Inside the Outdoors: Clay target lead ammo ban is a solution looking for a problem

I’ve always viewed myself as a person of science.

I believe, for instance, in the unwelcome truth of climate change and that we humans are, at the very least, accelerating that change by our ways of living.

Having lived through the years of the final climactic battles against crippling polio, which decades earlier had robbed President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the use of his legs, I believe in the science of vaccines to help us conquer disease.

When science has proven itself, it should be believed.

On the other hand, in trying to follow the paths where science leads, in our haste it’s possible to get ahead of science.

A case in point may be the legislation that was recently introduced in both the Minnesota Senate and Minnesota House of Representatives.

These companion bills would, on a broad basis, ban the use of lead-based ammunition for all shooters in Minnesota. They would also ban the use of most lead-based fishing tackle, including commonly used sinkers and jigs.

The lead ammo ban would be not just for hunting wild game, but for target shooting too. This includes rifle and pistol bullets used at ranges both indoors and out, and shotgun shells used in outdoor clay target shooting, including for our youth who participate in school-sanctioned clay target leagues.

The latter is one of the great success stories in high school extracurricular activities. But, as a consequence of the lead ammo ban, it could be threatened.

At first blush this legislation seems like a positive, forward-thinking idea. We know that exposure to lead can cause neurological damage, especially in children, and can lead to developmental disabilities from the minimal to the profound.

For this reason, lead has been eliminated from paint products, gasoline, plumbing and more.

After many decades of being used in shotgun shells for game bird hunting, lead shot was prohibited for use in hunting migratory birds, chiefly ducks and geese, nationwide.

This occurred after it was found that waterfowl were ingesting randomly dispersed lead shot pellets in the lakes and wetlands where they were hunted and were becoming crippled or dying from lead poisoning.

Since 1991, substitutes for lead have included steel shot, and more expensive bismuth or tungsten alloys.

The use of lead-free ammunition is now more widely required for hunting upland game like pheasants, on some federal or state wildlife management lands.

But, by and large, hunting game birds with shotguns and big game with rifles has remained a world in which lead-based ammunition is overwhelmingly used. The same is true in target shooting, whether breaking clay targets with a shotgun or “paper punching” stationary paper targets with a handgun or rifle.

Beyond the unfortunate poisoning of migratory waterfowl that occurred before lead shot was banned, there are unquestionably other negative impacts on wildlife.

Scavenging bald eagles, crows, ravens, wolves and others that feed on the “gut piles” of field-dressed deer or on unrecovered game carrying lead ammunition often become poisoned by lead fragments or residue.

And there is mounting evidence that deer and even game birds killed with lead-based ammunition that end up on a hunter’s table can carry small fragments, or trace amounts, of lead from the bullet, or pellets, used — a potential risk to those who eat wild game.

These things argue for a future in which hunting wild game relies mostly, if not entirely, on lead-free ammunition. This is one of the provisions of the legislation, though it sets no deadline for the eventual use of lead-free ammunition by all hunters statewide.

Where this legislation departs from science is in its ban on lead-based ammunition used at Minnesota’s outdoor shooting ranges. In particular, a provision that by November 2024, the Minnesota State High School Clay Target League must adopt rules that limit participants to lead-free ammunition only.

Clay target league competition is shotguns only, not rifles or pistols. Depending on the nontoxic substitute used, lead-free shotgun ammunition can be ballistically inferior, more costly, and/or more limited in availability in the kinds of loads used by clay target shooters.

It’s widely believed that such a ban could have a significant negative impact on participation.

As a former Minnesota Department of Natural Resources commissioner, Tom Landwehr is as familiar as most with the issue of lead-based ammunition and fishing tackle. In recently published comments, he was quick to agree that in the hunting realm there is cause for concern over lead ammunition.

At indoor rifle and pistol ranges, too, there can be risk to shooters if that indoor range does not meet federally mandated safety rules for protecting shooters and employees.

But, as Landwehr points out, there is nowhere to be found any data on a risk of lead-caused harm to outdoor shotgun shooters. Unlike rifle and pistol bullets, which when fired are cut and grooved by the barrels through which they are fired — and can shed tiny lead particles — lead in shotgun shells is fully encapsulated in a plastic tube, or wad.

It is fired from a smooth barrel and does not disperse until it is well beyond the barrel and in the atmosphere.

Landwehr is critical of the Izaak Walton League, one of Minnesota’s foremost and dependable champions of good conservation policy, for supporting the proposed legislation’s ban on lead shotgun ammunition for clay target league shooters without evidence that these shooters are at risk of harm.

An early supporter of the clay target league, Landwehr fears that this legislation could do great harm to the fastest growing high school extracurricular activity in Minnesota.

Landwehr accuses the Izaak Walton League of a poorly considered, “ready, fire, aim” approach, for recommending more research, but then advocating in this ban a drastic measure without waiting for any research results.

And, in the process, jeopardizing a program that benefits some 12,000 Minnesota students, in many cases members of an under-served segment of the student population, and promotes healthy participation in the shooting sports.