Mr. Trefry was my seventh grade industrial arts teacher and an avid fisherman. He showed me how to cast lead jigs, which I used over the years to catch a pile of perch. Trefry was paranoid about lead; he told all his students that when he was young he did all sorts of stupid things with metal, and that we shouldn’t follow in his footsteps. Biting lead split shot closed with your teeth, for instance, was a dumb idea because no amount of lead is safe to ingest.
After his pep talk I mostly stopped biting lead split shot closed with my teeth. But I still used it to fish, partly because the little sporting goods store where I bought fishing tackle didn’t start selling steel sinkers until the lead ones were banned in the 2000s, partly because the frontal lobes of my brain hadn’t developed enough to facilitate sober second thoughts, partly because I hadn’t yet developed an environmental ethic that allowed me to think beyond myself – of the waterfowl and snappers and all the other creatures who don’t have kindly metal shop teachers telling them not to put lead in their mouths.
Fast forward to me at almost 40, and I’d like to report that I’m a completely enlightened example of lead-free eco-responsibility. But it’s not true. There’s no more lead in my tackle box, and my bird shot is steel. But the drawer of my gun cabinet is full of lead bullets. My .22, my .243, my 30-06, and my muzzleloader all lob lead. Part of this is because the little sporting goods store I patronize doesn’t dependably carry non-lead bullets. But part, I guess, is that it just hasn’t seemed like a big deal to me.
Then, this week, a writer submitted a story on lead exposure in vultures. Environment International published a study earlier this year where researchers measured lead levels in 108 turkey and black vultures and every one had chronic levels of anthropogenic lead in their bones. They don’t know the cause or causes, but one hypothesis suggests that hunter-killed carrion could be a contributing factor. How much lead could there possibly be in a carcass or gutpile? I wondered, then came across this study done by the Minnesota DNR. The researchers euthanized some sheep, then shot them, then x-rayed the meat to check for lead fragments. In the most extreme case a single bullet fragmented into almost 500 pieces, and some were as far as 14 inches from the wound channel. I don’t know how I missed all of this in 2008.
If, like me, your first thought is: oh crap, my family eats a lot of venison, it’s important to note that this science, like all science, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. While a follow-up study that tested for lead exposure in humans who ate a lot of venison found slightly elevated levels of lead versus the control, none of the venison-eaters had levels that were considered dangerous. The big thing to chase the sheep study with is the fact that rural people have been using lead bullets for generations and eating a lot of game meat and living long, healthy lives.
But it seems to me that there is something worth knowing here. My take away is that I probably haven’t been trimming venison scrupulously enough. And if I were a woman who was pregnant or trying to get pregnant, or a parent who had a small child, I would think twice before shooting a deer with a lead bullet that might fragment. And because I care about the raptors and corvids and bobcats and foxes and fishers and coyotes and everything else that might be picking at a lead-tainted gutpile, why the hell am I using lead bullets anyway? National Geographic reported in a story last year that at one rehab center in Washington state, more than half of the 96 bald and golden eagles that were admitted had lead levels that were considered toxic.
I went to a different gun shop last night that carried non-lead bullets, and bought a box of CCI .22s, a box of Barnes .30-06, and placed an order for Barnes .243s. The copper bullets cost about 50 percent more than basic lead ammo, so I was able to go lead-free for about the price of a tank of gas. According to everything I’ve read online, there shouldn’t be any performance drop off. Going forward I won’t have to worry about exposing my three-year-old nephew or the turkey vultures we see each spring near the ledges behind camp to lead. As I was leaving I wondered why I hadn’t made the switch sooner.
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