Shooting and hunting is facing an uphill battle in the UK. With phaesant shooting there are large number of big commercial shoots, where guns are paying upwards of 40 a bird and team of 8 to 10 guns will 200 if not more in a day. These are commercial ventures using marhinal lands / woodlands to bring income into an estate. They employ good numbers of game keepers, dogs, handlers and the vast majority of phaesants shot are reared and released. Shoots are putting down 20 or 30,000 birds a year and shoot several days a week.

Many shoots are now showing high flying birds at ranges of 50/60 or 70 yards high - 36g or 42g duck shooting type cartridges are being used with long barreled modern over and unders. Not many old guns are suitable for such shooting (ok perhaps pigeon / wildfowling guns).

On a typical shoot shot to kill ratio is typically 3 or 4 to 1. So hundreds if not thousands of cartridges are bing fired, and given that it is driven shooting most are fired from the same spots each time.

Hence there is a lot of lead and plastic wads going onto the land.

There is unequivocal evidence that lead salts are poisonous to both man and many forms of wildlife - not only birds of prey eating shot birds, but also partridges and other seed eaters picking up pellets. And the UK is densely populated country.

This is not a legal ban, its voluntary phasing out of lead shot and ammunition for game shooting and deer stalking.

We have had to use non toxic shot on waterfowl for a few years now. Early steel cartridges were rubbish. But modern steel in my experience works well and drop fast flying ducks just as well as old lead shot. Yes a modern Franchi semi auto. Now i don't my 100 year Alex Martin sidelock ribless onto the duck marsh.

I do use it with lightly loaded cartridges of fine days. Will I continue to use it -yes but with light cartridges. Probably with bismuth, but there are plenty older guns in use and with the correct wad, i am sure cartridge manufacturers can produce the right cartridge.

For mainstream shooting, most shooters wont really notice much difference. The main difference is the shot game can be sold and go into the humane food chain.

Sadly in the UK we have very little walked up shooting with two or three good friends a couple of dogs, you cover ten miles a day and you each shoot two or three birds for your own consumption.