Lead in Meat Discussion

[Jason Snyder]

I personally know a guy that went from shooting everything with a 6.8spc to a 300win mag just to use copper bullets.

I don’t know why he would need to. I’ve killed a lot of elk with a .243, 6.5 CM and a .280 Rem, all with Barnes or Hammers.

Load data I see for a 6 CM shows 32-3300 fps for a 103 grain Hammer Hunter. I guarantee that will kill an elk. I was using 85 grain Barnes in my .243.

 

[Jason Snyder]

And I don't buy into the idea that you need to have a screaming velocity and size down to use them.

The problem many folks run into is thinking they need to use the same weight copper as the accubond they were using. They probably don’t have the twist rate to stabilize the bullet and they are losing velocity.

Based on my experience of loading these bullets, stay on the lighter side and push them fast. Results are better. There is plenty of data on the Hammer forum to support this.

 

[Wyo_hntr]

I don’t know why he would need to.

Neither do I, he has fully bought into the "bigger is better" and "if I use lead my kids will die" train of thought. I just nod in agreement and keep killing stuff with eldm's....

 

[Mike D Texas]

The science on lead consumption by mammals and birds ( and yes even in the form of metallic lead) clearly indicates toxicity/neurological harm from even minimal exposure. In humans there is no safe level of lead and consumption can cause permanent impacts on the developing brains of children. Your game eatin granpappies living to 90 is irrelevant and they very likely had reduced IQs from exposure to leaded gasoline, leaded paint and weekly doses of lead shot in their dinner. Raptors and scavengers with highly acidic digestive system are also particularly susceptible. Hunters that boast about their lack of concern for condors or raptors or suggest non leaded ammo use is falling into a conspiracy to somehow disarm us all are doing the hunting community no service. Copper bullets like the TTSX, LRX, GMX, Hammer Hunter at impact velocities out to 400-700 yards depending on caliber absolutely blast animals with plenty of authority and dont poison other scavengers or increase the risk to your kids. Seems like Rokslide is recently a bit of an anti mono echo chamber and claims about lost animals are very likely the same dudes shooting too much recoil caliber and is just plain poor shooting. Spend 5 seconds on any African hunting forum and you'll understand just how effective these bullets are, from gazelle to cape buffalo to elephants.

Yeah we should all blindly “follow the science” like in 2021 right?


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[Str8shooter]

Yeah we should all blindly “follow the science” like in 2021 right?


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Or better yet, dont trust scientists, experiments or anything from academics, or even data you disagree with. Trust your feelings, good luck

 

[bradmacmt]

Here's a piece by John Barsness. I like John - he's a no-nonsense, "just the facts mam" sort of writer (of course he is, he's from Montana). I've used copper mono's on and off since the 1990's. Mostly I stick to lead core bullets. I've absolutely found they kill quicker than mono's. Apparently John has found the same thing to be true. However, I think the case for lead-free is compelling and I keep an open mind. For your consideration:

"Here's Chapter 20 of my Big Book of Gun Gack III, which is a longer version of an article I previously wrote for Handloader magazine:

Non-Toxic Hunting Bullets

While the term “non-toxic” sounds somewhat weird when applied to hunting bullets, the recent lead-free trend keeps increasing. Some hunters believe the concept to be an anti-hunting conspiracy, but it’s happening because lead isn’t good for animals—including humans, the reason we developed lead-free gasoline, paints, and plumbing pipes, and many indoor shooting ranges ban lead bullets.

Some skeptics point out that lead occurs naturally on Planet Earth. That’s true, but lead primarily becomes a problem after being mined, smelted and used in various products, adding to natural levels. It can affect all organs of the body, resulting in symptoms from exhaustion and hearing loss to seizures and miscarriages. These don’t necessarily happen immediately:
Lead tends to first accumulate in bones, and can be released months or even years later.

