Lead Free Bullets

Does anyone have experience with lead free bullets? I have used Nosler Partitions and Accubonds with great success. The only reason I see to switch is to be more sensitive, responsible, toward the environment, specifically eagles and other critters feeding on entails left in the field. The NYS Conservationist magazine has an article that peaked my interest.

Well I think it's commendable to be concerned. Lead and many other issues plague our environment, we all need to be paying attention. I don't believe scavengers pick up that many bullets or fragments there of. It's a systemic exposure problem. I'll give you an annalogy to consider.
I've been eating game birds all my life, started long before steel shot was required for waterfowl. A lot of deer and elk too.
At 35 I took a test to determine how much lead was in my system, no elevated levels. At 55 after 20 years working in our range and still eating birds, slightly elevated levels. I'm pretty sure the exposure came from the range.

I have several friends I load for who like the Barnes bullets. They certainly work. My limited experience is they cause less catastrophic damage to the chest cavity, the insides don't get turned to jelly, but they will punch through both shoulders and exit. I like exit wounds. My experience is limited to a dozen or so deer and elk.
We never lost an animal shot with a Barnesbullets.
No experience with the Nosler.


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Whether we like it or not, lead-free bullets are likely to be imposed on all hunters/sportsmen in time. SC has given some good insight into the danger (or lack thereof) from using bullets containing lead. I use E-Tips and Barnes bullets in quite a number of cartridges. If velocities are sufficiently high, they work well. For some situations, I still prefer lead for a quick kill. BlkRam and I tracked a bear through some incredibly thick underbrush on one occasion. At the shot, it was four paws in the air. Suddenly, that bruin rolled and darted into the bush, necessitating a long tracking job. I knew the shot was good, but the wound channel was not as massive as I would have expected with a standard cup-and-core bullet.

I've never been tested for lead exposure; but, then, as daft as I am, few would feel the need to gather evidence. I have eaten quite a bit of wild game over the years, though I confess that I haven't knowingly consumed all that many bullet fragments since I prefer to leave behind visibly blood shot meat and meat with visible evidence of bullet fragments. Neither have I witnessed all that many ravens, coyotes, wolves and/or bears that showed evidence of lead poisoning (other than the sudden introduction of said lead via high velocity projectiles).

Some years ago I shot a couple of mule deer with the 100 gr Barnes TSX at 3340 fps from my 25-06 rifle. This was before Barnes had added the tip, and before Nosler had introduced the E-Tip bullet. In one case, the buck was shot at close range and the bullet obviously expanded, and penetrated well. In the other case... I really wasn't sure the bullet had expanded at all. But the buck died.

A problem I had with those Barnes bullets was that the pure copper bullets left a lot of copper fouling in my 25-06, however I didn't note that problem when I tried Barnes 168 gr bullets from my .308 Win with the Krieger barrel.

The E-Tip should avoid that barrel fouling problem as it is made of a gilding metal alloy.

Much of California has mandated lead-free bullets. It's been discussed for the Pacific Northwest as well. I have some old Barnes bullets, and enough Nosler E-Tips on hand to keep me shooting & hunting for a few years if it comes to that.

I am happily using steel shot for all my bird hunting now, as lead shot is prohibited, even for upland bird hunting, in my area.

Guy

I tried the original TSX bullets several years ago for a couple of seasons on elk. After three or 4 tests, i found that the elk seemed to walk around a lot more before they expired with the monolithic bullets than lead. I also think that its going to be really hard to prove that lead bullets have any impact in the western US. Seldom is it common to kill large amounts of animals in the exact same spot as waterfowl shooters do. Rifle ranges are of course a different issue. Windmills kill a far greater number of birds than lead bullets ever will.

How much lead was put into paint/gasoline before it became an issue and then wound up in some dump site, or in the air? I'll guess 100,000,000X more than any bullet shot at Big Game.

What about the Ba-Zillion of 22 rimfire rounds that no one has a problem with, just yet?

Just another environmental micro step to cease hunting all together.

Yes, Mono's will penetrate, given sufficient velocity (That's their key issue), cup & cores seem to transmit more internal damage.

