The move away from lead shot and the implications for clay – Malcolm Plant
Malcolm Plant mulls over the move from lead shot, considers how the transformation will work and, in particular, the implications for clay shooting
The times they are a-changin’ for game shooting. But what about clays? Lead metal and plastics must disappear from cartridges used for shooting game. The large UK associations involved in the provision of sporting shooting for edible quarry, with feathers or fur, have nailed their colours to the mast. And that requirement will apply to the lead shot pellets in cartridges and lead bullets for shooting deer, hares and rabbits.
The principal driving force for the change is that the toxicologists and health experts are now pointing out that even a small quantity of lead in our food or in the human body is probably not good for us; previously there have been recommendations for a small maximum tolerable lead content. So putting lead into a food source on purpose, to provide a pheasant for the pot, starts to look a little shaky. However, we do consume small amounts of lead in many different foodstuffs; traces of lead that get picked up from the soil.
Alternatives
The most economical alternative to lead shot is iron, but the world capacity to make large quantities of iron shot is rather limited in the short to medium term. Of course, if there is a demand for a commodity, someone will eventually fill the production gap. Shot pellets made from other non-lead products, such as bismuth, tungsten matrix and tin, are also not currently available in large quantities; these metallic commodities are also expensive raw materials compared with iron.
There are reports in the marketplace of the possible manufacture of larger volumes of iron shot using a molten iron process to form iron droplets, rather like the traditional way of making lead shot from the molten metal. The major producers of iron shot (in China) currently use the older ball-bearing process of rolling small iron cubes until they are round, which is apparently a highenergy process.
The driving piston or wad in a cartridge, which pushes the shot along the barrel, has traditionally been a plastic plug or cup, or a fibre composite plug. The fibre wads have been preferred by most game shoots and some clay pigeon grounds because they will eventually fall apart and not litter the ground with plastic debris. Some cartridges now have fully biodegradable wads that disappear ‘back to nature’, though these cartridges are made in relatively low volumes at the moment. Unfortunately, iron shot requires a complete wad cup to keep the abrasive shot pellets away from the barrel walls. The development and large-scale production of non-plastic, nature-friendly cup wads is still in the embryonic stage.
Just over a year ago, the game shooting organisations said that they were working to a transition period of five years to move away from lead, so four years remain to put in place everything that is needed to shoot game without lead shot. Recently, the National Game Dealers Association said that due to pressure from its retail customers and supermarkets, its members would not accept game shot with lead after July next year. That has rather put the cat among the pigeons. Where will all the non-lead game cartridges come from for the 2022-23 game shooting season? Watch this space.
Ramifications
So what are the ramifications for clay shooters and the shooting grounds, from the large international venues down to the local village ‘straw-bale’ clubs that shoot on a Sunday morning? The cartridge manufacturers will be making larger volumes of non-lead cartridges and probably a wider range of cartridges in their complete product offering. This will have an impact on their costs and the cheap and cheerful lead-filled club clay cartridge may not be so cheap in future.
Apparently, cartridge-loading machines have to be run more slowly when loading
“The cheap and cheerful leadfilled club clay cartridge may not be so cheap in future”
iron shot because any spilt shot can damage the machine mechanisms. So overall, loading capacity will be lower and costs higher.
And there is quite a variety of problems depending on what type of clay shooting you are interested in doing. For example, the Olympics will continue to use lead cartridges, so if you want to shoot at a competition level in the Olympic disciplines you will want lead to continue being accepted for clay shooting. But the European Chemicals Agency is trying to stop the use of lead in all shooting; the shooting sports just throw lead all over the place, is its stance. And though we are no longer in the EU, the British Government and Defra seem likely to take some of their guidance from the European approach.
Original clays were made of mineral filler stuck together with coal or petroleum pitch; the mixture was blended up, in the molten state, in a hot cauldron and then pumped to a moulding machine. Historically, the types of pitch that were used contained aromatic hydrocarbons from the coal or crude oil, the same hydrocarbon chemicals of this type gave the characteristic smell of preservatives for fences and sheds. Unfortunately it was found later that they could cause cancer. So other chemical binder materials with low aromatics were investigated.
The two principal requirements of the clay pigeon are that they should not break when thrown by the trap and that they should break when hit by the shot cloud. Also, not cracking during transport and not sticking together in the supply box tends to help with good throwing performance from the trap.
More recently clays made using ‘greener’ resins have come on to the market, but they are more expensive. But clays made from the modern, low aromatics clay formulations just seem to disappear at our club ground when the fragments have been lying around.
Technical developments
We will see how all of this pans out, but remember every time you pull the trigger and hit a clay, you may well be keeping an environmental chemist in a job in the future. It could be an ideal career opportunity for your boffin teenager, perhaps.
Overall the technical solutions for cartridge manufacture, recycling of consumables and understanding the pollution impacts will, I believe, support the continuation of clay target shooting. For example, because iron shot is less dense than lead, the manufacturer can only get a lower total weight of shot into the cartridge space. There are two basic ways of closing over the end of a cartridge – the widely used star crimp closure and the more traditional roll closure round a card disc. When the cartridges are fired, the roll closure occupies less of a shotgun’s chamber than the longer, opened out crimp triangles, so it’s possible to get more iron shot into a roll-closed cartridge, for a given chamber length of gun. This is now being done, but of course it all requires different filling machines. Back to the future?
We will see what the officials in Brussels propose and what the European parliament agrees, following which the UK will develop its position, with metallic lead in the soil being a key issue for clay shooters. It will take some time to get it all sorted out and it all looks likely to cost more. In the meantime, keep your head on the stock and focus on the target.