big ears
Well-Known Member
As a fly fisherman and a beekeeper I agree 100%
Another angle on the lead or non-lead debate.
- Thread starter Deerkeeper2
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Never mind "No Farmers, No food" ........................... No Bees No Nothing!!!!
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
Ingested lead from eating game not likely to end up in your blood or bones - a statement that some on here believe. Eating lead does you no harm cos it will pass straight through.
Have a read of this article and follow to the articles it cites, especially those on the bioavailability of ingested lead.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Have a read of this article and follow to the articles it cites, especially those on the bioavailability of ingested lead.
Lead contamination in Australian game meat - PMC
Lead-based ammunition (gunshot and bullets) frequently leaves small lead fragments embedded in the meat of wild-shot game animals. Australia produces several commercial game meat products from wild animals harvested with lead-based ammunition and ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Smellydog
Well-Known Member
Who in the right mind a; serves blood shot meat that obviously possibly contains a projectile part or pellet?Ingested lead from eating game not likely to end up in your blood or bones - a statement that some on here believe. Eating lead does you no harm cos it will pass straight through.
Have a read of this article and follow to the articles it cites, especially those on the bioavailability of ingested lead.
Lead contamination in Australian game meat - PMC
Lead-based ammunition (gunshot and bullets) frequently leaves small lead fragments embedded in the meat of wild-shot game animals. Australia produces several commercial game meat products from wild animals harvested with lead-based ammunition and ...
b; on realisation a foreign body is in there mouth chose to swallow it?
Decades of nanny statism has got all believing we need saving from ourselves.
And if someone is using a fragmenting bullet on a deer they are using the wrong bullet!
Although not optimal expansion this bullet killed very quickly and left nothing behind hardly.
Then the mixed message it’s alright to kill and eat rabbit shot with a .22lr or airgun but not a deer shot as suggested by SD. Then it’s alright for olympic shots to put 35 tonnes of lead shot around clay grounds but nobody else.
As for game shooting it’s alright to breed and put out millions and millions of non native birds just for the purpose of shooting them and forget the damage they are doing to flora and fauna. When the sport could be replaced with simulated game shooting using clays and steel shot.
As for game shooting it’s alright to breed and put out millions and millions of non native birds just for the purpose of shooting them and forget the damage they are doing to flora and fauna. When the sport could be replaced with simulated game shooting using clays and steel shot.
Did you listen to the podcast?A useful summary article from a few years ago on the risks of lead from game meat. Makes references to a number of studies overseas showing elevated lead levels amongst those who eat lots of game meat.
Clearly in the UK, the population has a totally different biology from those elsewhere in Europe or North America, with completely different digestion and immune systems so none of this applies here in the UK.
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
No I wouldn’t keep bloodshot meat or knowingly eat lead fragments.
But, when it comes to commercial operations it seems that plenty of such lead shot meat ends up in products such as mince, burgers, sausages etc etc. Lets face a lot of the employees in meat processing plants are not the best paid, and there is huge pressure on maximising meat recovery.
If you look at x-rays of deer shot with lead you will see that fragments end up all over the carcass, and many of these fragments are too small to seen with the naked eye. Such contaminated meat will not be discarded and those fragments will end up on somebodies plate and then in their stomach.
Lead fragments then will dissolve in stomach acids. Typically a meal of game meat will be in the stomach for a few hours so plenty of time for small fragments to dissolve.
Indeed a lot of game cookery involves marinading and cooking in red wine etc - so the dissolving process starts long before the meat is eaten.
Usually when you shoot a deer through the shoulder a lot of the lead fragments end up in the chest cavity in the heart, lungs and congealed blood. These are removed during the gralloch and left for the buzzards, eagles, red kites, ravens and all sorts of other creatures to consume.
Shoot a deer with a muzzle velocity of above 2450 fps, it will expand and fragment quite rapidly. Most bullets will loose a significant portion of their mass within the target animal. The bullet you show is very untypical of most high velocity lead hunting bullets.
Worse are the highly fragmenting varmint bullets used to shoot foxes, rabbits etc. such bullets are designed to blow up into lots of tiny fragments.
Wild birds and animals tend to take in large lumps of heart, lung etc and are unable with their beaks and mouths to pick out the lead fragments. Most have very acidic stomachs and thus any lead fragments readily dissolve. Plenty of evidence that lead is very harmful to raptors and other wildlife.
Going back to the bullets and 400 years of hunting with lead bullets. In days of black powder you used large lumps of lead going at about 1/2 to 1/3 of the velocity of a modern centrefire. They would mostly punch through remaining in one piece and not fragment into little bits, so little in the way of contamination of the surrounding meat.
But once you get up to high velocities they break up. This is reason why you use jacketed bullets to keep them together to allow bullet to penetrate and not break up too quickly.
Copper bullets generally stay together in one piece and punch through the carcass 99% intact. And you do not get the massive bruising you get with lead bullets so you get a much higher level of meat recovery.
And when such carcasses go to the game dealers and meat processors there is no lead contamination to be worried about.
Smellydog
Well-Known Member
So the problem is commercialisation and a glut of shot game being sold. Not what they were shot with.
Introduce a bag limits and ban third party sales.
Yes and no, jacketed bullets arrived to prevent leading a barrel and losing accuracy due to increased velocity. Not because they break up.
Lead alloys harden bullets and work as does paper patching and a modern alternative is plastic coating.
So we should have a concession for historical arms and a grant for hunting with such...?
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
Historical arms - yes there could be a concession. Vintage cars can still use leaded petrol.
However bismuth shot can be used in vintage shotguns - wildfowlers have been using it for many years in old 8 bores etc.
New products such as Hortonium could be used in shotguns and in old rifles. But certainly up here in Scotland old vintage black powder rifles don’t meet muzzle velocity requirements for hunting deer.
There are proposals that lead can still be used on ranges where bullets are captured, and most ranges use some form of butts that capture the bullets so no problems with using old rifles on these.
I wonder if there is any analysis of the areas that have been mined for lead and silver in Britain and how those areas compare to areas with no lead or silver mining?
If there were an issue, should growing food on those areas be prohibited with the risk of lead getting into the food chain?
If there were an issue, should growing food on those areas be prohibited with the risk of lead getting into the food chain?
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