doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The Nutcase that lives to hunt waterfowl

This one single "statistic" from your vaunted 20 page report should tell you something. The author is telling you that in the last few years, steel has actually gotten better than lead. And you believe that nonsense?

And your contention that it was hunters who wanted a lead shot ban for waterfowl, and the environmentalist wackos only got on board recently... really?

Some of us were born at night. But it wasn't last night.

I don't think it means that steel shot is better than lead but that it is better than it was when it first came out and that hunters have learned to use it with its limitations..so less crippling because you don't take those fringe shots like you would be tempted to take with lead ...I don't mind using steel in my modern made guns,I long ago got used to its limitations and the improvements in shell design have improved it a lot.... what really gets me is the rip off prices being charged for vintage gun compatible nontox.....they price that stuff like its made with gold shot....

Sportsmen in the day helped collect the carcasses and helped collect data on waterfowl deaths. I don't think anyone had any idea where it would lead. Duck populations in the 1960' were at some of the lowest levels and ducks were diing in the marshes from other than hunting.

Lead shot, sinker and bullet bans are coming, we don't have the science or the numbers to stave it off for very long. I'm working on lead free ammunition for my coyote guns and big game rifles for that day. When everyone else is sitting home wining about the loss of lead shot and bullets I'm going to be out hunting and doing as well as I did with lead.

I hope regular folks can pass traditions on for generations to come. Sounds like it'll die out sooner rather than later. The occasional duck hunter may be a bit more important than you give them credit for being.

If more bans on lead ammunition or even lead fishing sinkers do in fact come, it will be because of sportsmen who bought into the claims made by junk science and phony doctored statistics.

There is still no peer-reviewed scientific evidence that lead was causing population-level impacts to America�s migrating waterfowl. In fact, most of the population declines in the 1960's and 1970's has been attributed to breeding habitat loss and drought. We still see much of the same improper use of so-called science being used to promote other agendas. Global warming is another popular one that is widely promoted and fully accepted by people unwilling to look at simple facts and make up their own minds. We have had a .85 C degree increase in global temperatures since the 1880's which is within the standard deviation for error. But we are also monitoring temperatures in places that were not monitored in the 1880's. Arctic sea ice is in fact decreasing, but Antarctic sea ice has been increasing for several years and was at all time record levels last year. The Earth has always had natural cycles of warming and cooling. California's current drought appears to be due to a normal 1100-1200 year cycle, but that is not stopping rabid Chicken Little claims that the sky is falling due to man made global warming.

My Biology degree is from Pennsylvania State University. I have personally seen researchers doctor or fudge data in order to get continued government grant money. I ate trout that were killed by a researcher for a meal, and he reported that the fish died due to low pH levels from acid mine drainage which caused cancers in the fish. He told me that the surest way to get government grant money at the time was in cancer research, so you tell them what they want to hear. It embarrasses me that my Alma Mater was collaborating with East Anglia University in Great Britain to submit falsified climate data supporting Global Warming claims. The Liberal Media was pretty quiet about that, and claims of Global Warming were pretty subdued for a couple years until things cooled down and the scandal was largely forgotten.

We can quibble about steel shot ammunition being better than it was when first introduced, and fewer hunters engaging in sky-busting resulting in lower crippling losses, but to claim that crippling with steel shot in the last few years is lower than crippling with lead before the ban... at a time when waterfowl populations were lower... strains credulity. Anyone who thinks the anti-hunting and anti-gun forces will stop or be satisfied if and when they get lead ammunition banned is ignoring history and being foolish. I don't expect to change oskar's mind on this. Now he is trying to tell us again that sportsmen led the charge to ban lead shot by collecting carcasses for autopsies and studies without knowing where it would eventually lead. It was abundantly clear where it was headed as the calls for banning lead shot increased. oskar himself knows where it is headed if we sit on our hands and do nothing, because he has told us he is already shifting to non-lead ammo for other hunting. He has drank the Kool-Aid, but the rest of us should stay on top of this scam and remind our legislators that we do not support junk science aimed at reducing sport hunting and fishing.

When they outlaw lead for rifles it will get interesting.

yea; since they wont be able to hunt critters with them lead core rounds; some
folks will be sending it back to politicians one round at a time.....never thought the revolution would be started by a bunch of candy ass sportsman....

BTW I heard the all copper rounds are just as accurate and effective on game....

When I saw that the title of this thread was about a nut case who lived to duck hunt, I thought somebody had finally published my life story....:)

Like Oskar, I too have been in this game a long time. 40 years for me. I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Md. Started hunting in the early 70's when lead and the A5 were King. One of my friend's father ran a goose guiding business and I went along occasionally. When the mandate to use steel hit, it was only for 12 ga. ALL the serious hunters that I knew went out and bought 16 ga guns so that they could continue to use lead. My parents house was on a peninsula of land with a huge corn field behind it and a large body of water in front. The geese would fly back and forth over out house and the first couple of seasons where steel was mandated, the geese would bleed all over the cars, the sidewalk, everything.

In the spring we would be in the marsh trapping muskrats. Never once did we find a dead duck in the marsh. Trapping season was followed closely by eel potting for crab bait. We were out there, in the boats, pulling eel pots by the score, close to shore, close enough to see back into the marsh and again, we found no dead ducks.

The body of opinion on the Shore was that this was yet another way for the State of Md, and their notoriously anti hunting DNR to back door restrict hunting.

Yes Oskar, today's steel shells are head and shoulders above the first generation of steel, but they are no where near what lead shells are capable of. As far as I'm concerned, if a steel shell load isn't traveling at 1500 FPS or better, I'm not buying it. (and no I don't like Hyper Sonics, they kick too much) Velocity is what has made today's steel tolerable.

2 years ago when I was told I had cancer, I made the surgeon hold off on scheduling the operation till after the season was over. If the bag limits were reduced to one bird a day, I would still go out before first light and set decoys and wait to see what dawn brings.

Mergus, nutcase....

To the extent that there is increased mortality from lead poisoning in heavily-shot marshes, the increased wounding of game from the use of steel shot probably offsets the intended gains from using steel. The problem could have been solved easily if we had designated "Waterfowl Loads" which were lead, but had an excise tax equal to the increased cost of steel vs. lead put on those shells which would be used for the purchase and maintenance of breeding marshes. We all know that the ultimate reduction in huntable populations of all game is caused by the loss of habitat

There is no reason for ordinary people(whatever that is) to lose the traditions of the past. Steel shotshells are not anymore expensive than lead waterfowl loads in the past. In the early 70's a box of Win 1 1/4 oz. Duck loads was about $3./box and I was making $3.50/hr operating a crane. When I retired a few years ago steel loads were $8-9/bx and I was making $25/hr, today they run $9-10/bx. I can't see where having to shoot steel would stop anyone from hunting. My old hunting partner shoots nothing but steel even for upland as it is too much of a hassle to swap loads all the time even for wild pheasants with his 20 ga. He puts more time into upland than anyone I've ever met and doesn't find it disadvantages him any.

My advice for anyone that thinks steel doesn't kill any better than lead "don't shoot if they are to far to kill with steel".