Fragments in Meat?

[omicron1792]

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Lead Bullet Fragments in Venison from Rifle-Killed Deer: Potential for Human Dietary Exposure - PMC

Human consumers of wildlife killed with lead ammunition may be exposed to health risks associated with lead ingestion. This hypothesis is based on published studies showing elevated blood lead concentrations in subsistence hunter populations, ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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No more miller lites for you!

 

[MDR]

I've found a few prizes in my meat over the years. Birdshot, lead pieces, copper jacket bits. It happens. Spit it out and go about your day.

Doesn't beat my 1st bison. I had split the meat with a friend. His half went to the butcher, cut and packed. Into the slow cooker, then dished out and cut up. Somehow he still manages to get a piece that had my mushroomed .366 cal Oryx bullet in it.

 

[HunterGatherer]

California passed the copper bullet laws to save the condors - not people.

The reason birds succumb to lead poisoning more is due to them grinding their food in their crops. Mammals are more likely to crap out a chunk of lead (or copper) without it being digested and affecting us.

I asked you about the birds to see what your actual level of education about the overall topic is.

I'm older have no desire to start hunting with copper. Also, I work with environmental contaminants for a living and find the lead bullet thing to be flawed and more of a fear promoting thing.

Yeah I knew you were baiting me with the bird stuff. Figured you were checking to see if I had listened to the same Exo podcast that everyone else did.
I didn’t want to get into the collateral damage to wildlife part of it as that wasn’t really the topic of the thread and I’m not super well informed on that part, as you have pointed out.

 

[Deerhunter6250]

Any high shoulder or square rib contact with gameking soft points I'll have lead in meat despite judicious trimming around entry and exit. If it goes through the grinder you may as well throw out your burger or sausage. This is why I'm phasing out lead in my rifles and going strictly copper. Copper bullets and rifles are good enough these days that I don't feel I'm sacrificing anything by giving up lead. Got a 3 year old and 3 month old who nurses. Ain't going to risk it anymore.

I agree, I only use steel on all my game birds anymore. I had a friend test my wild pig i shot with a lead bullet and I trimmed it well and it had lots of lead in the testing. Only copper for me and my family anymore.

 

[Hondo64d]

Quick simple question: Who's bitten into or otherwise found a bullet fragment in their game meat?

If so, can you tell me the shot placement, which cut of meat, and what type of bullet?

TIA

I’ve found small pieces of lead in ground venison killed with an 140gr AMax from a 6.5 Creedmoor. Heart/lung shot placement.

John

 

[Robobiss]

This isn’t true. Even in people who eat nothing but wild game, lead levels are not elevated above the baseline. The thing that elevates lead levels is cleaning firearms.

Cleaning firearms?

Perfect. Zero concern here

 

[Chris_in_Idaho]

I appreciate all the discussion. Nothing will vaporize my wife's support of my hunting faster than her or one of my boys biting a chunk of bullet. So while toxicity of lead is an important topic, it's not exactly what I was trying to ask about in this thread. Also I've seen how some of the other lead toxicity discussions have devolved into name calling and willful ignorance...

But since the worms are mostly out of the can at this point I might as well jump in as well:

I'm not super concerned about the acute effects of lead making me sick, as in "lead poisoning." But I do definitely have concerns about long term effects on my sons (8 & 11) both on their cognitive abilities and also when they have kids I don't want my grand kids to be a little slower because I fed lead to their dads.

Life is hard, it's harder if you're stupid. I don't want to set them up to be more stupid.

I'm not saying I know whether these effects would happen or not or that I'm making a decision based only on this possibility, but it is a factor in my thinking.

As mentioned before, a solid chunk of bullet in the meat would be catastrophic for my hunting. Most likely I'd catch them all while butchering, but that's another factor I'm considering.

If I decide to go with fragmenting lead bullets, I get the benefit of being able to use very small calibers and be able to spot my own impacts.

If I decide to go with monos, I need to bump up to a bit bigger to make up for the less violent terminal performance. This means a bit more recoil and probably not spotting my own shots.

So as I see it I'm choosing between eliminating the possibility of toxicity and solid fragments in food on one hand or being able to spot impacts on the other.

 

[omicron1792]

I appreciate all the discussion. Nothing will vaporize my wife's support of my hunting faster than her or one of my boys biting a chunk of bullet. So while toxicity of lead is an important topic, it's not exactly what I was trying to ask about in this thread. Also I've seen how some of the other lead toxicity discussions have devolved into name calling and willful ignorance...

But since the worms are mostly out of the can at this point I might as well jump in as well:

I'm not super concerned about the acute effects of lead making me sick, as in "lead poisoning." But I do definitely have concerns about long term effects on my sons (8 & 11) both on their cognitive abilities and also when they have kids I don't want my grand kids to be a little slower because I fed lead to their dads.

Life is hard, it's harder if you're stupid. I don't want to set them up to be more stupid.

I'm not saying I know whether these effects would happen or not or that I'm making a decision based only on this possibility, but it is a factor in my thinking.

As mentioned before, a solid chunk of bullet in the meat would be catastrophic for my hunting. Most likely I'd catch them all while butchering, but that's another factor I'm considering.

