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Hi Keith Im not taking your posts personally you are right to draw attention to our loss. What I am saying is we know a ban is coming and that the governments aim is to introduce legislation to restrict lead shot in the environment . To that end it has ,through the statement made by our shooting organisations here in the UK, expressed its intention to ban lead for all live shooting

The organisations which previously held the view that there would be no change from lead until there was scientific evidence to justify that change have u turned. The magazine writers in shooting times over the last year have been writing more positive articles on steel cartridges and some even writing that they had switched over to steel and how successful it has been long before this announcement If you look at the UK based pigeonwatch forum and read the reaction on the steel shot / voluntary ban threads amongst other things you will see shooters, yes shooters ,proposing a ban on game shooting and an adoption of simulated game shooting instead ie clay shooting over ground once used to drive pheasants commercially, all while they continue pigeon shooting ,wildfowling or deer stalking.
This self interest and inability by some shooters to pull together will encourage those opposed to any form of live shooting and highlights the divisions within the shooting world.
These attempts at appeasement when under so little pressure reflect badly on a section of UK shooters but in their eyes the availability of a Eleys 2 3/4 steel game load with a biodegradable shot cup wad is sufficient to warrant a complete ban on lead shot for live shooting.

I can only imagine that legal change was imminent, that the shooting organisations reasoned ,perhaps partly because our shooting community was so divided .that we would not successfully oppose it ,and opted to preempt a total ban by the voluntary ban this would give shooters time to plan their adoption of non lead alternatives and use up their lead ammunition and allow a transition period for ammunition manufacturers to sell off their lead game cartridge stocks and switch to non lead production for their game cartridges.
Clay pigeon shooting will continue with lead which unbelievably has resulted in a call on shooting forums for a total ban on all lead shot shooting ...........BY SHOOTERS.
And all this before we take in to account the work of the anti shooting brigade.
Phew.


Last edited by Konor3inch; 02/28/20 05:21 AM. Reason: Clarification
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Consider the effect if there is steel shot left in the corners of a stomach who then has an MRI scan (extreme magnetic field) the lawyers will have a field day.

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Anyone ever tried to scan a steel shot bird with a metal scanner? To find and pick out steel shot before cooking?

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Throwing my 2P's worth into the hat. - Short story - there is no market for the birds we kill for fun, shooting is pretty much just an avenue for spending money, it doesn't make the shooting community look good.

I live in the UK in a big shooting area. Lots of people are involved with shooting sports here, not only that but lots of people shoot and own guns that are not that into shooting. Plenty of farmers and agricultural workers have guns, but may never actually go on a big shoot, so first thing to understand is that while there is a lot of big estate shoots ( i live on the boundary of three employing more than 6 full time game keepers) but there is also a lot of shooting that isn't driven game shooting at all.

Most pest control on farms is carried out by private individuals who do it as much for sport as for practical concerns.

Anyhow, when you look at whats gone on about a year ago the BGA was formed, the British game alliance. The alliance was seeking new markets for shot game, the problem is in the UK there is very little home market.

85% of consumers have never bought or cooked game of any sort at home.

When you look at the hayday of shooting the sale of game from the first days shooting would generally cover the Labour costs of producing the game and shooting it. In the old days birds were reared from eggs from wild stocks. Now days everything is bought in most the eggs that are hatched are not produced in this country. Its saves Labour and that's expensive.

Lets look at the average "estate" shoot.

This small estate employs one full time game keeper to which the estate usually provided a house, work clothing, and dog food as part of the job. Your average pay for our average keeper is about 21,000 per year,( about $27,000 ) your probably producing single handed the same shooting that it once took three or four men to produce each year. The value of the property is probably worth at least half that income to the estate if rented to anyone else per year.

Each bird produced and released is about 12.40 per bird.

the return is about 38%. 62% of the birds you release will not be seen again in hand.

Lets say the estate shoots 3 days a week, two small days and a larger day, for arguments sakes two 150 bird days and a 300 bird day. over the 16 weeks of the season thats 48 days shooting.
600 birds harvested a week, for 16 weeks, 9,600 birds shot, but thats only 38% of what you produced, so we need to raise about 25,000 pheasants.

25,000 birds will cost about 310,250 to rear and release.
the average price per bird is about 34.61 a cost that has doubled in the last 10 years so your 9600 shot birds are worth about 332,160 in income from the sold days.
your just about covering your game keepers salary at this point.

Fortunately you end up with 9600 birds to sell, which are worth about 0.30p each, this has halved in the last 10 years, bringing in an extra 3k or there about, looking at it like this working from average figures the costs just don't add up.

this is before you get to having to pay beaters, often 40 - 50 a day in my experience ( but the average figures say 25- 35 )
and pickers up with the reported average at 30 - 50)

The fact is that many estate shoots are running so that their owners can enjoy one or two family days at minimal expense, and invite guests who each return the favor with another day at their expense.

Its a game you can only afford to play when you have lots of money doing nothing, if the estate was concerned about making money or running as a business, they would double their profit by renting out the game keepers cottage.

