Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Anyone choosing unleaded bullets for meat safety?

Oxymoron.

OK I admit I'll mix in bacon or other fatty meats occasionally and almost always add seasoning and add an egg to the burger too. But they are much leaner than beef.

+10

Nope. To each his or her own, but frankly, I rank the 'hunter lead ingestion problem' right down there with global warming. It's just another angle from which to chip away at our personal freedoms.

My use of Barnes bullets has been situational; only for their terminal benefit, or because they happened to shoot most accurately from a particular rifle. The choice is ours to make individually. It's all about personal freedom and choice.

That truly is the bottom line!

The x rays I saw suggest otherwise. Lead particles traveled a long ways from where the entrance wound was and not only in the direction one would think. Very easy to shoot something behind the shoulder and have particles make it into the should or back strap.

BWalker, the problem with those x-rays you're looking at is that they're two dimensional pictures that give no indication of the depth of the particles you're seeing. HuntnShoot is correct that the particles don't just magically make their way to the shoulders or hams. It's far more likely that the particle you think are in the shoulders are actually in the organs within the body cavity away from the meat. I've seen many of the same pictures you have and have no concerns whatsoever about lead in wild game.

A lot of the responses have gotten off of the original question, which was switching bullets due to lead panic. It has nothing to do with which kills better. Not using lead bullets for fear of polluting your kids is asinine bs. Everybody has shot game for many years with lead bullets and I don't think that it has ever been proven that wild game killed with lead is harmful. That is left-wing loony fodder, just to try to make everybody panic and get rid of lead.

Use what you want, if it works, but losing the lead bullets for the health of it is stupid.

MnDNR sheep test?

Those photos I have seen. I can see the cases of extreme spread of the lead in some of those shots and can see where it is pretty reasonable once you understand that most of the lead s very, very fine particles that are nether visible nor palpable. A hit will lift the onside hide and separate it some from the underlying tissue. Extremely small particles would likely form a cloud intermixed with blood and finely ground tissue/bone and the whole mess could be well and widely disseminated. Witness the "pink mist" when you splatter a varmint. It''s logical to assume that both the entrance area and the exit area would show some of that dispersion along with the wound path through the middle.

One of the significant problems though is the blood inside the cavity has to be assumed to be well contaminated. When you gut, the is no way to avoid contaminating OTHERWSE uncontaminated areas like the hams and tenderloins even in the case of a through the chest double lung shot.. I have never seen any Xray or otherwise analytical attempt at shedding light on that problem.

While there undoubtedly would be bacterial contamination of meat after a bullet passes through there is a lot to consider if we get into that issue.

Very small amounts of lead are harmful to young kids. It's been proven that lead makes its way into the meat of game. Not sure how much more proof you need.

[quote=MILES5

One of the significant problems though is the blood inside the cavity has to be assumed to be well contaminated. When you gut, the is no way to avoid contaminating
[/quote]

Which is why the no gut method is preferred The body cavity is never opened.

I can't recall which study it was Miles. Eating game shot with lead bullets might be fine, I'm just not willing to take the chance with my kids given the anecdotal evidence that is out there.

To each their own, but I'm done killing game with pencils.

I thought most of this was liberal panic about awful harmful lead when it was about the stupid Condors eating carcasses but I saw some x-rays that were surprising in how widely distributed the particles were and it was posted by a hunter not an environmental group.

I may be guilty of looking for the holy grail bullet by the way. I used Nosler Ballistic Tips 7mm 150 grain for years but loaded 160 Accubonds for my first elk, it killed elk fine but was way less accurate in my rifle. I used 180 grain partitions in Dads old 30-06 to kill a cow because he always wanted to shoot an elk with that gun but never got the chance - they were OK but not as effective as my NBT. Then for several years I killed elk including 2 good sized bulls with the NBT's no long tracking jobs and everything died. I hit a bull in the ribs at an angle one year and the entry wound was the size of your hand. It killed the elk with shrapnel in the lugs after a 500 yard run. Luckily blood sprayed out on the snow shot every 15 yards so I found him easily but switched to Barnes then and haven't looked back.

I hadn't thought about health benefits until I read an article and saw the x-ray that was very convincing. It may be complete BS but I'm happy not to need to find out:

I am rally happy for you that your animals don't bleed. That has to be a handy thing. I am just not that good with a rifle yet, and I do have to have those tenderloins, I just haven't got to the point can pass on them.

How is choosing what bullet you want to shoot, comparable to liberals trying to change our lifestyles and forcing their global warming religion on us?

I think adults should debate this.

We know lead is bad, will effect the brain.

The debate is, is any spreading through the animal. I don't think it is much of an arguement to say I ate it, and I am fine. First, some here it is debateable. 2nd you could play in traffic, and be fine.

I tend to think most people don't eat enough, add on top of that the stastical chance of getting the piece with it.

If I had children, that I cared about, I read up on the topic.Just saying we are all fine, is not research. I think reading is safe.

On the topic of, I did it, and I am fine, a recent study suggested the possibility of transfering CWD from deer to humans. If I lived in a CWD area, I would again read up. Sounded like the draw back of testing is waiting weeks for the result. There was talk about home testing. Granted companies selling testers, want you to test.

I don't eat lungs.

BWalker,

The current CDC standard is zero lead for children and childbearing women.

That comes from finding clinical evidence of damage when they are down at the limits of what they can measure accurately. That standard poses a very significant question: Does lead intake in adult males follow different patterns or can we simply not measure that effect separately from the rest of the damage? The science has steadily decreased the standard for everyone, including adult males, so I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend continue. Substituting lead for calcium is where the problems come from.

saddlesore,

Here's the link to the European study of the effect of lead in game animals on hunters:
www.springerlink.com/index/BFPM6CLJ036W3VKW.pdf

The only other data I have is limited: My wife had to have her blood analyzed for a number of years due to a medical condition. Game is 95% of our diet, the exception being when we eat out, which isn't very often. We use both lead and "non-toxic" shot and bullets, but would guess at least 3/4 are lead. The lead levels in her blood were considerably under the average for American adults.