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Jul 25, 2023

Inside the Outdoors: Lead ammo is still a plot line in our hunting drama

During the final week of June, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Sarah Strommen signed an order that will require the use of lead-free ammunition by hunters on 56 DNR-managed

During the final week of June, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Sarah Strommen signed an order that will require the use of lead-free ammunition by hunters on 56 DNR-managed units known as Scientific and Natural Areas.

The primary purpose of Minnesota’s SNAs, as described at the DNR’s website, is to preserve for scientific study, education and for posterity areas that are of special significance for the plants and wild creatures found there — including rare or threatened species — and for their uncommon ecological or geological characteristics.

Much like Minnesota’s state parks, hunting is permitted on only a minority of SNAs. Just 56 of Minnesota’s 168 SNAs permit hunting.

Recreation that is not in conflict with SNAs’ purposes is generally allowed; activities like hiking, birdwatching, nature photography, fishing in some cases and hunting to a limited degree.

Some SNAs permit hunting of all legal Minnesota game, some waterfowl only, and some SNAs allow deer hunting only.

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As an indication of just how protected these areas are, prohibited on all SNAs are camping, campfires and the collecting of plants, nongame animals, rocks or fossils.

Harvesting of wild edibles is allowed only where special regulations permit. Much like state wildlife management areas and state parks, special posted signage marks SNAs at their access points and boundaries.

Since that June lead-free SNA ammunition ruling by the DNR, there has been pushback. The most high profile has come from Anoka, Minnesota-based ammunition manufacturer Federal Cartridge Company.

Federal shared with the media a letter it sent to Commissioner Strommen. In it, Federal charges that the DNR’s ban on lead ammunition on SNAs will affect thousands of hunters and harm Minnesota’s important “economic engines” — the firearms and ammunition industries.

Federal contends that the price of lead-free nontoxic ammunition will discourage hunting, cost jobs and ultimately reduce the contributions that manufacturers like Federal make to state conservation programs.

These contributions come from an 11% excise tax on ammunition, under a program by which millions of dollars generated each year by this tax flow back to state conservation departments for wildlife-related programs and projects.

Federal has presumed — logically — that the DNR’s ban on lead ammunition on SNAs was based primarily on lead’s well-known potential for poisoning wildlife. A game bird, whether a duck, goose, turkey or grouse, is likely to become disabled or die if it consumes lead shot it has mistaken for the grit it needs for food digestion.

So, too, protected species like trumpeter and tundra swans, and loons. Eagles and other scavengers are known to have become sickened or died from ingesting lead bullet fragments embedded in remains left behind when hunters field-dress deer.

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It should be equally disturbing that venison intended for human consumption has in tests been X-rayed and found to contain fragments of lead from bullet disintegration.

A 2002 Connecticut study found trace amounts of lead in woodcock harvested with lead shotgun pellets. In England, where wild game harvested to manage their populations on large private estates can be legally sold, commercial game buyers will not purchase game harvested with lead ammunition.

All this should tell us something.

In challenging the lead ban, Federal points to the DNR’s own data to argue that there are no proven population-level declines in Minnesota wildlife due to lead ammunition.

As just one example, Minnesota bald eagle numbers are growing statewide, rather than decreasing, according to DNR website information, Federal notes.

In a letter to Federal Cartridge responding to its objections, Commissioner Strommen downplayed the role potential lead poisoning played in the agency’s ban.

A July 21 Minneapolis Star Tribune story cited excerpts from her letter, in which Strommen reportedly claimed that the lead ammo ban was not based on potential harm to wildlife, but that to allow its use on SNAs would “undermine the … values for which these lands were dedicated.“

Further, that the use of lead ammunition would be an “unnatural influence” on the scientific and educational resources within SNAs.

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By making these “values” and “unnatural influence” points, Commissioner Strommen deftly steered the conversation away from Federal’s focus on statewide wildlife numbers.

It would have been more straightforward if Commissioner Strommen had stated that the real issue is not the overall number of bald eagles, swans, loons or any other species at the statewide level. The mission of SNAs is to preserve the natural resources — including wildlife — that reside within the boundaries of each particular SNA.

Lead from ammunition could have an impact on wildlife at that local level, defeating an important purpose of that SNA.

Certainly the 22 organizations that signed the anti-lead petition submitted by the group Friends of Minnesota Scientific and Natural Areas — among them the Minnesota Division of the Izaak Walton League, staunch supporters of hunting and fishing — did so in the belief that lead ammunition poses a threat to wildlife.

Instead of parsing words as Commissioner Strommen did, perhaps we should just admit that lead is unhealthy in any amount, and is deadly in sufficient amounts.

And, if it’s practical to avoid this harm — to an individual creature, or to a population — that might be the right thing to do. Especially if the hunting is on lands dedicated primarily to another purpose.

Nontoxic lead-free ammunition is not new. It’s also not — as Federal Cartridge contends — generally so expensive that it is likely to keep an enthusiastic hunter from buying it if he or she wants to hunt on one of Minnesota’s SNAs.

It’s worth noting that SNAs account for less than one-half of 1% of the public lands managed by DNR where hunting is permitted.

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Since 1991, duck and goose hunters nationwide have been required to use lead-free nontoxic shot; it’s typically made of steel (soft iron), bismuth-tin alloy, tungsten or some blend of these nontoxic materials.

For big game hunting, well-designed copper bullets have been proven effective, and in some states — California, for instance — such ammunition is required for big game as well as waterfowl hunting.

Nontoxic ammunition is already required on all federal Waterfowl Production Areas, as well as on National Wildlife Refuges where hunting is allowed.

Nontoxic lead-free ammunition is often comparable in price to premium, top-of-the-line lead-based ammunition. Comparing nontoxic ammunition prices to low-end, bargain basement lead ammunition prices is not a level-playing-field comparison.

Apart from between-the-seasons target practice and sighting-in, the average deer hunter probably does not go through more than one box of 20 cartridges — if that — during an entire deer season.

I’ve spent some grouse hunting weekends without firing more than a vest pocketful of shells. High-volume ammunition use is not an everyday, every outing thing.

And, when the total cost of a hunting outing is tallied — including fuel, perhaps meals and/or lodging, and equipment that is incidental to a hunt — ammunition is likely to be one of the least burdensome expenses.

When the requirement to use nontoxic lead-free ammunition for waterfowl hunting nationwide was being phased in between 1987 and 1991, there was fierce opposition. Early substitutes, made of soft iron alloys we all called “steel shot,” did not perform as well as heavier lead shot pellets, and hunters had to adapt by giving up the longest shots, or risk crippling birds.

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Over time, innovative ammunition makers developed better nontoxic substitutes for lead shot, some even better than lead in their performance. Federal Cartridge, by the way, manufactures both lead as well as nontoxic lead-free shotgun and big game rifle ammunition.

Inexpensive? No. But with the interplay of hunter acceptance, volume production and industry competition, nontoxic lead-free ammunition has become better, more available and generally more affordable; certainly so in the mid-range region of the price landscape.

The COVID-19 pandemic did throw a wrench into ammunition production, both in finished ammunition and in the component parts that some of us purchase to load our own ammunition. But supply is clearly on the rebound in both spheres.

To oppose wider use of nontoxic lead-free ammunition with exaggerated claims of a decline in hunter participation and harm to professional wildlife management not only underestimates our intelligence and our respect for the creatures we hunt, but makes us look bad to the nonhunting world.

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