Economically the industry just doesn't really work. You pass on all the costs of the birds to the guns that shoot them and get to sell the shot game; brilliant, but in the past there was a market for game, and now there is none.

Its difficult to sell an end product that contains lead, its isn't so much that people are concerned about eating lead, its that they are unfamiliar with eating game, cooking game, its not atypical in the populations diet, yet each year we harvest tons of it that we just cant sell, Meat here is quite cheap i think, as farming is heavily subsidized we dont pay the true cost of food, for instance it costs about 18 to produce a chicken to sell, yet we buy them oven ready for 3.80 go figure.

A great market for pheasant meat would be dog food, its a sad waste but not nearly as sad as estates running incinerators.

Nobody will buy dog food that will contain ground up lead particles. Americans wouldn't buy pheasant bratwurst minced with lead in it. Lead is pretty tough to extract from the meat. No not many people die from lead poisoning but it doesn't mean its good for you, it stands to reason anyway as clearly not that many people are regularly consuming the quantity's of game they would have to eat to consume all that is shot!

Steel has to be the answer as it is in theory easy to extract, mash the meet, float it on water over powerful magnets.

on your 150 bird day, there might be 8 guns, 19 birds a piece or there abouts, lets say they are high birds, 5 - 1 ratio, 95 shots per gun for the day, you cartridge cost for high performance game load steel is 267.000 per thousand cartridges. 0.27p per shot.

If your shooting high birds your probably not doing it with an old hammer gun; if you are you might need bismuth. 1142.00 / thousand. 1.15/shot or and extra 110 to shoot for the day. I think if your that dedicated and broke you will either just suck it up and shoot a new gun, or if your that dedicated you will just pay the extra 110.

Source available for average figures, full report below.
https://pdf.euro.savills.co.uk/uk/rural---other/shoot-benchmarking-survey-2017-2018-season.pdf



Last edited by Demonwolf444; 02/28/20 07:19 AM.
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Originally Posted By: ellenbr
No, a Motor Patrol grading the shoulder will hide them or if you live in town, a street sweeper will kick them down the road. I've see them for 40+ years & NEVER have I seen anyone picking them up less some fishermen for lead weights. So they are still there. One can pick up enough coinage for a snack & enough wheel weights for sinkers @ an intersection. If you haven't seen them, you just aren't looking. Maybe it is because you can't run or bike on controlled access thoroughfares?

Cheers,

Raimey
rse


Let's see . . . fishermen can walk along picking up stray lead weights on controlled access thoroughfares in Alabama . . . but joggers can't run on the shoulder of the road? (Not that there aren't better places to run!) Gotta be some strange laws down there in AL.

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Re the issue of lead poisoning in humans who eat game killed with lead shot or bullets: Several years ago, there was concern about game being donated to places that offered meals to the poor and homeless. In North Dakota, where hunting is very popular and residents are far more likely to eat game than they are in more urban states, blood samples were collected from a large number of volunteers--nearly all of whom said they ate wild game. Tests showed that the blood lead level of those volunteers was actually LOWER than the nationwide average . . . which would seem to indicate that the lead one consumes from eating game isn't all that great a concern, unless maybe one eats nothing but a steady diet of wild game.

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Hi demonwolf444.
It doesnt make commercial driven shooting in the UK look good but the excesses of some commercial shoots couldnt be portrayed in a good light.
It seems that the ban will not be driven by peer reviewed scientific study showing any detrimental effects of lead in the environment but brought about by by the perceived need to allow large commercial shoots to hopefully market their by product and allow meat to be easily processed fit for consumption in dog food.
And all the while barely scraping a profit.
All this with no anti involvement.
Perhaps we will see cans of dog food advertised with pictures of shooters holding up a brace of pheasants.
If the problem lies with commercial shoots inability to sell lead shot game then let those shoots insist on steel bismuth or tungsten shot and leave shooters who eat the game they shoot to continue using lead shot in their old guns which may be unsuitable for non lead shot.

Last edited by Konor3inch; 02/28/20 10:05 AM. Reason: Clarification
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If the ever increasing restrictions keep coming back to being an image problem. Maybe, law abiding shooters could make proactive efforts to not buy into the image. The other thing would be to have an effective political lobby, keeping in mind that a real measure of effectiveness is the level of demonizing by the opposition not agreeable porosity.

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Sorry craigd Im struggling to see your point ,could you be more specific.

From the forums Facebook and twitter accounts of anti fieldsports supporters I have read shooters couldnt be more demonised its what we do that causes this demonisation not how effective we are in putting across a pro fieldsports point.

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Re the issue of concentrated shot fall on estates where there is commercial driven shooting:

If there is concern about partridges ingesting lead shot, there's a fairly simple method to determine whether it's a serious issue: Examine the gizzards of all partridges shot on the estate. This was done on a quail research facility in the US where a large number of birds were shot in a relatively small area. 241 gizzards examined . . . 3 contained lead pellets.

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