The Three-Minute Outdoorsman: Wild Science from Magnetic Deer to Mumbling Carp

18. Politics and the Lead Ammo Debate

t h e t h r e e - m i n u t e o u t d o o r s m a n 78 “the use of non-lead ammunition significantly reduced lead exposure in eagles, suggesting this is a viable solution.” This is good news. California has recently instituted a ban on lead bullets, but compliance is estimated to be 80 to 95 percent. As good as this is, clearly we need more evidence to convince the public that lead bullets are bad for the environment. The Bedrosian study now provides that evidence. It certainly supports the growing sentiment for outlawing or severely curtailing the use of lead bullets. And I would like to put in a plug for my favorite local hunting club, Wild Wings of Oneka, which has required steel shot for sporting clays and hunting for many years. Some clubs host national sporting clays championships where competitors shoot over marshlands. As many as one thousand shooters discharge four hundred or more rounds in a few days. That amounts to around twenty-five thousand pounds of lead. Multiply that by decades . . . We obviously did not purposefully contaminate our environment with lead, and now that we know the extent of its toxic effects, we are more careful. It does make you wonder, though, about what we are currently adding to the environment that might someday turn out to be the next lead threat. 18 politics and the lead ammo debate One of my essays on lead ingestion by Bald Eagles generated some controversy after it was published. One reader wrote that my article contained misinformation and was politically motivated. I had to chuckle at the thought of my having a political agenda, but given the growing importance of the lead debate, further discussion is bound to occur. What is the political agenda? Well, for example, Safari Club International has joined the National Rifle Association (NRA) I N T H E W O O D S 79 in opposing bans on “traditional ammunition,” which of course means lead. The reason? The NRA has decided that the movement to oppose the use of lead bullets is actually an attack on our Second Amendment rights. Yes, that’s a political agenda. My “political” agenda is this: eight shotguns, two rifles, two bows, two handguns, three pointing dogs, and my permit to carry. I do not work for or represent any group that has a dog in this fight, except, perhaps, my actual dogs. I personally think it challenges credibility to suggest that opposing lead bullets is opposing the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I admit to doing a double take when I first read this stance. Didn’t we just go through this with nontoxic shot in waterfowl hunting? Did we lose our shotguns or our right to hunt ducks and geese? My family enjoys eating the local geese in our freezer and a nice bunch of mallards from Manitoba. And yes, we used nontoxic shot. I can only surmise that the real agenda is the fear that many will not be able to afford nontoxic bullets and therefore will give up hunting, which would be bad. Yes, I wince at the price of a box of nontoxic shotgun shells or copper bullets. However, many prices have come down as demand has gone up. The price of ammo is not the big driver in the costs of hunting. Instead of spreading fear, the NRA should lobby for cheaper nontoxic bullets . These bullets do the job, as my son and I discovered in a recent hog-hunting trip to south Texas. Also, there are two issues, which should perhaps be considered independently: the type of bullets used for hunting, and the type used for target practice. Should we stop using lead bullets for both? We could use lead bullets for target practice only, but lead and copper bullets can have different ballistics, and so you’d have to sight in your rifle for whatever nontoxic bullet you might hunt with. Perhaps we could limit practicing with lead bullets to particular well-marked areas, from where maybe in time the lead could be recovered? But maybe it’s irrelevant—random lead bul- t h e t h r e e - m i n u t e o u t d o o r s m a n 80 lets might not have a demonstrable effect on the...