Food for thought

Sustainable game shooting depends on a market for game; you can’t sell a foodstuff by saying it’s tasty and sustainable but, by the way, it contains a toxic metal. If our sport is to survive we have to move away from lead.

For those of us with traditional side-bysides the advice on iron shot is confusing, and while some proof marks may be clear others are not. I think that the cartridge manufacturers and the gun trade should get together and produce a web page on which you can enter the make, model and serial number of your gun and receive a notification that your gun and cartridge is either ‘safe’, ‘unsafe’ or ‘check with a gunsmith’. I would also call on the cartridge manufacturers to speed up production of degradable shot cups in smaller bores for game shooters. Make them and they will sell.

Alan Jackson, Isle of Man