Steel shot divides opinion. After a decade spent representing the association that is still blamed for “selling wildfowling down the river” by a minority of diehard ‘fowlers two decades later, I know this to be true. The accusation of selling out is of course nonsense but this is not the place to defend BASC. They are quite capable of defending themselves.

The fact is that the law requires us to use non-lead shot. We must obey the law, not least because we are law-abiding certificate holders. The wildfowling club system we have around England and Wales polices the use of non-lead shot very well indeed. If caught using lead you would be ejected from your club (possibly physically) for putting everybody else’s sport in jeopardy.

AN UNFORGIVING TRIBE

Wildfowlers are an unforgiving tribe. If you have ever had to break bad news to the AGM of a wildfowling club you will come to understand the definition of a hostile crowd. Having said that you will not meet a more committed group of people to the sport of shooting. It is a commitment that goes deeper than a lifestyle and further than a way of life. For many of them, it is their inheritance from previous generations. They feel their heritage keenly and are at once welcoming and fiercely protective of their ground (both literally and figuratively). But they are a pragmatic bunch most of whom quickly accepted that when the political tide cut off the use of lead shot they had to embrace alternatives.

Steel shot is not the same as 20 years ago. The first cartridges on the market were – well, not great. Most of the other alternatives were eye-bleedingly expensive and the less said about the cheaper tin shot the better. Combine this with a general lack of understanding about how to use it compared to lead shot - choking and the limits of range - and there was an awful lot of moaning - some of it justified.

These days the moaning has largely disappeared from those who have experimented with steel shot. If I hear someone say “steel shot’s shit” it tells me that they haven’t shot much of it and are probably too idle to take the time and trouble to find a combination that works. They often also have an over-inflated opinion of their ability to shoot – most people’s ability with a shotgun fails before the limit of the effective range for standard steel (40 metres). If they are still shouting that they could kill stuff at 70 metres with lead, then their ability to judge range is probably something their marsh warden or club chairman might be having a word with them about.

Steel shot has, up to now, had one major drawback. To use it safely a thick plastic wad had to protect the steel barrel from the wear of the shot travelling up it at 900mph.

THE WORLD WAKES UP

In November 2017 the world woke up to the problem of plastic pollution in the marine environment when an episode of the Blue Planet, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, aired on BBC television. The speed and scale of the political tide turning against single-use plastics must have taken even him by surprise. Within 48hrs questions were being asked in parliament. It was a lesson for everyone about how fast and how completely opinion can be channeled in the age of social media. It has profound implications for the defence of shooting and hunting worldwide too, but that is another chapter entirely.

It will surprise some looking from outside into the world of shooting that having to use plastic wads to find an affordable, workable alternative to lead shot was something that ‘fowlers have been making noises about for some time before a national treasure whispered into the collective ear of the country that plastic pollution was ‘a bad thing’. Game shooters too have largely turned their back on plastic wads over the years.

BIO WADS ARE NOTHING NEW

Biodegradable plastics are nothing new. I was aware that a biodegradable plastic wad for a shotgun cartridge was commercially available from a company called Armusa in Spain and had been for some years. Many of us who frequent the bar fight that is Twitter could see that it was only a matter of time before plastic wads were used as a stick to beat us with by the antis. The wad in a 3.5” magnum steel cartridge is big, and sure enough, an image posted by a birder of a fist full of squid-like wads picked from the shoreline was retweeted 400 times with a suitably outraged caption before anyone evenly vaguely sympathetic to the sport of shooting had got out of bed.

I had been pushing some of the manufacturers quite hard in public on the subject and felt that they were not facing up to the seriousness of the issue. I feared that we would do what we usually do when faced with a problem in this sport: hope someone else will deal with it and, while squabbling over who’s job/fault it is, get ill-considered legislation imposed on us. That was until I received a cryptic message from the head of marketing at Eley Hawk. The message read “Come and see me at the British Shooting Show, I have something to show you”.

TAKING THE LEAD

Eley had brought to the UK market a compostable plastic wad that was thick enough to protect the barrel and that was fully water-soluble. Having shot their ‘Lightning Steel‘ at duck, geese and pigeons I know their steel loads to be effective at normal ranges. 

As an advocate for the need for such a cartridge, it was hard for me to pick holes in it, but my natural scepticism overcame the desire to shout “here at last!” from the nearest rooftop. Putting these to the test meant they had to perform in the toughest of all shooting environments – the foreshore. 

VOCAL OPPONENTS

One thing that surprised me was that some vocal opponents of plastic wads in game shooting went further than my scepticism doubting the safety of the use of such a wad. They suggested that somehow moisture in the atmosphere would cause it to break down and stick to the barrel wall or the inside of the cartridge. They had no evidence for these assumptions as far as I’m aware, but they made them anyway.

WET POCKETS?

