• Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.

    We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.

    Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103

Lead particles in the wound channel!

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

PreglerD

58 Cal.
Joined
Oct 22, 2006
Messages
2,178
Reaction score
3
Hello from Germany,

in a german hunting magazine of the ecological hunting society I read an article about remaining of lead particles in the wound channels of harvested game. In the article was told that when using jacketed bullets with lead inside there will be many lead particles in the wound channel so that the meat is poisened. How is it when using RB's?

Regards

Kirrmeister
 
It's a wonder any of us are still alive according to some of these scientific findings. Listen, it's real simple, when butchering an animal give the wound channel a wide berth and cut around it.
 
Maybe its just my humble opinion but since the last study that purported to show lead hazards in deer meat I've been skeptical. Yes there is the lead issue but cutting out the wound channel should IMHO take care of this.

I believe the NRA has an article about the origins of the last study and who funded it and how it was flawed.

Edit:

Lead in your meat.

The above is a link to the OutdoorLife special report. Lead fragments have been found in the meat at food banks. I suspect the higher velocity ammo causes higher fragmentation. Black powder projectiles IMHO tend to hold together much better due to the lower velocities.

As I said before I believe much of this can be solved with proper meat preparation and cleaning.
 
I shoot em through the ribs, one hole in, one hole out. I throw the lungs and heart out to the dog, and I dont use the ribs, so I dont have any wound channel to worry about. Sounds like some sort of environmental alarmist disinformation to me. Some geek in a pony tail trying to beat the drum for his cause. Dont loose any sleep over it.
 
The human body can digest, and pass through all kinds of heavy metals-- and does -- daily, from many sources. Microscopic lead that MAY be ingested as the result of poor meat processing will not poison anyone. It is passed on through and out the body. Any heavy metal atoms that do get into the blood stream are filtered out through the kidneys, and then excreted out through the walls of the rectum.

These are alamists studies done with an anti-hunting agenda in mind-- nothing more. They tell us nothing. If these small amounts of lead were truly toxic to humans, our ancestors who depended on meat they killed, and usually with rifles or lead shot in the 18th and 19th centuries would all have died, at an early age, and we would not be here to be writing about this!

Cut around the primary wound channel. Wash the meat well with water, to remove any surface debris, including copper, steel, or lead from your bullets. I wash the wound channel, cut-away meat, and soak it in water to get the blood out, but then put it in a bowl to use for grinding up venison for sausage. As long as its been washed and cleaned, its fine.

I found that lead washes out from meat with the first rabbit and pheasant I prepared, shot with lead shot. I missed a piece of shot once, and found it when biting down at the table. The lead pellet was dark indicating oxidation had occured, but other than a bit of metallic taste there was nothing wrong with the meat. I spit out the lead pellet, and finished the meal.

With bird hunting, finding a piece of shot in the meat you eat is a relatively common event, no matter how well the meat is prepared. Sometimes, you find a hole, but just can't find the pellet that made it. It will have slide Under a muscle after slowing and sometimes hitting the breast bone.
 
I usually trim away the damaged meat.

But Lord knows how many shot pellets I have bit down on and probably ingested. I think eating lead is a problem for the very young and lessens as you age.

You ain't getting dealt near as many brain cells after you turn 10 years old of so.
 
Almost all the deer I shot with breechloading high velocity rifles had so much bloodshot meat around the wound channel it was automatically trimmed outupon our butchering. It was not uncommon to also find copper jacket fragments if they were shot close up (most were). In later years we always had to use shotgun slugs and that sort of meat destruction was less prevalent (deer were just as dead) Good smoke, Ron in FL
 
Its not like there is coffee, egg yokes, or bacon in there so you will probably live.
We immunize our babies with vaccines utilizing mercury. We fill out teeth with base metals like silver and gold. Im thinking that a few flakes of lead, that will most likely pass right on through, will NOT matter to much in the scheme of things.
There are some people out there that just simply can not find enough negative things to focus on EXPECIALLY if it deals with guns, hunting, or the harvesting of animals.
 
I'd be more worried about chipping a tooth on a bullet fragment than getting poisoned by it.

Somebody needs to publish a story about the benefits of eating wild game to counter the anti's BS.

HD
 
I came to terms a long time ago with the realization that if you eat the food, drink the water, and breathe the air you just ain't gettin' out of life alive.

Lead, mercury, concrete & steel playgrounds, and other world-ending substances used to be pretty common-place. Somehow (as another poster mentioned) we survived.


So far...

:haha: :wink:
 
Heh, how many of us have ever spit out a pellet from eating a game bird. I know I've done it once or twice over the years.
 
As kids in Hawaii we fished with lead split shots. We would open them up by wedging them in our teeth and close the them by biting them down to crimp the line.

That sure explains a lot now I guess. :youcrazy:
 
The fact that makes me curious was that this article was in a magazine of a german hunting associaton. But there destiny is to invent none lead bullets, so they do everything that lead bullets will be prohibited.

Kirrmeister
 
In the link I posted I believe they mentioned the difference between a higher velocity ammo vs a shotgun slug. IMHO there is merit in why we might see more lead particles in the high velocity projectile.

The bullet design on the lighter weight, faster moving bullet is to expand quickly. In doing so I think we've all seen how the jacket sometimes shreds taking particles of lead with it. The slow moving slug on the other hand tends to stay together and retain it's weight.
 
I think the same. A PRB for example or also a conical won't be crack in the way a modern bullet with lead inside does. Most RB stay good together and nearly loose much lead, even when they hit a bone.

Regards

Kirrmeister
 
roundball said:
Guess we should all start taking head shots !!
:grin:

:shake: Here we go again. Time for another head shot debate?

O.K. I'll begin...Head shots are not ethical IMO.

:v

HD
 
Huntin Dawg said:
roundball said:
Guess we should all start taking head shots !!
:grin:

:shake: Here we go again. Time for another head shot debate?

O.K. I'll begin...Head shots are not ethical IMO.

:v

HD

Come on HD, if you want to stir the soup, really stir it! Head shots are not ethical unless you happen to blow down the barrel! :rotf:
 
Pork Chop said:
Huntin Dawg said:
roundball said:
Guess we should all start taking head shots !!
:grin:

:shake: Here we go again. Time for another head shot debate?

O.K. I'll begin...Head shots are not ethical IMO.

:v

HD

Come on HD, if you want to stir the soup, really stir it! Head shots are not ethical unless you happen to blow down the barrel! :rotf:

OK...here's the deal...No head shots allowed unless:
You blow down the barrel;
And used a lead flint wrap;
And align a pillow ticking blue stripe with the front sight;
 
I headshot an old doe with an Enfield about 20 years ago and when the bullet hit it sounded like two softball sized rocks being slammed together. It was the only part of the deer I could see at the time and I wanted meat in the freezer. Haven't tried one since but they can be extremely effective. Hey we head shoot squirrels don't we and they are a far smaller target?
 
Back
Top