I have had the following reply so far:
1 uses Gamebore Black Gold Dark Storm 32 gram #3 High Performance Steel.
1 uses Gamebore Black Gold Dark Storm 32 gram #3 High Performance Steel.
Shooting Steel
- Thread starter MAXLISTER1987
- Start date
StephenToast
Well-Known Member
That's annoying. I bought 3000 a couple of months ago. I'll have to see if I can either get some more or find something else.
Hey @MAXLISTER1987 im not a big touring game shot but on the occasional day I do have I have used these for the last two years. I’ve also used them to take pigeons, corvids, rabbits and 2 admittedly quite close Foxes. Shot through a 6 year old side by side chapuis, I’ve shot about 1000 of them now and have no damage to the gun. I’ve practiced with them on clays too. My advice would be not to over think it, much like the copper deer ammo it certainly works, perhaps in a different way. There’s no need to make it a hill to die on.
Ultimate Steel Game 30 grams Earth Wad - Lyalvale Express
The Ultimate Steel is a high quality Non-Toxic Shot game cartridge, with the new Earth Wad that is 100% Bio Compostable that offers an excellent alternative to lead. Apart from it’s non-toxic credentials, the custom-made iron alloy shot conforms to the CIP softness requirements, but won’t deform...
www.lyalvaleexpress.com
Dunwaters
Well-Known Member
Very unlikely to happen before you run out of places to go.
Hey @MAXLISTER1987 im not a big touring game shot but on the occasional day I do have I have used these for the last two years. I’ve also used them to take pigeons, corvids, rabbits and 2 admittedly quite close Foxes. Shot through a 6 year old side by side chapuis, I’ve shot about 1000 of them now and have no damage to the gun. I’ve practiced with them on clays too. My advice would be not to over think it, much like the copper deer ammo it certainly works, perhaps in a different way. There’s no need to make it a hill to die on.
Ultimate Steel Game 30 grams Earth Wad - Lyalvale Express
The Ultimate Steel is a high quality Non-Toxic Shot game cartridge, with the new Earth Wad that is 100% Bio Compostable that offers an excellent alternative to lead. Apart from it’s non-toxic credentials, the custom-made iron alloy shot conforms to the CIP softness requirements, but won’t deform...www.lyalvaleexpress.com
They are most likely discontinued now that Fiocchi own Express and fiocchi have their Green Core B&P range of wads as Fiocchi also own B&P.
1 uses Dark Storm Steel Quad Seal size #3 or size #4
Trigger260
Well-Known Member
I use steel for duck and geese.
Standard 32g 4s for duck, 3inch 1s for geese.
No complaints!
Standard 32g 4s for duck, 3inch 1s for geese.
No complaints!
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
Large amounts of land are already under certification and or stewardship type regimes. These pretty all now stipulate non toxic ammunition. Many shoots are also selling to game dealers who are supplying end customers that also stipulate non toxic.
By all means take your custom elsewhere, or turn down invitations, but if the shoot stipulates non toxic and you choose to shoot, then you need to abide by their rules. Or get thrown out.
As others have said there is so much overthinking of this question.
If your gun is steel shot proofed then you can use High Speed steel if you feel the need. Otherwise provided your gun is good order, the barrels have not been honed or subject endless refinishing on the outside and are not tightly choked just use standard steel and carry on as before.
Or you can shoot elsewhere, or take up golf.
Night òwl
Well-Known Member
Lead free , no such thing as non toxic were metals are involved
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
Lead free and non-toxic are used interchangeably on this subject. But yes agree that metals have varying levels of toxicity depending upon levels ingested and adsorbed into body tissues. But equally some metals are essential to humane health.
Indeed there are a number of ongoing studies linking levels of metals in the blood and humane health. Some - lead and cadmium in particular are essentially toxic in any quantity, but others such as iron and zinc are essential for good health but in high quantities may be toxic.
