By Ben Neary
NMWF Conservation Director
Killing big-game animals with conventional lead-core bullets commonly results in lead fragments in the gut piles that hunters leave behind in the field. That lead can harm or kill eagles and other wildlife that feed on the remains.
Aaron Kindle, director of sporting advocacy with the National Wildlife Federation, made the switch to non-lead ammunition for his own hunting years ago. These days, he uses copper bullets exclusively to take elk, deer and other game to feed his family.
Kindle will speak about the importance of hunters getting educated about the advantages of non-lead ammunition at the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s ‘Wildlife Wednesday” event on May 14. The free program will start at 5:30 p.m. at Marble Brewery’s Northeast Heights Taproom at 9904 Montgomery Blvd NE in Albuquerque.
Kindle, a Colorado resident, has worked in conservation for the past 20 years. He said he sees hunters choosing to switch to non-lead ammunition as an extension of hunting ethics.
“Most sportsmen, at least the good ones I know, don’t want to be harming other wildlife,” Kindle said. “We all learn in hunter safety to know your target. You’re responsible for that bullet. We just extend that to whatever you left in the field. That bullet is still your responsibility,” he said.
Kindle noted that responsible hunters know not to shoot at a skylined animal – meaning one standing on a ridge with no immediate backstop to catch the bullet. And hunters know not to shoot into a herd where there’s a chance of hitting other animals standing behind the intended target.
“I feel like it falls kind of in that same realm,” Kindle said of the decision to use non-lead ammunition. “You can’t do harm to other things. You need to harvest your target safely, humanely.”
The New Mexico Wildlife Federation is a member of the North American Non-Lead Partnership, a group of state and federal management agencies, conservation groups and others that works to educate hunters about non-lead ammunition. The partnership is based on the principle that, by choosing to use non-lead ammunition in the field, hunters demonstrate their commitment to wildlife conservation while also protecting the public image of hunting.
“The New Mexico Wildlife Federation recognizes that most people don’t hunt, and it’s critical for hunters to be responsible conservationists to preserve our hunting traditions,” said Jesse Deubel, NMWF executive director. “As hunters, we need to do everything we can to protect other wildlife, especially raptors and other species that feed on the gut piles that hunters leave in the field.”
The North American Non-Lead Partnership was founded by biologists and conservationists who saw that condor restoration efforts were being hindered by the birds getting into lead bullet fragments in the wild. Kindle is an ambassador for Sporting Lead-Free, a group that grew out of the work of raptor biologists at the Teton Raptor Center.
The North American Lead-Free Partnership and other groups working on the issue commonly stage demonstrations at shooting ranges at which they fire both conventional lead-core and copper bullets into water traps. The results are eye-opening.
“You shoot it into the water, and you’re like, ‘oh, gosh, I see this,’” Kindle said. “There are hundreds or thousands of particles of lead in the mediums. Copper bullets, you weigh them and copper weighs ninety-nine percent the same as it did when it went out of your rifle. And the lead slug that’s left weighs sixty or seventy percent. And you have to add up all those tiny little pieces to get the initial weight. All of those things are pretty conclusive. Obviously, the lead spreads around. You have to say, ’what’s the impact of that?’ With raptors, we know it’s pretty heavy.”
Informing hunters about the issue and having them voluntarily make the switch to non-lead ammunition in the hunting fields has the advantage that it can help to preclude outright government bans of hunting with certain types of ammunition, Kindle said.
The federal government outlawed the use of lead shot for waterfowl hunting in 1991. California has banned the use of ammunition that contains lead for all hunting. Several states have recommendations or restrictions on using lead ammunition in certain areas, particularly in condor ranges. New Mexico requires non-lead ammunition for upland game at the Bernardo, La Joya and Huey wildlife management areas.
Elk hunters are particularly passionate about researching every aspect of their sport to try to get every possible advantage. That curiosity, Kindle said, creates a natural opportunity to give hunters a chance to learn about the advantages of non-lead bullets.
“So what you try to do is you give information that’s as accurate as possible and you demonstrate what we’re talking about,” Kindle said. “When you do that, and leave the decision up to them, we find that hunters often make the right decision. They need the information, and they need it from a trusted source.”
Hunters are naturally suspicious about proposed ammunition bans and regulations that come from non-hunting or even anti-hunting circles, Kindle said. “When that happens, they have a good reason to not trust a lot of that,” he said. “A lot of those folks would hope that there’s no hunting at all. They’re not necessarily trying to just regulate lead, or just improve outcomes for wildlife. They actually don’t want hunting anyway, and it’s just another way that they can reduce it, and paint hunters in a bad light.”
Kindle’s own evolution as a hunter to using non-lead bullets came when he shot an elk in the shoulder with a conventional lead-core bullets some 20 years ago and wound up with a lot of blood-shot meat. He said he was soaking the quarter, trying to salvage what he could, when a friend remarked that the cause of so much damage to the meat was small particles of lead that had blown out after impact.
“I was like, ‘what do you mean, it’s lead?’” Kindle said. “I don’t know what I thought it was, I never really considered it. I was just trying to get the good meat.”
Kindle said his friend directed him to look up some studies that had been done by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in which researchers had shot pig carcasses with lead bullets and then x-rayed the results.
“You could see the x-rays and the lead goes everywhere,” Kindle said. “I was like, “oh my God, I have a two-year-old and a pregnant wife. You know?”
Kindle disposed of the bloodshot quarter and the incident prompted him to start researching the issue of residual lead from hunting bullets in game meat. “It kind of took me down the path to learning about lead professionally, and learning about different studies,” he said.
Kindle describes himself as a meat hunter. He uses an old .30-06 he received from his father decades ago.
“I just go with the trusty Barnes TTSX,” Kindle said of his choice of bullet. He buys factory ammunition, and said its accuracy is fine in his rifle.
Kindle said the TTSX bullet has performed well for him in, and emphasized that, as with all hunting, good shot placement is paramount. “A well-placed shot, if you hit double-lung, or heart, or something like that with a big piece of flying metal, it’s usually going to do the trick,” he said.
“That’s the thing we can’t stress enough, right? Nothing is a substitute for good shot placement,” Kindle said. He said he’s heard criticism from hunters who claim to have experienced poor performance from non-lead bullets but said they often admit that poor shot placement was an issue.
Making the switch from conventional lead-core ammunition to copper requires careful sighting in of the rifle, and may require the hunter to try several brands of ammunition to find the one that works best, Kindle said. He said the selection of non-lead ammunition has increased a lot in recent years while prices have come down.
Some hunters who take game at extremely long ranges have stated that copper bullets don’t work well for them because the harder metal may resist expanding as bullet velocity drops off. “People talk about plus 400 yards, out to 800, and I’ve never shot anything that far, so I can’t verify that,” Kindle said.
While there are always trade-offs in selecting any rifle cartridge and load, Kindle said the choice of copper bullets works well for him.
“It kind of fit perfectly,” Kindle said of his choice to use non-lead ammunition in the hunting fields. “I don’t want to hurt other wildlife. There’s a great alternative, it’s the right ethical thing to do in my mind. And I think a lot of hunters, once they get that information, kind of make the same choice. My thinking has always been, let’s get them that information. Show them the alternatives.”
Kindle said he will welcome questions from hunters considering making the switch to non-lead ammunition at his presentation.