From 1960-70, Americans had average lead blood-levels of 60 micrograms per deciliter, while for many years five micrograms per deciliter was considered “safe.” (All lead levels cited here will be micrograms per deciliter.) Recent studies, however, suggest any lead-level can result in damage to humans, particularly in children. Thanks to the elimination of many lead sources, since 1970 the average level in Americans has dropped considerably, in 2012 averaging five.
How much eating wild game taken with lead-based bullets affects humans, however, is debatable. One large-scale study in Germany and Switzerland found adult hunters had about the same lead levels as non-hunters, perhaps because hunters tend to live in more rural areas, instead of cities where lead pollution is more prevalent. A Spanish study found elevated levels of lead in the meat of deer and wild boar, and stated, "Mining sites in the region can influence the results, but they alone do not explain the extremely high levels detected in some samples."

Another study in North Dakota found hunters, and people who eat game provided by hunters, have lead blood-levels 50% higher than non-hunters. However, the levels were very low, .84 for people who didn’t eat game, and 1.27 for people who did—far less than the average for all Americans.

Another, less general “study” took place in our own household, when for a while my wife Eileen’s blood had to be tested annually for a medical condition. Despite our living almost entirely on game meat, her lead levels were also far lower than average for adult Americans.

However, during that period we started using more and more lead-free bullets. I took our first big game animal with a non-toxic bullet in 1995, and during the next decade we put a total of 55 big game animals into our freezers, 23.6% with non-toxic bullets. Over the last five years we’ve put 21 big game animals into our freezers, 15 of them (71.4%) with non-toxics.

We started using more non-toxic bullets not because of concerns about eating lead fragments, but because “monolithic” bullets ruin less meat in smaller animals like pronghorns, and penetrate deeply in larger animals like elk. The lead-free bullets used during the past five years included Barnes TTSX’s, Cutting Edge Raptors, Hornady GMX’s and Nosler E-Tips, and normally tore up noticeably less meat than lead-core bullets—though there have been occasional exceptions.

Velocity and shot placement also affect meat loss, and one rare exception was a mule deer buck Eileen took in 2014 with the 100-grain Barnes TTSX at 3150 fps from her NULA .257 Roberts. Despite shooting behind the shoulder as the buck stood broadside at 100 yards, the bullet still ruined a lot of shoulder meat. On the other hand, some of our moderate-velocity lead bullet loads result in very little meat damage, especially the .35 caliber, 180-grain Speer Hot-Cors Eileen handloads to 1900 fps for her old German 9x72R combination gun, and any of the lead-cored 286-grain bullets I use at around 2400-2500 fps in various 9.3mm cartridges.

We also personally butcher all big game going into our freezers, and trim bullet-damaged meat very carefully. Still, lead fragments can travel a long way from blood-shot areas. A Norwegian study found leads fragments as far as 29 centimeters (about 11 inches) from bullet entrance holes, but hunters who cut up their own animals trimmed at most 20 cm (8 inches), and often less than 10 cm (4 inches). The same study also noted that controlled-expansion lead-cored bullets result in far fewer lead fragments than cup-and-core bullets, but all lead-core bullets left “a cloud of lead particles in the meat around the wound channel.”

A British study on gamebirds taken with lead shot indicates cooking can increase how much lead enters human bloodstreams. Tiny pieces of lead normally pass quickly through the human digestive system, but cooking allows some lead to be absorbed by the surrounding game meat, especially when vinegar’s used in the recipe.

Concerns about lead poisoning aren’t only about humans but various sorts of wildlife, especially birds. The lead shot ban for hunting waterfowl in the U.S. occurred because ducks and geese picked up lead shot while feeding in ponds and lakes. Their gizzards ground the shot, sometimes resulting in lead poisoning. The same thing occurs with carnivorous birds scavenging gut-piles or varmints shot with lead-core bullets, the reason for lead-bullet bans where rare California condors have died from lead poisoning. (Condors also live in parts of Arizona, but their game department only requests that hunters use lead-free bullets in those areas.)
However, even after lead bullets were banned in the parts of California where most condors live, their blood-lead levels didn’t drop, and in 2019 lead-based bullets will be banned throughout the state.
Eagles, ravens and other scavenging birds have shown elevated lead-levels in areas where big game gutpiles or varmint carcasses are common. Studies also indicate that (like human children), young birds in the nest are far more affected by eating lead fragments. I know a ranch-owner here in Montana who only allows non-toxic bullets for shooting prairie dogs on his place, though he doesn’t ban lead-core bullets for hunting big game, and uses them himself.