Pine Marten
Well-Known Member
I'm the guy with the Chapuis, and I've been using the Jocker standard power cartridges mentioned before for two seasons. They have a patent cardboard wad so don't leave a mess. I bought them before I had the steel proofed, 3" chambered Chapuis for my old Brno side by side and kept using them. They are absolutely fine for everything at normal ranges. I have a few boxes left and will keep using them until they run out on the "drives" (loose term...) with pheasant, woodcock, hares, pigeons etc. They are a bit underpowered for duck. You have to accept the range limitation but that's no different to what most people are quite bad at doing on ducks. Which I learned painfully from seven seasons of wildfowling. So this year, on the ducks I shall be using Eley ESP high power steel, 3" cases, biodegradable EcoWads, number 3 steel shot.
I actually wanted the BioAmmo equivalents, which also boasts biodegradable cases, but no-one seems to be importing them to the UK, only the BioAmmo Blue ones which have a proprietary alloy shot, and are far more expensive. That defeats one of the main points of buying the Chapuis. Suspect the same.has happened to the Jockers: they're still available in France, just not being distributed here anymore as far as I can tell. Shame as they were very good and pretty cheap also. I won't mention the B-word...
I have Bean shooting steel since the ban on shooting wildfowl with lead came in, which was a total con.
Anyone who says steel is as good as lead is talking utter tosh, out to 40 yds it brings birds down after 40yds its a lottery.
I am a much better shotgun shot than a rifle shot, I can kill birds with lead out to 50-55 yds,using the correct cartridge, but not a chance with steel.
Anyone who says steel is as good as lead is talking utter tosh, out to 40 yds it brings birds down after 40yds its a lottery.
I am a much better shotgun shot than a rifle shot, I can kill birds with lead out to 50-55 yds,using the correct cartridge, but not a chance with steel.
RJD
Well-Known Member
You make a good point, perhaps the ‘steel is awesome’ comes from the same guns who struggle to estimate height.
You are a better shot than me, 35 yards is pushing the boundaries on decent grown on pheasant and ducks.
I find it amusing in some ways. when steel came in for wild fowling almost 30 years ago all you heard was it doesn't kill it just wounds, the penetration is not as good, it does not have the range, etc etc etc. now you hear the same thing from the game shooters!
Now I know a large number of people who prefer steel to lead. With the US leading, steel has improved massively over that period of time, where lead has almost stood still. Yes TSS is better than lead but at a price.
if you accept that for the average person, 40 yards is the maximum that most people will regularly hit birds at then steel will kill cleanly at that range. if it doesn't, then it is more likely that your aim was off and the bird was not in the pattern. However most people will not admit to that. yes lead will travel further than that and TSS even further, but how many can in reality hit 90% of what they aim at at those ranges?
the trick to my mind is either to go completely to steel for everything or to ensure that all of your cartridges are going at the same speed so that you do not have to adjust lead to suit the speed of the cartridge you are shooting.
for fowling, my go to cartridge is game bore mammoth 36 gm 3's steel.
Now I know a large number of people who prefer steel to lead. With the US leading, steel has improved massively over that period of time, where lead has almost stood still. Yes TSS is better than lead but at a price.
if you accept that for the average person, 40 yards is the maximum that most people will regularly hit birds at then steel will kill cleanly at that range. if it doesn't, then it is more likely that your aim was off and the bird was not in the pattern. However most people will not admit to that. yes lead will travel further than that and TSS even further, but how many can in reality hit 90% of what they aim at at those ranges?
the trick to my mind is either to go completely to steel for everything or to ensure that all of your cartridges are going at the same speed so that you do not have to adjust lead to suit the speed of the cartridge you are shooting.
for fowling, my go to cartridge is game bore mammoth 36 gm 3's steel.
Last edited:
Hornet
Well-Known Member
I have also been using none lead on the foreshore since joining my wildfowling club 20 plus years ago, at first, when it was affordable, tungsten matrix and hevi shot were very good indeed, then due to the horrendous rise in price of those mentioned, switched to steel, mammoth 3" no 3s or 1s or Hull Solway or Express, all do a good job, but of course are all high performance steel requiring a suitable gun, now from my own observations, I think standard steel in 12 bore is pretty poor, I shoot a fair amount of pigeons and squirrels to feed my hawk, which of course have to be shot with steel, time and again, my 20 bore kills much better with "standard steel" than the 12 bore standard offerings, and have no hesitation in using it out to 35-40 yards.
