances, slowly the lead would dissolve and be absorbed into the water supply, however for land hunting? For target shooting? That's weird. I doubt deer hunters are just firing aimlessly, spraying lead everywhere ( I mean, I understand shot goes all over, there's no helping that) but it's not like they're laying down tons of ammo. And for ranges, unless you have some really bad shots, the lead will likely just end up in the backstop anyway. HELL, If they're that concerned, why not design a back drop with a hard back that absorbs the impact energy, and which funnels down to a chute under the range to collect the lead?

 

Again, it's just a back-door way of (Well maybe not gun control) but severely limiting legal firearm use, and ownership. If ammo is (more) expensive, it will greatly discourage new shooters.

It might be that the newer "green" ammunition has a much more finite shelf life than older ammunition, and it might not make sense to stock too much of it away, or at least to look into it.

 

Why would anyone with an agenda want to create ammunition in this fashion?

It should be noted that the statement in the linked article is based on guess and not on fact. If they were really cncerned about the eagle ewating lead they would have done a blood test to prove their.point. However guessing is enough in this country to get the alarmists going for a total lead ban.

It should be noted that the statement in the linked article is based on guess and not on fact. If they were really cncerned about the eagle ewating lead they would have done a blood test to prove their.point. However guessing is enough in this country to get the alarmists going for a total lead ban.

 

The state of the environment being what it is, most critters have some level of lead in them from a jillion small and not so small sources. Unless you make active efforts to remove it form a system, it tends to accumulate in certain parts of a system. There's still a TON of lead in the environment form adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline. But it can come from lots of places. Bullets aren't even NEAR the top of the list. However, for waterfowl it was a more legitimate concern. not becuase the lead dissolves in water easily, but because shot sits on the bottom in the much and waterfowl eat the much and like the shot for filling their gizzard. For simple mechanical reasons, it winds up going into the avian population very quickly that way.

The state of the environment being what it is, most critters have some level of lead in them from a jillion small and not so small sources. Unless you make active efforts to remove it form a system, it tends to accumulate in certain parts of a system. There's still a TON of lead in the environment form adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline. But it can come from lots of places. Bullets aren't even NEAR the top of the list. However, for waterfowl it was a more legitimate concern. not becuase the lead dissolves in water easily, but because shot sits on the bottom in the much and waterfowl eat the much and like the shot for filling their gizzard. For simple mechanical reasons, it winds up going into the avian population very quickly that way.

 

^^^This is 100% correct. We discussed similar things in Bio 4. The irony is these environmentalists will decry lead from ammunition, complain about it online, and all that stuff, however they don't seem to realize that a much greater concern should be old electronics. A lot of companies that "recycle" these products simply dump them off in poor 3rd world areas, or China. There they are smashed to bits, and various components heated to obtain the valuable metals such as copper, gold, and silver, inside. The rest are usually either burned, or thrown into rivers, or dumps where the toxic metals will seep into the water supply, and environment anyway. Though many companies who recycle this stuff do it properly, there are many who do not. However, since it is not firearms, or hunting involved, they don't make as much noise about it.

 

Another irony is that in NJ, we actually need more hunters. Because the colonists killed off the big predators here, deer populations have been able to reach their ecosystem's carrying capacity, which is fairly rare in nature. The problem with this is that population growth rarely stops at the carrying capacity, but usually overshoots it, since there are more individuals than the ecosystem has sustainable food sources, they end up stripping almost all the food, and end up starving to death in the long run. Not to mention that the survivors will be weaker since they will turn to lower-quality food sources to survive.

 

Good news though, EPA says they don't have the authority to ban lead ammo. I'm sure they can find someone else who does however....

 

http://onlineathens.com/sports/outdoors/2012-04-10/epa-says-it-cannot-regulate-lead-ammunition

My job is to buy and pump as much lead as I can afford to back into the ground FROM WHENCE IT CAME!

 

Sometimes I think that the enviromental-whackos are gaining ground. If this crap keeps up, it could get nasty and go all of the way to the SCOTUS.......but probably not in my life time.