I have a theory about lead. I think the whole anti-lead movement is hogwash. When a dead animal is found to contain traces of lead there is a rush to the conclusion that the animal died of lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning is a real thing, and it is a very ugly thing to watch happen to a human. But, it occurs only after a lifetime of repeated daily exposure to lead fumes or lead oxide. It will not occur from ingesting metallic lead in the form of bullets or shot.

Also, the idea that carrion eating animals ingest lead from hunter's bullets in gut piles smacks of a complete lack of knowledge of how things work. I have hunted for a lot of years and killed a lot of deer and other animals. So, I will speak only form my experience, which I think is a fair sampling. I will make a conservative estimate, from my observations, that 90% of the deer I have killed have no bullets or fragments remaining in their bodies. I try very hard to keep my bullets that I shoot at deer OUT of their guts. 90% are total clean passthroughs. Another 9% are passthroughs with some degree of fragmentation so there is a slight possibility that a tiny amount of lead did not exit the animal. I have recovered about 1% of the bullets (pieces) that I have shot at deer.

So, bullets in gut piles? Hogwash. Bullets in dead animals that were not found? Hogwash.

We may hunt waterfowl with only non-lead shot. Whether it be in the arctic, the great plains, or coastal marshes. Waterfowl. To my knowledge the only restrictions on lead shot in an area are the coastal marshes. Doves, quail, pheasants, anything else may be hunted with lead shot except of course while you are hunting waterfowl. So, lead shot is being used in the same areas that waterfowl frequent but are simply not being actively hunted with it.

Anyone who has actually set foot in a coastal marsh soon finds out that the water is about 1' deep and the mud is about ... well it goes to the center of the earth as far as I know. Lead is heavy. Your pocket knife is heavy. Drop your pocket knife in the coastal marsh and neither you or a mud eating shoveler is going to get it back. The same thing happens with lead shot. It hits the mud and keeps on going. Ducks just simply don't have the ability to dive into 3' of mud to gag down lead shot.

As a duck hunter who has lived and hunted in both the lead shot world and the non-lead shot world I can say that the number of ducks that have flown away, swam away or simply gotten away crippled from the use of steel shot is far greater than the number I have killed with lead shot total.

So, any reason to not use lead shot, is pure Hogwash.

Biting into a lead shot hurts and is not recommended. Biting into a steel shot will break a tooth and cost $250 - $2000 depending on which tooth and what has to be done. That's Hogwash too! Because it doesn't have to be that way.

I've seen sporting clays courses set up over water. They use lead shot. When there is no shooting there are ducks and other water birds out there all the time. Those ducks aren't ingesting lead? No, they're not, ...

Because it's all Hogwash.

That's my theory.

Leaded gasoline is another story. Elemental lead vaporized in the heat of an internal combustion engine and deposited on the roadway, washes into the bar ditch and does indeed contaminate the soil and plants and anything that ingests those plants. But the entire bar ditch could be covered with lead shot and it would not do the same thing.

Alan