Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Bullet Fragmentation video! must see.......

Interesting study.......


Casey

Seems related to me to the steel shot fiasco... I have continually found more dead/wounded birds since we were forced to steel, than before....

I choose not to smoke, don't drink coffee and rarely drink alcohol. When it comes to bullets I will not abandon lead bullets entirely for my hunting, as some of my rifles are in calibers where the only real option is jacketed (like my Marlin in .375 Winchester). Where possible, however, I am already well down the road in converting to Barnes MRX, TSX and TTSX, and will continue in that direction.

Is lead a problem in the environment? Yes, just as is mercury in certain fish. Will ingested lead be the death of me? Probably not, but in the best case, ingested lead will do me no good. I'm not particularly interested in needlessly ingesting lead to test the "it really won't harm you" theory.

The MRX, TSX and TTSX provide great accuracy and the terminal ballistics I want (like high retained weight and deep penetration), so I feel no need to use lead bullets when I have an alternative.

And that's the reaction they're looking for, good job! It's too bad common sense doesn't rule in this case, such questions as "What does the carcass look like after it is properly field-dressed?" are never addressed. My parents raised five children on the big and small game shot with lead projectiles. We all graduated with high or highest honors from college, I have one sister who is a doctor, three of us were valedictorians, one salutatorian, and I'm working on my master's degree and in the top 5% of my class. My wife and I have two daughters, 5 and 3. The 5 year-old is in kindergarten, we just had conferences for first quarter, they want to move her up to first grade. Our 3-year old is in pre-school and we just had her conferences as well. She has completed all of the benchmarks for the end of the 4 year-old year and could be placed in kindergarten if one only looks at cognitive skills and abilities. We will not move either of them for social development reasons and they are going to school with their best friends. They have been raised on a VERY steady diet of deer and small game I have shot with - yep - lead projectiles. It's a good thing it's made them stupid or we wouldn't know what to do with them. The gullibility of people to accept results without questioning them is what will destroy this country. Think critically and logically before accepting anything as "truth".
Selmer

What the CDC has to say - the gov't organizations should synchronize their watches and reports to not contradict one another!

NEWTOWN, Conn. � The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) � the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry � issued the following statement in response to study results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), released by the North Dakota Department of Health, showing no evidence that lead or �traditional� ammunition pose any health risk to those who consume harvested game meat.

Recognizing that hunters and their families may be concerned or confused by recent news reports about the study, NSSF encourages every individual who may consume harvested game meat to read the NSSF statement, fact box and CDC report made available in this news release.

Facts Hunters Should Know from the CDC Study . . .

1. Consuming game harvested using traditional hunting ammunition does not pose a human health risk.

2. Participants in the study had readings lower than the national average and well below the level the CDC considers to be of concern.

3. Children in the study had readings that were less than half the national average and far below the level the CDC considers to be of concern.

4. The study showed a statistically insignificant difference between participants who ate game harvested using traditional hunting ammunition and the non-hunters in the control group.

5. Hunters should continue to donate venison to food pantries.

�������������

Read the CDC report (PDF)


The CDC report on human lead levels of hunters in North Dakota has confirmed what hunters throughout the world have known for hundreds of years, that traditional ammunition poses no health risk to people and that the call to ban lead ammunition was nothing more than a scare tactic being pushed by anti-hunting groups.

In looking at the study results, the average lead level of the hunters tested was lower than that of the average American. In other words, if you were to randomly pick someone on the street, chances are they would have a higher blood lead level than the hunters in this study.

Also of note, the lead levels of children under 6 in the study had a mean of just 0.88, less than half the national average. Children over 6 had even lower lead levels. The CDC�s level of concern for lead in children is 10.

A media advisory released by the North Dakota Department of Health cited the highest lead level reading of an adult study participant as still being lower than the CDC lead level threshold of concern for a child, and significantly lower than the CDC accepted threshold of concern for an adult. Furthermore, during a tele-press conference hosted by the ND Department of Health, officials stated they could not verify whether this adult even consumed game harvested with traditional ammunition. Correspondingly, the study only showed an insignificant 0.3 micrograms per deciliter difference between participants who ate wild game harvested with traditional ammunition and non-hunters in the non-random control group.

Also demonstrating their understanding that game harvested with traditional ammunition is safe to consume, the ND Department of Health, following the release of the CDC study results, encouraged hunters to continue donating venison to local food banks as long as processing guidelines were adhered to.

NSSF was critical of the ND Department of Health when earlier this year the Department overreacted to a non-peer reviewed study by a dermatologist who claimed to have collected packages of venison from food banks that contained lead fragments. North Dakota health officials did not conduct their own study, but merely accepted the lead-contaminated meat samples from the dermatologist. The ND Department of Health then ordered all food banks to discard their venison. Serious questions were raised in a subsequent investigative journalism piece published this summer about the scientific validity of the testing of venison samples from the ND food pantries, including concerns regarding the non-random selection of the samples.

It has since come to light that the dermatologist�s efforts were not the independent actions of a concerned hunter, as he claimed. It was an orchestrated strategy by the Peregrine Fund � an organization dedicated to eliminating the use of lead ammunition for hunting. The dermatologist serves on the Fund�s Board of Directors.