However, scavenging mammals may not have the same sensitivity to eating lead, perhaps because (unlike humans) they only eat raw carcasses. A 2010 study of wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and black and grizzly bears around Yellowstone National Park found some animals had higher blood-lead levels than others, though almost all were lower than five.
Only grizzlies had lead levels approaching those considered unsafe for humans, but no lead fragments were found in their droppings, so the reason couldn’t be determined. Mountain lions and wolves don’t scavenge carcasses very often, and their lead levels were often too low to be detectable. Perhaps the most significant finding of all, however, was that in all the animals tested, “blood lead levels did not increase during the autumn hunting season when potentially lead-tainted gut piles are available.”

So once again, the evidence is mixed, but non-toxic bullet regulations keep increasing, one reason so many companies now produce lead-free bullets, along with ammunition loaded with lead-free bullets, including rimfire ammo. The major concerns for American hunters, of course, are price and effectiveness.

Prices continue to drop as more companies make lead-free bullets, but in general non-toxics still cost more, because lead’s one of the cheapest, most easily formed metals available. However, in 2018 monolithic big game bullets cost about the same as most “premium” lead-core bullets, and less than some. The only lead-core hunting bullets that are substantially cheaper are the cup-and-cores the Norwegian study found disperse the most lead in game meat.

Many big game hunters consider the terminal performance of monolithic big game bullets superior to almost any lead-cored bullets, for the same reasons Eileen and I use so many: They destroy less edible meat, and usually penetrate deeper than lead-cored premiums.

On the other hand, because monolithics destroy less tissue, on average they don’t kill as quickly as lead-cored bullets. In an analysis of my big game notes since 1995, rib-shot animals taken with monolithics have traveled an average of slightly over 50 yards after the shot before falling, while the fastest average kills come from lead-cored bullets that fragment considerably—and the more they fragment, the sooner animals drop. The average distance big game shot with Berger hunting bullets, for instance, has only been 18 yards, and the percentage of instant drops from rib shots is also higher.

 

[bradmacmt]

Part 2:

One other problem with monolithics for some hunters is longer-range performance. Because monolithics are made of lighter metals, they’re longer for their weight than lead-cored bullets, and contrary to what many hunters still believe, bullet length, not weight, is the major factor in bullet stabilization. As a result, it’s more difficult to stabilize long monolithics with really high ballistic coefficients.

However, that’s changing as rifling twists in factory rifles continue to tighten, and at “conventional” hunting ranges, a fast, light monolithic results in the flatter trajectory desired by most hunters. Over the past decade or so, adding pointed plastic tips to monolithic bullets increased ballistic coefficient and enhanced expansion.

Obtaining sufficient expansion with non-toxic rimfire and varmint bullets is more difficult. Monolithics don’t expand as easily as lead-cored bullets, so most manufacturers make non-toxic small-game with thin jackets around some sort of copper-mix core. CCI offers both .22 Long Rifle and .22 Magnum ammunition with non-toxic hollow-point bullets made of copper powder and polymer, and Eileen and I tried both on ground squirrels during the past two summers.
The Long Rifle Copper-22 load features a 21-grain bullet at an advertised 1850 fps, and from Eileen’s Anschutz Model 54 it expanded like any lead hollow-point ammo. However, Copper-22’s cost about twice as much as CCI’s popular Mini-Mag hollow-points.