If I decide to go with fragmenting lead bullets, I get the benefit of being able to use very small calibers and be able to spot my own impacts.

If I decide to go with monos, I need to bump up to a bit bigger to make up for the less violent terminal performance. This means a bit more recoil and probably not spotting my own shots.

So as I see it I'm choosing between eliminating the possibility of toxicity and solid fragments in food on one hand or being able to spot impacts on the other.

I guess this is only true if you trust that meat you buy from the store is 100% free of contaminants. I don’t.

 

[Chris_in_Idaho]

I guess this is only true if you trust that meat you buy from the store is 100% free of contaminants. I don’t.

Care to elaborate how grocery store meat affects which bullet I hunt with?

 

[Customweld]

I appreciate all the discussion. Nothing will vaporize my wife's support of my hunting faster than her or one of my boys biting a chunk of bullet. .

Wait until she finds a tapeworm cyst while butchering! To the actual topic, yes I have encountered lead fragments in my meat while processing. No fragments big enough to notice have ended up in a meal.

 

[omicron1792]

Care to elaborate how grocery store meat affects which bullet I hunt with?

It’s shouldn’t. But don’t wax poetic about the safety of your family being threatened by eating harvested game. There isn’t one shred of evidence it will hurt your grandkids IQ.

 

[MNGrouser]

I do all my own big game processing and have certainly recovered bullets in the processing, I have never found any bullet fragments in the meat once it is in the kitchen or on the table. I have recovered a ton a BBs in grouse and pheasants over the years.

I also have a lead pot and pour all of my own lead fishing jigs and many no-roll or walking sinkers. I'm certain that my lead exposure is considerably higher due to those activities than the little bit of microscopic lead which may end up in the final product of my big game meat. It is probably also worth noting that I am not a father so needn't concern myself with what I feed "my kids".

 

[S-3 ranch]

Any fool that shoots a Hornady eldx will be eating a lot of lead in their game meat , same thing with any other target bullet that are ever so popular on here
Don’t want lead in your meat go with a tougher bullet, watch this channel and figure out what kind of bullets don’t contaminate your food

 

[wyosam]

Is this the thread that is going to kill the TMK worship here?

No, might turn into another thread about the quality of the mentioned and other studies on the subject. That might spur arguments about the effectiveness of mono bullets. Good times will be had by all.


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[cuerro viejo]

Quick simple question: Who's bitten into or otherwise found a bullet fragment in their game meat?

If so, can you tell me the shot placement, which cut of meat, and what type of bullet?

TIA

100 plus times and all in the face!!

All upland and waterfowl

 

[cuerro viejo]

Any fool that shoots a Hornady eldx will be eating lead in their game meat , same thing with any other target bullet that are ever so popular on here
Don’t want lead in your meat go with a tougher bullet, watch this channel and figure out what kind of bullets don’t contaminate your food

Even a partition fragments so really your only true option is mono. Hell to the no, I live in a free state still

 

[BigredRusch]

My good friend is a falconer. He fed some game meat to one of his birds and killed it. He sent it in for a necropsy and found it died from lead poisoning. Birds are much more sensitive than humans but the bullet fragments are there regardless of if you can see them.


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[Macintosh]

Ive been shooting monos since 2017 or 2018. I chose to use them because they create a smaller wound channel, and the sst’s and ballistic tips I had been using were destroying too much meat. We have very low deer densities where I mainly hunt and its fully timbered so there is extremely little opportunity to “pick your shots”. I got frustrated after losing most of the meat from the off-side shoulder on a deer. So far I have had nothing but good experiences with solid copper bullets. Actually, aside from one clearly misplaced shot, every one has worked what I consider perfectly. I highly prefer the smaller wound channels to what I was getting before. Probably they also work well for me because Im not trying to use them at distances where they’ll be approaching or below their minimum upset velocity.

Yes, I have found lead fragments in meat. 7mm08 SST, found lead fragments in a backstrap that did not appear bloodshot. It was shot in the chest facing me.

And, this is a copper fragment from a 30 caliber 168gr TTSX. Impact was on the near shoulder, about 2500fps at impact, quartering to. This petal was from that near shoulder. Apparently I missed it when butchering, but I found it eating. The rest of the bullet passed thru. Be careful shooting copper, you could chip a tooth!

 

[49ereric]

I had Sierra game kings 165’s I bought from a guy so old version of the bullet.
Close ranges in the woods they would blow up on contact. Had to shoot couple of deer 3 times and butchering was a fragment nightmare, slow and tedious affair.
Used the rest of those bullets for practice

 

[minas stiris]

The people that I hunt with including me, butcher our own. Back in the good old days we would cut roasts and removed all bone. We always used a Garrett Carrot metal detector on the deep meat cuts to ensure there are no cooties or anything we couldn't see. We also used the Carrot on the bodies we killed just to make sure there wasn't something in there to cut or hurt us. Almost every bear the group killed had some form of broadhead or spent slug in the body somewhere. Same thing with a few of the elk we put down. We found about a seven inch piece of aluminum arrow and broadhead in it's liver. The Garrett Carrot is probably the best hand held metal detector on the market but there are other makes that are less expensive. One would be surprised how useful a Carrot can be.