Others have questioned on social media whether the wads will degrade in rain-soaked pockets. This is a legitimate concern. It caused me to look into it. The cartridge case itself is not biodegradable plastic (we should all be making every effort to pick up our empties anyway). Eley has paid attention to the crimping to try to prevent water ingress. They have heat-sealed the centre of the crimp to address it. It is however not completely sealed. This is the case with almost all brands of steel shot cartridge and has always been a problem on the foreshore. I never keep steel shot that has been out with me on the foreshore for the next season as the corrosive power of seawater means that the steel pellets rust easily and could fuse together. Don’t be too alarmed by this though. It is unlikely to cause you injury but the pattern will not be as effective as it might be. Also, you will get some warning if there is a corrosion problem. The brass covered steel that makes up the head of the cartridge (containing the primer) will show signs of rust first. This is of course less likely to corrode quickly from a damp pocket on peg four than it is in a brine-soaked ‘fowling smock.

A TEST TO DESTRUCTION

To combat this there are several options. Some old fowlers used to coat their brass-cased cartridges and certainly the rolled turn-over (as it was in those days) with nail varnish and that is one option. Another more modern version if you have access to a deer larder as I do – you can vac pack five or ten cartridges at a time (although that is extra plastic – not quite in the spirit of the day). An easier way, and something most of us will be able to lay our hands-on, is to wipe a smear of gun grease on the crimp to fully waterproof the spaces in between the petals of the crimp. This works a treat and I have left cartridges standing crimp down in water (both brine and fresh) for 24 hrs which show absolutely no signs of damp or degradation either in the shot or the wad compared to the control that did show signs. This is a test to destruction though and not conditions that one would find out in the field or the marsh.

DECISIONS ON A WHIM

Since I conducted these early tests all the major shooting organisations have expressed their desire over the next five years to move away from lead shot and single-use plastics. This has been coming for some time and if it was a surprise to you then I respectfully suggest that you were not concentrating. The early signs were there at the back end of last year when Waitrose and Sainsbury’s announced they would no longer stock game shot with lead. This was significant, not because they take a large percentage of the game on the market, but because multi-million-pound supermarkets do not take decisions on a whim. They do their market research and whilst I have not seen it, we can guess that the British public, faced with the option of toxic metal in their food or not, said a resounding ‘no’ to lead. 

If the game we shoot is not destined for the human food chain and it is reduced to a bi-product of a rural entertainment industry, then game shooting becomes indefensible.

THE BEAST THAT NEVER SLEEPS

It is disappointing, however, that the announcement of a seismic change in direction for the sport of game shooting was not handled better. I am not interested in blame, but I am interested in learning from mistakes. The cat was out of the bag on this at the British Shooting Show in February fully a week before the official announcement. On the Friday before the announcement, I am told that a press release went out which was embargoed for the weekend until Monday morning. It was almost as if social media did not exist. Well, social media works weekends – it is the beast that never sleeps and you ignore it at your peril. Rather predictably Facebook melted with the heat of outrage and howls of betrayal. Much of the fury was directed at BASC. This was misguided as for once, all the major organisations involved in game shooting were on the same side of the ball.

MISGUIDED ALLEGATIONS

Then the allegations started. ‘There was no consultation with the membership as to whether they wanted this decision.’ That too is misguided - BASC members are consulted every year in council elections and in a democratic organisation you get the leadership you deserve. Out of a membership of 150,000 members, turnout for elections is consistently around 5%. Decisions are made by those who show up and if you don’t vote some might say you forfeit the right to whinge about the result. For the die-hard lead fans, I would ask why you didn’t vote for a candidate who supported lead, and if you couldn’t find one, why you didn’t stand for election yourself? That said, I do believe that BASC council members should be more accessible and accountable to their members in the future and said as much to senior management when I worked there. Past mumblings about it being ‘too technical’ to host Q&A’s online or their being ‘no appetite’ for such interaction have been shown by the resilience of the shooting community during lockdown to be an outdated mode of thinking.

SHADY DEALS

There were also accusations that Eley had somehow engineered this scenario with BASC in a shady deal. The facts do not support this. Eley has a parent company, Maxam. They export ammunition to well over 100 countries around the world. Maxam’s interest in the small company that produces this bio-degradable wad is strategic and they have exclusive rights. With a global move away from single-use plastics in industry, Maxam was not solely focussed on the UK game shooting market when they took the decision. The fact that none of the other manufacturers have a comparable product is neither Eley’s fault nor their design.

DIFFICULT TO SWALLOW

The reply to the organisations from the cartridge manufactures was as perplexing as it was disappointing. Claims that they were not consulted and that it was impossible to fulfill the aims were difficult for me to swallow. At the end of 2018 after publicly asking questions about the use of biodegradable plastics for wadding I received a private message from one of the UK manufacturers who now find themselves behind the curve, stating that the topic was of the “highest priority”. This was no surprise to them, although there may have been an unwillingness to accept it at board level. It is interesting to note that the “impossible” was then caveated with the phrase “without significant financial support”.