I used the TNT Green .22 Magnum load in my Ruger American Rifle, a 30-grain hollow-point at 2050 fps. It was plenty accurate, and in the RAR shot to exactly the same place as lead-cored ammo, but on ground squirrels the bullets didn’t expand much, if at all. However, they expanded well on jackrabbits, so are probably designed more for larger varmints—and the price is close to lead-cored .22 Magnum ammunition.

I also field-tested a bunch of Hornady NTX .17 HMR ammunition on both ground squirrels and prairie dogs. Hornady’s website states the NTX bullets feature a “frangible copper alloy” core, and they aren’t kidding. The advertised muzzle velocity is 2525 fps, but they chronographed around 100 fps faster from my CZ 452. Point-of-impact, accuracy and expansion were indistinguishable from Hornady 17-grain V-Max ammo, and the price is pretty close too.

Hornady also offers a 15.5 grain NTX Superformance load for the .17 Hornet at an advertised muzzle velocity of 3870 fps. In my CZ 527 the velocity was spot-on, and occasional rounds broke 3900 fps! As with the .17 HMR load, I didn’t find any noticeable target or field difference between the NTX ammo and 17-grain V-Max factory loads.
Unfortunately, Hornady only offers the 15.5 grain NTX bullet in factory ammo, not as a handloading component. I asked them if that might change, and they said maybe—but they’re busy with a bunch of products and projects, and it sounded like a light maybe.

While a few non-toxic .17 caliber component bullets are available, I tested only the least expensive, the 18-grain Lehigh Defense Controlled Chaos, which still costs as much as some lead-cored big game bullets. It’s a monolithic hollow-point designed so the nose section breaks up on impact, and originated due “an animal control agency’s request for a no lead .243 bullet… Basically, the idea was to burst the bullet into numerous particles at a pre-determined depth…. The agency had tried copper-matrix frangible rounds and found the penetration depth and particle size were less than what was required….”

I handloaded the 18-grain Lehigh bullets in my .17 Hornet with the same charge of Hodgdon CFEBLK used with 20-grain Hornady V-Max and Nosler Varmageddon Tipped bullets. Muzzle velocity was similar, over 3700 fps, and accuracy good. The Lehigh bullet expanded on ground squirrels, though not as violently as plastic-tipped bullets, and should work very well on larger varmints from jackrabbits to coyotes.

In calibers from .204 up several brands of non-toxic varmint bullets are available, and all work very well—except, again, they’re lighter than the heaviest lead-core bullets, so their ballistic coefficients remain somewhat lower. On the other hand, the lighter bullets can be driven to far higher velocities, so hold up pretty well out to 300+ yards.
Several varmint shooters I know have had accuracy problems with 36-grain Barnes Varmint Grenade .224 bullets in various rifles, especially .22 Hornets, and other smaller cartridges with slower rifling twists. As a result, the 36-grain doesn’t always fully stabilize. The solution is either the 30-grain Varmint Grenade or Speer TNT Green.
If you must use—or choose—lead-free bullets for hunting, there’s a practical alternative for almost any purpose from small game on up to the biggest game on earth."

 

[jslove]

I've killed plenty of whitetails, muleys, elk, and pronghorn over the years with lead and with copper using .270 and .300 Weatherby Mag. As long as the bullet is in the right place, they all tip over. When they don't, it's because the bullet didn't end up exactly where it should have.

Move the goalposts all you want, but the fact remains that shot placement and not bullet type, material, or caliber is what results in quick kills. Also, you actually responded to me first--I replied to EastHumboldt. And your post #147 says nothing about caliber. Now, I'm not saying you are experiencing memory confusion due to increased lead in your diet over the years compared to most folks, but, maybe I'm not not saying that either

This.

We archers next door are arguing about mechanicals, fixed blades, and heavy arrows. Everything is a trade. Nothing is perfect. Have good judgement and practice with your weapon so you can hit the spot. If you practice enough and understand your limitations you can use any of it and be successful.

I like animals. I like to watch them, I like to hear them, I like to hunt and eat some of them. I’m happy to do my part on our little planet and accept reasonable constraints to make sure I get to keep doing the stuff I like. Better than having to go to Mars because we screwed everything over around here. Elon and all the cool kids can go.