For more than a century, hundreds of millions of Americans have safely consumed game harvested using traditional hunting ammunition, and despite there being no scientific evidence that consuming the game is endangering the health of individuals, special interest groups like the Peregrine Fund and anti-hunting groups are continuing to press state legislatures around the country to support a ban on this common, safe and effective ammunition.

These politically driven groups understand that while an outright ban on hunting would be nearly impossible to achieve, dismantling the culture of hunting one step at a time is a realistic goal. Banning lead ammunition is the first step of this larger political mission. We can only hope that with the conclusive CDC results concerning the safety of traditional ammunition, legislatures across the country will listen to science and not anti-hunting radicals.

The notion by some, that any amount of lead is a �concern,� is scientifically unfounded rhetoric that runs contrary to nationwide, long-standing standards of evaluation. The NSSF is pleased that hunters and others can now comfortably continue consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition that has been properly field dressed and butchered, yet we remain unsettled that for so many months good and safe food was taken out of the mouths of the hungry as nothing more than a political gambit by special interest groups.

Rost459 - +1

For those of you who quote the NSSF, as if they have no agenda, wake up.

Of course the NSSF has an agenda.

Never cared for picking lead out of my birds, but at least it doesn't break teeth as easily as steel.

Feel free to eat all the lead you want, though - the cigarettes and booze will do you in first.

+1

Lead is Poison, Michaelangelo died from it!

Let's stop the madness and use lead-FREE bullets!

There was a disclaimer buried in the beginning stating that no hunter harvested game has ever caused a health problem due to lead. It was an interesting video. I won't be changing bullets any time soon.

Lemme see......people have been shooting game with lead projectiles for several hundred years.I dare anybody to come up with a creditable study indicating a direct correlation between lead from fragmented bullets and harmful effects on humans.

When I see this sort of thing on any subject, coming from the government, I get very suspicious because I know there is an agenda, and I doubt the outcome is going to be in my favor. Clearly this is PR stuff promoted to (a)scare you(another crisis requiring immediate government intervention to resolve);and (b)set you up for the lead bullet ban they intend to shove down your throat.

Stay tuned for the next chapter.....it's coming!

Well I am not going to stop shooting lead bullets into game anytime soon, Guns and Bullets have been around in some form or another for 700 years now. And in that 700 years, men have shot an ate a lot of game, more that we would ever shoot in these so called modern times. This is nothing more that puting the notion that bullets , lead now the rest later poses a health threat, if you eat meat that has been shot, never mind feed lots and mad cow but lets just stick to the facts or lack of, they want to ban hunting its that simple, and along with it guns and even breathing, since CO2 is a polutant too. Guys this nonsense is going to gain legs. Even if we go to all copper bullets or what have you its not going to matter. The pervision of science for the purpose of pushing an adjenda is afoot. And we will loose in the end.

Are you a peta member?

So that's the answer! I've often wondered what happen to all the folks that have died over the past 400 years. They all died from lead poisoning. If they had only known, huh. They would all still be with us, and Obama would still be the president elect.

Before some of you phuggers start going the greenie bandwagon, I suggest you dump all of your primers too. OMG, they are dangerous!

Here's what I've got after one search; appears NOTHING is safe! http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2004/articles/1101vargas.pdf

Any of you guys sick? No, I am not advocating breathing lead dust in a confined, unventilated area, no more so than I would William Tell, but many who can't swim aren't afraid of the ocean either. Use precaution. You can lose your hearing too without precaution.....

Most of us know life ain't fair and there are no guarantees; stop driving your car and go rickshaw if you want, let the rest of us have fun before we die......and stop mandating schitt.

Not me, but I�m not stupid, either.

Granddad and Uncle are deaf as bricks because they didn�t protect their hearing. The hearing didn�t go all at once, it went a little bit at a time.

Hat makers used to use mercury in their processes. It didn�t do much to them initially but over the long term was a different story. There is a reason for the expression �Mad as a hatter�.

Smoking won�t kill you or even have much effect on your lungs � the first few times. Over time it causes decreased lung performance, cancer and other problems.

Same story with drinking, even to excess. Once or twice probably won�t have much long term effect � but too much too often is a different story.

Lead ingestion is known to be harmful in cumulative, even when small doses are involved. No, swallowing a 300g hardcast bullet isn�t going to kill you, as only a tiny amount is going to be absorbed while most will pass through. I get enough contamination from the environment without intentionally eating the stuff.

If the bullets made of copper or gilding material do the hunting job, as they do for me, I seen no reason to use lead bullets. Others can do as they please, makes no difference to me.


{Edited to add...]

By the way, I do still use some lead core bullets where I have not found acceptable alternatives. The .30-30, .357 Mag, .375 Win, .44 Mag, and .45-70 come to mind.

Ouch...... That is becoming the way too familiar pattern of the technique used to have their way with the people who elected them.

It appears that some lead in the diet maintains proper brain-health. Studies have shown that vegetarians and PETA members and others opposed to hunting have suffered severe brain damage and vote Democrat.

Are you all sure you all haven�t been getting to too much lead in your diet? Because I just looked up some of the symptoms of lead poisoning; irritability and aggressive behavior are on the list.

i'm reminded of what hitler said - "tell the people what we want them to believe, tell them repeatedly, and they will believe it."

What about all the crap- hormones, antibiotics, etc that are fed/injected into beef cattle when they are packed into feedlots for months on end and fattened up? Does anyone think that crap is good for us?