Lead Poisoning

Transcript for Lead vs. Non-Lead Bullet

Allen Zufelt: I’m Allen Zufelt from the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

Chris Parish: And I’m Chris Parish from the Peregrine Fund and the North American Non-Lead Partnership.

Allen: And we’re out here today to look at some of the issues dealing with lead poisoning and lead bullet fragmentation as compared to non-lead bullets, and some of the differences that we see with those and how effective they are.

Chris: We’ve asked an awful lot of questions of ourselves over the years, trying to untangle this mystery of where the lead’s coming from, and we hope that this demonstration will help reveal to you what we’ve learned and give you more information so that you can make an informed decision on your choice of ammunition.

We’re doing this demonstration to share with our fellow hunters how lead fragments can get into the food chain.

So, this contraption we’ve built in an effort to capture the entirety of the bullet, both the remaining slug of the bullet and any fragments that may shed off of that bullet.

Basically, we’re going to shoot two different types of bullets, and we’re going to quantify and be able to actually count the number of fragments as well as the remainder of each bullet. Same medium, a water jug. And it has a water trough that we’ve created, and it holds a trash bag full of water. And we’ll shoot it with both Solid Core monolithic bullets and lead-based bullets.

So, the first piece is just a shooting platform. And that’s going to hold the water high enough so that we can hit the target from the front of the barrel. That’s the base. And then we have two sides.

And again, the entirety of the function of this is simply to hold the trash bag and the water inside in place so that we can get a shot through the length of this. It’s about 32 inches.

And then we have the shooting window. And the shooting window, we’ll just wrap a piece of packing tape. And all this packing tape does is basically holds the bag and the water from pushing out of the front end so that we can get a target put on to it. And so, all we’re shooting through is the material of the trash bag and this packing tape.

It’s a little delicate because it has to fall apart without breaking the plastic. Now, we’ll put the trash bag in that will ultimately contain the water.

On screen: Chris uses a garden hose to fill the plastic bag inside the barrel with water.

This column of water holds about nine gallons. So, now, we want to get most of the air out of the top without knocking the whole thing down. And then the keeper goes on top. And so, upon being hit, the pressures will unfurl the bag and release this keeper, and the whole thing will collapse.

So, we’ll put a target there in the middle, give us a target for a point of aim. Now, we’ll go shoot it.

Allen: The guns that we’re shooting today, this is a Savage Access Rifle—a budget rifle. The two bullets that we’re shooting out of this, this is a .30-06; there’s the Federal loading of the Nosler AccuBond, 180 grain, and also the Federal loading of their 180-grain Trophy Copper bullet, so same manufacturer, same bullet weight. The only difference we have is a lead bullet versus a non-lead bullet.

On screen: Gunshots are heard as Allen fires the rifle at the target.

Chris: So now we’re going to pull out all the pieces, making sure that we wash them in the remainder of the water, and the lead will fall out towards the bottom. And once we have all the pieces of the contraption removed, we’ll just be left with the bullet.

That perfectly mushroomed bullet is exactly what you want to see. But again, the part that we failed to recognize is where did the rest of that bullet go?

So, these are some of the fragments that were trapped inside of the bag, and the rest of the fragments might have exited the bag upon impact. But we’re going to wash these fragments from the bag, and leave it all so we can collect as much as possible.

There’s the mushroomed bullet, devastating to big game. But again, we would look at that and say the bullet did its job. What we failed to see before is all of these fragments. Even from a bonded bullet, those fragments left in the field, in a gut pile, can be ingested by wildlife.

Luckily that lead’s nice and heavy, and it falls right out, just like panning for gold.

So, you also see in there the white plastic tip from the bullet. So, we have recovered a large portion of that bullet.

So, the remainder of that bullet is in the form of fragments in that gut pile. And when we leave the field and that gut pile is consumed by scavengers, that’s where the potential for lead exposure exists.

So, same process as before. We’ll pull all the pieces out, making sure that they’re clean and rinsed of any fragments so that we can recapture 100% of this bullet.

Allen: OK, for the .30-06 with these Trophy Copper bullets, now, we’re going to shoot it into the barrel to demonstrate what this bullet does.

Chris: Two and a half high, half right. Two and a half high, half right.

Allen: All right.

On screen: Allen fires the rifle at the target again.

Chris: Beautiful. So, the first thing we noticed is there aren’t a bunch of fragments in the bag. All we see is the remainder of that bullet.

And we’ll take these back and put them on a scale. And we’ll weigh the remainder of a bullet after it’s shot for both types. So, I’ll cut that away, and there it is.

So now what we’ll do, as a continuation of this comparison, is we will weigh the remainder of the bullet collected for each type.