The conclusions based on my experiences that I have personally come to are that lead is still my go to where allowed until I have to change.
I accept that lead is on the way out and agree that acceptable alternatives need to be used to keep what we kill in the food chain.
However firstly I personally believe that we have to use as lethal a cartridge as possible. Steel is ballistically inferior, just been the choice of the cartridge manufacturers.
Personally where lead can’t be used for game shooting I wouldn’t consider any form of steel unless you are shooting a semi auto or heavy O/U with some form of recoil reduction system to reduce the recoil.
TSS, Remington Hevi shot , Tungsten are all I would use.
Availability and price are restrictive but you have to decide how much/ important shooting is to you.
The Shooting community has come accustomed to paying a relatively low price for cartridges and consequently the amount of shots fired per person has increased over the last few decades.
Most people I talk to moan about the cost of non lead cartridges but are more than happy to boast about how much the new gun they have got cost and that they treated themselves to the higher grade not the base model.
How much the price of birds has gone up but they still pay to shoot them.
Seems to be a kudos on buying anything else other than ammunition.
Spend more on your cartridges and don’t buy the wellies with the zips up the side.
I accept that lead is on the way out and agree that acceptable alternatives need to be used to keep what we kill in the food chain.
However firstly I personally believe that we have to use as lethal a cartridge as possible. Steel is ballistically inferior, just been the choice of the cartridge manufacturers.
Personally where lead can’t be used for game shooting I wouldn’t consider any form of steel unless you are shooting a semi auto or heavy O/U with some form of recoil reduction system to reduce the recoil.
TSS, Remington Hevi shot , Tungsten are all I would use.
Availability and price are restrictive but you have to decide how much/ important shooting is to you.
The Shooting community has come accustomed to paying a relatively low price for cartridges and consequently the amount of shots fired per person has increased over the last few decades.
Most people I talk to moan about the cost of non lead cartridges but are more than happy to boast about how much the new gun they have got cost and that they treated themselves to the higher grade not the base model.
How much the price of birds has gone up but they still pay to shoot them.
Seems to be a kudos on buying anything else other than ammunition.
Spend more on your cartridges and don’t buy the wellies with the zips up the side.
If the truth is out for many many of the UK's game shooters a driven forty yard pheasant is the exception and most are but thirty yards if that. With driven partridge and driven grouse then a twenty-five yards shot is the normal. It's different for flighted wildfowl but on driven birds on many shoots I'd still stand by what I've said that a thirty yard bird is the normal if that.
Felt recoil is different to every single person. Being an old arse, I recall learning to rifle shoot on Lee Enfield no4's as a young cadet (303), then SLR's (7.62) as a soldier. I laughed when the young sprogs complained of the recoil from a SA80 shooting 5.56.
Yes my Ou is heavy, (usually 36gr 3'3 but sometimes 42 gr) I prefer it as it slows my swing down, but even on my sxs with 30gr 6's I do not notice much recoil really
Hi
Here in Denmark lead shot was banned back in the mid 1990ies.
At first we experienced some issues using steel shot. Personly i fond the stel shot bad, espeasially when used on deer.
Lead shot size 3 (3,5mm) has always been the perfect tool for shooting deer out to around 25 meters on driven hunts here i Jutland. When we had to chenge to steel shot we experinced a lot of woundings.
On birds, like ducks and geese the same picture was obvius.
Tungsten and Bismuth did better, and was almost up to the old lead standard, but 8-10 times more expensive back then.
However as eveyone had to use it, and the cartrige compaies, and hunters started to get more experience.
First of, you have to reduce distance to target by around 10-15% when using steel shot, otherwhise you will get a lot of wounded animals out there.
