( Sports Afield )

Many shooters are worried that all lead shot will become illegal- -not only for hunting waterfowl but for hunting upland birds and animals as well; for trap, skeet, sporting clays; and even for plinking out in the field. With a complete ban, countless fine, thin-barreled shotguns, long retired from the duck or goose blinds, would become curios, objets d'art to be hung on the wall. Competitive clay target histories would enter Phase Two, with an asterisk appended to all previous records to indicate that they are lead shot records. Quail hunters would grab a handful of cartridges loaded with No. 5 or 6 steel instead of their usual lead No. 8s. Pheasant hunters would have to go with No. 2 or 4 steel.

Is such a concern justified? Lead shot is, of course, illegal for all manner of waterfowl hunting. But consider that lead shot is also illegal for the hunting of all game on some state-owned hunting areas and federal refuges, since waterfowl may feed in areas frequented by other shotgun quarry. Some trap and skeet clubs have been closed solely because the lead shot fell into a body of water.

Neither Winchester (Olin) nor Federal anticipates a ban on all lead shot. Remington, which is "hoping for the best but preparing for the worst," already has a line of steel shot target loads.

"We're very concerned about it," said Art Wheaton, Remington's vice president of sales and marketing, "and see the pressure continue to grow. But we hope that the issue is contained with nontoxic shot for waterfowl. We don't see a problem anywhere else."

Living With Lead

Lead occurs naturally in the environment, and for more than a century the ill effects of lead poisoning in humans has been recognized. As a result, lead has been virtually eliminated from paint and gasoline, and lead pipes are no longer a cinch--they're history. The dangers of lead ingestion are well documented, but elevated levels of lead in the environment do not always cause lead poisoning. For example, people living in homes built over an EPA lead-filled "Superfund" site in Colorado, where tailings and residue from a lead mine were deposited, have blood levels of lead lower than the U.S. average (according to the Smuggler Mountain Technical Advisory Committee's finalreport).

The Remington Gun Club in Lordship, Connecticut, was shut down because an aquatic hazard evaluation study found a substantial amount of lead shot in the waters of Long Island Sound, the result of years of trap and skeet shooting there. However, the report, prepared by Enesco of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1986, concluded that the lead shot in the Sound "represents low to negligible aquatic hazard to the species used in the testing" (mussels, oysters, killifish, brown algae and cord grass). Researchers observed 25 species of waterfowl (ducks, geese, swans, sea birds and shore birds), none of which exhibited symptoms typical of lead poisoning. Most species were encountered so infrequently that "significant exposure to elevated levels of lead was not considered probable."

Lead shot from gun clubs can poison waterfowl, but that's possible only when the shotfall area is in shallow-water habitat. Most gun clubs have no such situations.

A Lead-Free Future?

Pressure to eliminate all lead, quite apart from lead poisoning of birds and other wildlife, will probably increase. Lead shot, in the capacity it is used today, may have zero effect on the nation' s health. But it may well become an incidental victim of a no-lead campaign.

Another nontoxic substitute for lead shot may be in trial use this season, albeit in limited quantities. At press time, toxicity tests on bismuth shot have satisfied the requirements of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has proposed conditional approval for its use during the 1994 to 1995 waterfowl season. Costing twice as much as steel, bismuth shot approaches the effectiveness of lead. For more information, contact Bismuth Cartridge Co.; 1-800/759-3333.

PERMIT YOURSELF

What you do or don't do in the next 60 days can determine if and where you hunt big game a year from now. Deadlines for license applications in some states, for some species, is January. Get your applications out now.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Hearst Corporation