Just a note to think about...Mono's open up with 4 petals and expand to about the same diameter as a C&C but...the total surface area of those 4 petals is dramatically less than the full circle you get with with lead. Less surface area = less tissue damage=less hydro-static shock. But, they will penetrate.

I think this is an issue that we're going to face repeatedly in the future and a writer friend of mine has done more research on this than any guy I know.

The non-toxic bullets work, but there's some caveats- they typically need more speed to expand well than a typical cup and core bullet and dropping back in bullet weight is a good idea. You might want to shift the "behind the shoulder lung shot" that works so well with a frangible bullet a few inches forward into a "through the shoulder" shot to put more resistance in front of the copper bullet. You also stand a better chance of crunching some bone and dropping the animal right there and eliminating the tracking.

I think the health concerns from lead bullet exposure through game meat are considerably overstated. Tests on folks who eat nearly nothing but game meat would turn up something...but they don't. Likewise, tests on mammals who fed heavily on lead poisoned ducks didn't show elevated lead either. That doesn't apply to birds however and lead poisoning in waterfowl, condors and eagles are well proven.

So the problem isn't exactly a lead bullet...it's lead fragments or shot in places and things that birds eat. Waterfowl hunting went to steel a long while back and it's easy to see the positive result that had. Lead fragments in gut piles can lead to poisoning of avian scavengers. A copper bullet works...so does burying the gut pile.

Another option that doesn't get discussed is to use a tougher lead bullet. A single expanded bullet that exits the animal in one piece and keeps going isn't likely to be eaten by a scavenger. Today's better controlled expansion bullets do a great job of hanging together and exiting the animal- leaving behind fewer (if any) lead fragments for a bird to eat in the viscera.

Today's bullets are a lot different than the ones studied when this issue came to light. Back in the day, I'd often get bullets blowing up in the chest cavity and wouldn't exit at all. I'm sure that some magpie or crow munched down the remains of those bullets. The bullets I zip through a caribou lung that exit in one piece are unlikely to ever be found. That said- after early disappointment with copper bullets, I'm starting to work with them again.

I've killed a few elk with the 225 gr. Barnes TSX bullet at ranges from 150 to 350 yards. Haven't recovered one yet.

I've been playing with the 100 gr. TSX in the .257 Bob, and the 120 and 140 gr. TSX in the 7x57 and .280 Rem. but so far they suck big time. No problem with velocity but just can't seem to find the sweet spot for decent accuracy.

Paul B.

I've got some .25 cal 100 gr E-Tips, and some .30 cal 168 gr E-Tips from Nosler that I'm going to try.

Actually considered the 168 E-Tips from my 30-06 for the grizzly hunt, but those wonderful 200 gr Partitions got the nod instead.

Guy

I recovered this from a deer last year. I think it worked well.



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I’ve got a couple rifles loaded with Barnes TTSX’s. They have worked just fine in the past. Haven’t taken anything with an E-Tip yet but I’ll get around to it eventually.

I’m using the TTSX this year just because I wanted to see how they performed. They shoot amazingly accurate! I tried the GMX with one powder, but my rifle either hates that bullet or that powder. Have yet to try the e tips, but seems they come highly recommended on this forum so guess I may need to try them. Hopefully get to try out the TTSX tm morning !


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I've been using lead free bullets on game now for 8 or 9 years, and have nothing but good things to say about them. I've mostly used the 130 grain Nosler E-tip in the .270, but have also used several of the 140 grain Hornady Mono-flex bullets in the .30/30. Both have done everything I've asked for on game, and I haven't had to worry about core/jacket separations, lead fragments in the trimmings for burger, or secondary poisoning of eagles from fragments in gutpiles (something we see in the aftermath of deer season here in northwest Minnesota).

I think I've recovered three E-tips over the years, and most were admirable mushrooms and weighed 127 of the original 130 grains (missing only the polycarbonate tip). The attached photo is from the bullet taken from this year's buck (found just under the hide on the off side). One of the "petals" had sheared off (probably when I nicked the underside of the spine) but still weighed 118 grains. Copper fouling has not been an appreciable issue.