I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember a time when shooting has faced so many challenges.

Avian flu, grain prices, soaring fuel costs and meddling with the general licences have all played a part in making things difficult. To be honest, we aren’t making things easy for ourselves, especially with the proposed phasing out of lead shot.

The signatories of the proposed lead shot ban tell me they are tired of talking about this topic. I’m sure they are, but many of us need more convincing that steel is the right way to go. There is a lot of misinformation and we need some hard evidence.

To this end I have commissioned Richard Atkins, an engineer, to do some research on lead and the new steel cartridges with eco wads. This month he looks at whether steel shot patterns tighter than lead. The results may surprise you; they certainly surprised me.

I hope at the end of this series of articles we will have more evidence to help us make up our minds.