 

[Sccritterkiller]

I probably get more lead exposure from split shot sinkers than any bullet shot meat. It's just easier to use your teeth..lol

 

[doc holiday13]

The science on lead consumption by mammals and birds ( and yes even in the form of metallic lead) clearly indicates toxicity/neurological harm from even minimal exposure. In humans there is no safe level of lead and consumption can cause permanent impacts on the developing brains of children

How about my reasoning of: I don't enjoy chipping teeth or crunching on metal (lead or copper)

Yes its happened multiple times which is why I made the switch.

 

[Sccritterkiller]

How about my reasoning of: I don't enjoy chipping teeth or crunching on metal (lead or copper)

Yes its happened multiple times which is why I made the switch.

At least copper and lead give some...Steel is what really sucks...got 2 crowns thanks to steel shot. I got a pinpoint metal detector to go over my ducks before they get cooked now.

 

[doc holiday13]

At least copper and lead give some...Steel is what really sucks...got 2 crowns thanks to steel shot. I got a pinpoint metal detector to go over my ducks before they get cooked now.

Smart.. I might have to pick one of those up. I'm doing a conservation snow goose hunt in a few weeks. No plugs, no limits. Which means I'll be making LOTS of goose sausage

 

[Ozarkansas]

At least copper and lead give some...Steel is what really sucks...got 2 crowns thanks to steel shot. I got a pinpoint metal detector to go over my ducks before they get cooked now.

Tungsten shot in turkeys is the worst for that since it’s so small. It kills great but I gave up on it after cracking a tooth and getting paranoid about every subsequent bite.

As far as lead in meat goes, I’m concerned enough about it to avoid using fragmenting bullets, but not concerned enough to totally move to non-toxic, especially in my guns that prefer lead

 

[manitou1]

Here’s a couple Barnes TSX I recovered from whitetail I won’t be using those again

I quit using Barnes (TTSX) due to shooting a large buck in the crease behind the shoulder and breaking the offside shoulder, at 30 yards.
He ran 400 yards and disappeared.
I took my pack and gear up the hill and retrieved my kill kit.

Upon reaching the deer in the creek bottom below 40 minutes later, I set my gun down and grabbed his antlers to flip him over.
He exploded on me, knocked the kill kit out of my hands and knocked me over. I grabbed my gun and shot him again, aboout an inch from the first entry hole.

The heart just had a tiny pencil hole.

Those bullets were super accurate, but didn't do the job I desired.

Yes, I now give animals a quick tap before grabbing them! I had killed literally hundreds of animals prior to that experience without the "excitement".

 

[farmermail]

@doc holiday13, great post and great topic. Nice work keeping the conversation going.

A thought: My kids like to hunt. They have been exposed to information regarding lead toxicity and the impacts to birds. They asked "dad, can we use copper bullets in our gun?".
I looked at it as basically two choices:

Explain to them why that might not be a good. We have a GREAT load worked up for their 6.5CM using lead bullets, and they worked great on game, 10yo daughter one shot killed her first deer with it, Never took a single step, as humane of a kill as possible. I define that as good and a win.

Say yes and sort out a copper load that I am sure will work. May not result in the same "instant" kill, but we will find it, it will be humane.

I chose the later, as it keeps them interested in hunting, helps them "feel better" about shooting, and therefore they go hunting and shooting more. I struggle to see a "loss" with this decision. If we could get more youth involvement with shooting sports and hunting by voluntarily using less toxic ammo (copper is not "non-toxic": https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/etc.5620200427), is that bad?

Full disclosure: I shoot lead out of my guns, and use match bullets on game in some loads. 168 Sierra Match King in my .300 Win for example, and varmint loads that absolutely detonate for the giggle factor. I still shoot lead at upland game, and would hate to go to steel (or whatever) due to loving my teeth as others have said. Why don't I switch to copper in rifles? Just haven't, status quo is a tough thing to change for me .