Then you have to go one or two numbers up when using steel, we have always used size 3-4 on deer and geese and 5-6 on ducks. now we use 1-3 on deer/geese and 3-4-5 on ducks.
Remember that steel is lighter than lead, so 32 gram of steel stoot has a lot more pellets in it than 32grams of lead. This means the animal will be hit by more pellets, but the same size steel has less energy than lead, therefore go a size up i steel.
Finally the cartrige companies speacially ELEY, Gamebore and RWS, now make very good steelshot cartriges, including biodegredable wads.
The modern steel shot cartriges are wastly better than the steelshot shells made 25 yeas ago, and they are very close to lead shot in performance on game.
Here we are not allowd to use steel in some forrests, because the steel can lead to damage in wood mills, and then we use tungsten or bismuth, they are however today 2-4 times expensive.
Over the last 10 years we have seen a decline in woods where steel is banned, as the new woodmill eqipment has been designed to withstand steelshot embedded in timber.
My shotguns are older, AYA S/S hunters gun and 4 ring Fortuna Suhl S/S from 1959, i shoot high power steel in both (ELEY VIP Extreme Steel 12/70 32g, and Kent Hypersteel 12/70 32g).
However i had my Suhl choke changed from full to 1/4 on second barrel, as full choke combined with modern high performance steel cartriges as it has been reported to be damaging to such old guns.
So with 30 years experience from a whole country (Denmark) it can be said clearly, that with little reduction in range and a little lager shot size, then modern steel shot cartriges are OK for hunting.
Hope you can use the experinces we had here. The British cartrige companies are tody the best in the world for manufacturing Steel shot cartriges, so it should be possible for you to get them if you have to use them.
Here in Denmark lead shot was banned back in the mid 1990ies.
At first we experienced some issues using steel shot. Personly i fond the stel shot bad, espeasially when used on deer.
Lead shot size 3 (3,5mm) has always been the perfect tool for shooting deer out to around 25 meters on driven hunts here i Jutland. When we had to chenge to steel shot we experinced a lot of woundings.
On birds, like ducks and geese the same picture was obvius.
Tungsten and Bismuth did better, and was almost up to the old lead standard, but 8-10 times more expensive back then.
However as eveyone had to use it, and the cartrige compaies, and hunters started to get more experience.
First of, you have to reduce distance to target by around 10-15% when using steel shot, otherwhise you will get a lot of wounded animals out there.
Then you have to go one or two numbers up when using steel, we have always used size 3-4 on deer and geese and 5-6 on ducks. now we use 1-3 on deer/geese and 3-4-5 on ducks.
Remember that steel is lighter than lead, so 32 gram of steel stoot has a lot more pellets in it than 32grams of lead. This means the animal will be hit by more pellets, but the same size steel has less energy than lead, therefore go a size up i steel.
Finally the cartrige companies speacially ELEY, Gamebore and RWS, now make very good steelshot cartriges, including biodegredable wads.
The modern steel shot cartriges are wastly better than the steelshot shells made 25 yeas ago, and they are very close to lead shot in performance on game.
Here we are not allowd to use steel in some forrests, because the steel can lead to damage in wood mills, and then we use tungsten or bismuth, they are however today 2-4 times expensive.
Over the last 10 years we have seen a decline in woods where steel is banned, as the new woodmill eqipment has been designed to withstand steelshot embedded in timber.
My shotguns are older, AYA S/S hunters gun and 4 ring Fortuna Suhl S/S from 1959, i shoot high power steel in both (ELEY VIP Extreme Steel 12/70 32g, and Kent Hypersteel 12/70 32g).
However i had my Suhl choke changed from full to 1/4 on second barrel, as full choke combined with modern high performance steel cartriges as it has been reported to be damaging to such old guns.
So with 30 years experience from a whole country (Denmark) it can be said clearly, that with little reduction in range and a little lager shot size, then modern steel shot cartriges are OK for hunting.
Hope you can use the experinces we had here. The British cartrige companies are tody the best in the world for manufacturing Steel shot cartriges, so it should be possible for you to get them if you have to use them.
Similar threads
