Poisoned Wildlife and Tainted Meat: 
Why Hunters Are Moving Away From Lead Bullets. 
......
ZUMWALT PRAIRIE, Ore. — Aiming a rifle loaded with a copper bullet rather than the standard type made of lead, Chelsea Cassens fired at an elk from 70 yards away, hitting it squarely behind its shoulder. To avoid spooking the animal if it was only injured, Ms. Cassens waited several minutes before approaching as her father needled her skeptically, suggesting her newfangled ammunition might not have immediately killed it.
Moments later, Ms. Cassens, her father, Ed Hughes, and the three others in their hunting party descended on the fallen 450-pound beast, carved it open, inspected the internal damage, and found the spent bullet.
.....
“Will you look at that!” Mr. Hughes said, pleasantly surprised. The copper bullet had expanded on impact, as it was designed to do, opening a gaping hole in the elk’s lungs and killing it almost instantly.
“Her bullet did the trick just fine,” Mr. Hughes, 63, conceded, adding later that he also planned to switch from lead to copper bullets, a transition more and more hunters are making amid mounting evidence that lead bullets are poisoning the wildlife that feed on carcasses and polluting the game meat that many people eat.
At least 30 states regulate the use of lead ammunition, including Oregon, where Ms. Cassens and her father met for a week long elk hunt this fall. In Oregon, hunters are not allowed to fire lead bullets in a number of state wildlife areas. Neighboring California, which already enforces some of the nation’s most restrictive gun laws and was the first state to prohibit lead ammunition in specific regions, recently imposed a statewide ban on that type of bullet that will go into effect next July.
.....
Across the country, state wildlife agencies have tried a range of tactics to encourage hunters to switch from lead ammunition. In Arizona, non-lead ammunition is free in some areas, and is delivered in bulk to a Native American tribe that lives near habitats with the most vulnerable scavenger species. In Minnesota, game wardens host shooting clinics for hunters to compare copper and lead bullets, hoping to show that lead bullets break apart in ways that make them more prone to contaminate the animals they kill.
According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, lead exposure is the leading cause of death in California condors, the largest land birds in North America, which three decades ago were on the brink of extinction. And between 10 million and 20 million animals, including eagles, hawks, bears, vultures, ravens and coyotes, die each year not from being hunted, but from lead poisoning, according to the
Humane Society. 
Yet many hunters are reluctant to stop using lead bullets. They cite a range of reasons, from being unaware of the potential health threat or harm to scavenger animals, to having a stockpile of traditional ammunition they do not want to waste. Some also see the push away from lead bullets as a ruse for limiting gun rights or banning hunting more broadly. And many hunters question the availability, accuracy, price and lethality of non-lead ammunition.
Indeed, regulating lead ammunition has long been a
hot-button point of contention among both conservationists and hunters. The topic was so charged, in fact, that President Barack Obama’s administration waited until its last day in office to impose a ban on lead ammunition on federal land. Just hours after taking office as the Trump administration’s new secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke overturned that prohibition in his first action.
And in California, the organization representing the state’s game wardens has pushed back against the impending statewide ban, breaking ranks with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and writing in a letter to the governor that there is
“insufficient data to justify such a drastic action.” About 95 percent of the 10 billion to 13 billion rounds of ammunition purchased every year in the United States contain lead, which primarily comes from recycled car batteries, according to industry estimates. These bullets are often jacketed by a harder metal like copper or steel.
Check Out Our Forum Tab!
Topic: Hunters Movin From Lead? (Read 5277 times)