So, we’ll take the remainder of the copper bullet, put it on the scale in addition to the tip. It’s a little windy. 179.9 grains. And this was 180 grains to begin with. So, the bullet weighs 179.9 grains of the original 180-grain bullet. Nearly all of it.

So now, we’ll weigh the remainder of the lead bullet and the bit of a tip that we captured. 137.5 grains of the original 180-grain bullet.

So, here we have the completion of this phase of our bullet testing. We have 180-grain solid copper and 180-grain lead bullet. And if you just look at these two bullets after they’ve been fired, we would think that both bullets did their job. They expanded and mushroomed about two times their original diameter and did their job. What we failed to realize until recently is that the remainder of this bullet is in the form of fragments, and it’s those fragments that can be retained in the gut pile and become available as a food source for scavenging wildlife.

Whereas the copper bullet retained 99.9% of its mass; therefore, you don’t have any fragments of lead because there’s none in the original bullet to be retained in that gut pile and therefore is a very clean food source for scavenging wildlife.

So, this is ballistics gel, and it is made to simulate the same or similar density to water-containing products like game animals. However, we’re not shooting into bone or hide or skin—thin skin or thick skin. It’s just the ballistics gel. So ultimately, it’s still a great comparison because we’re shooting both lead and non-lead into the same medium.

A rifle fires at the target.

Got a hit. So now we’ve had our first shot of the 6.5 Creedmoor and 120-grain bullet. And this bullet happens to be a polymer-tipped, lead core bullet.

This tells the whole story. If this wound channel were in the thoracic cavity of a big game animal, this is what’s happening in there, and that’s where those fragments come from. We rarely see those because after we clean an animal, it’s just kind of a mess in a gut pile. But when that is consumed by scavenging wildlife, that’s where the potential for lead exposure comes from, and it’s those little fragments that are left in the gut pile.

A rifle fires at the target.

Well, we’re in luck. We got both shots in the same ballistics gel block. We have the lead bullet that we shot first, both of them 120 grains, 6.5 Creedmoor. In the lead and the non-lead wound channel that you can see, the points of entry are near perfect. We have the lead on one side, the non-lead on the other; and we’ll be able to clean this up with a heat gun to take these wrinkles out of here so that you can see. But what you will see is the wound channel is nearly exactly the same.

So, even though there aren’t fragments coming off of that non-lead bullet, they’re still impacting that flesh—in this case, ballistics gel—creating the wound channel necessary and that we are comfortable with for harvesting game. This bullet, however, because it didn’t lose mass, it kept traveling through the ballistics gel, and we collected it after it went through both.

So, here’s the second one. So, here’s where the lead ended up. This is where the lead bullet stopped, and the non-lead bullet came out the side here. But because we did it in the barrel, we actually were able to collect it.

So now, we’ll go melt all of the wrinkles out of these blocks so that we can see these wound channels side by side.

Allen: So what this is showing is what that bullet is actually mechanically doing, as it is going through that animal. Something we have no other way to demonstrate is what happens as it’s passing through three inches, five inches, seven inches, through something, and how much lead fragmentation is coming as it’s traveling through that animal. They’re so small—when a bird digests them, they digest very easily.

Chris: And ultimately, it comes down to how much does a bullet fragment. That’s what this demonstration was made—to answer that question. And we found that bullets fragment to varying degrees, depending on bullet structure. But basically, if it’s a lead-based bullet, there’s the potential for fragmentation and the potential for exposure to wildlife.

And that’s why we’re reaching out to our fellow hunters, sharing this information, and asking them to consider voluntarily switching to a non-lead bullet when you’re going to target wildlife whose remains are left in the field, available to scavenging wildlife.

It’s not all ammunition we’re talking about. I still shoot lead at the range. We’re just talking about those moments in time where you’re using a bullet to put an animal down, and you’re going to leave some of its remains in the field. The way to eliminate the potential for exposure is either to use non-lead ammunition or recover the remains of animals we shoot from the field.

Allen: So, one of the things that the Department has done, and to aid in this lead reduction activity, this voluntary lead reduction, is that the Department has joined an organization called the North American Non-Lead Partnership. Any other agency that wants to be involved can come to the partnership. And it means enough to the Department to be a part of this that we’re on this leading edge of this conservation activity and trying to help expand it to other places nationwide.

Hopefully, you’ve learned something. Hopefully, this has piqued your interest a little bit about the differences between lead and non-lead ammunition. There is a lot here. There’s a lot of information that’s available beyond what we’ve provided. And hopefully, you can look for that either on the Game and Fish website or the Peregrine Fund website. And hopefully, this will be something you think about moving forward in your hunting career.

On screen: For more information: nonleadpartnership.org