Lead Shot For Reloading

Ban Lead Hunting Ammo: We Are Not Survivalists Any More

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Ban Lead Hunting Ammo: We Are Not Survivalists Any More Warning: This article contains graphic imagery.

Ballistics short course: lead is dense and soft and cheaper than gold. These features make it attractive for use as ammunition. Dense means more shocking power on impact. Soft means instant deforming of the aerodynamic pellet or bullet into a big fat crushing deforming injury-inflicting instrument. The cheaper than gold part is self-evident.

Rifle and pistol shooters like lead bullets because the density holds speed and transfers shocking power. Shotgunners like lead pellets for the same reasons. A faster projectile with a flatter trajectory also makes it easier to adjust one’s aim.

I am no ballistics expert, but over the years I dabbled in reloading hot loads for a .270 rifle with a Mauser action and a glass-bedded Douglas barrel, so there are a few boxes of hand loaded copper and lead bullets in my tidy little armory. I also reloaded shotshells for bird hunting, and have dozens of cases of lead and steel rounds on hand.  (I guess those lead rounds will be consigned to the target range.)

One BB size lead fragment can kill an eagle. Bird hunters can leave 400,000 pellets per acre of intensely hunted areas. Wild swans ingest lead pellets from both water feeding and land feeding.

In the 1980s, the government proposed a ban on lead shot for waterfowl hunting. Ducks and geese and their allies feed in areas where hunters rain down millions of pellets of shot, of which only one or two ingested are fatal, and birds wounded with a few lead pellets were likewise doomed. Poisoning losses were widely decried. Steel shot pellets were the only available alternative at that time.

Sportsmen and gun aficionados protested. Steel, lacking softness and deformity, only punches holes in birds and does not kill them here and now , decried others, engaging in unfounded hyperbole.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was pushing the anti-lead shot agenda under presidents both Democratic and Republican. Field studies, ballistics reports, Environmental Impact Statements, Congressional findings, filled the public record. The Second Amendment was invoked. It was a hot topic.