I accept that it will be difficult to move both away from lead and towards bio-degradable plastics. The wads we have seen can work and it is up to the others to catch up to Maxam and Eley. The cartridge cases though maybe a harder problem to solve as the shear resistance of these plastics may not be up to chamber pressures. This is where research and development will need to accelerate, but do we really think that 5 years isn’t long enough to do it? I am open to persuasion if there are valid reasons, but on first reading, it seems more like the response of a petulant child, resistant to change.

STEEL SHOT AND TIMBER

Several other social media opinions have somehow hardened into fact. One classic is "‘steel shot ruins timber values’. This seems to me to have been a fact imported from Scandinavia where non-lead shot has variously been adopted and the forestry industry is a large and, one imagines, influential body. In much of the UK’s driven game shooting, tree trunks are rarely behind our target. Scandinavian hunting is much more based around what we would call rough or walked up shooting, not driven shooting. Cover crops driven back towards woodland pre-dominates in the UK and in the wooded valleys of the west country and parts of northern England guns do not pay vast sums to shoot at game flying halfway up the height of a tree. Proper shoot management can address this issue too. Often I hear the phrase on a shoot briefing “shoot whatever gives you pleasure but make sure it has sky behind the barrels”. The only time I can recall shooting game where the main trunk of a tree was in my sight-line is shooting on a spaniel trial in woodland. It would be of interest to conduct some penetration tests at different ranges to put this one to bed for good. 

BARREL SCORING

Another myth that must be addressed is “steel will ruin my gun”. This is often backed up on social media with the image of deep scoring to a ‘gun barrel’. Firstly – it is not a gun barrel it is a piece of industrial pipe; secondly – the scoring is not done by steel shot used in cartridge manufacture – the original source of the picture shows the damage was caused by ball bearings under hydraulic pressure. The soft iron used in steel shot is a world away from industrial ball bearings. This picture is often trotted out as fact by one staunchly pro-lead campaigner and conspiracy theorist. Steel shot can, if used through too tight a choke cause a barrel to bulge usually at a weakness that already exists in the barrel wall. Barrels rarely ever split like a peeled banana and when they do the cause is almost always a barrel blockage from a stuck wad, mud, or snow. I did once have to investigate (insurance wise) a barrel splitting but the gentlemen in question had little idea of appropriate equipment for wildfowling since he was putting 70mm steel cartridges through a 65mm chambered English gun from the turn of the century and he had plugged his barrel into the creek. He now knows the true value of the only opposable thumb he has left.

WHAT IS SAFE WITH STEEL?

The guidance from the proof house on steel shot changed in March 2020 and will be the subject of another post.

It is important to remember that there are two types of steel shot: ‘Standard Steel’ and ‘High Performance’ steel. For users of vintage guns and side by sides, standard steel can go through any nitro proof barrel in good condition, this excludes damascus (according to the recent guidance). That is as long as your chamber length is 70mm (2 3/4"). Currently, there are no 65 mm or 67 mm standard steel cartridges in the UK - yet - I am working on that with the manufacturers. 67mm standard steel cartridges do exist on the continent, and many are loaded by one of the manufacturers here in the UK, but they are over the limits set by the British Proof Authorities so are not legal to sell in this country. If that raises your eyebrows, rest assured that mine raised too.

You should not use tighter than half choke with standard steel and in classic or vintage guns you should have your barrel thickness checked by a competent gunsmith. There are no published lower limits for wall thickness for using standard steel but I would be uncomfortable shooting it through a barrel thinner than 23 thou.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE STEEL

High-performance (HP) steel can only go through barrels with the ‘Fleur de Lys’ proof mark on them (see image above). There is no choke restriction on High-performance steel proofed barrels until you get to shot size BB. If shooting BB or bigger, then half choke would be the maximum. In reality, this only applies to goose shooters.

Shot size matters with steel. If the shot size is 3.25mm or bigger then it is classified as HP steel and should only go through HP steel proofed guns. The problem we have is that some manufacturers measure steel and lead shot sizes differently. This is why Eley Eco wad 32g 3’s are still classified as Standard Steel – they measure under 3.25mm even though some comparative charts show 3.25 as an English shot size 3. Confused? Most people would be.

CONFUSION REIGNS

I have been lobbying the Gun Trade Association who were party to the announcement on the planned phase-out of lead shot, to have a mandatory system of labeling that all manufacturers must follow. The shooting public must be able to have confidence in what they are shooting for this transition to work. Confusion existed even in the minds of senior members of the gun trade over what an HP steel shot proof mark looked like. I saw one shop owner point to the two crowns over SUP (superior proof) and with misplaced confidence say to a customer ‘there, that is your steel mark’. Well, it wasn't, but the old boy might be forgiven for his confusion (but not his certainty) because HP steel is sometimes referred to as ‘Superior Steel’. This term should be dispensed with as it only causes confusion. We should stick to referring to it as ‘High-performance’ steel. Also, the original steel shot marks the proof authorities decided upon had three constituent parts. In a refreshing blast of common sense, the new guidance from the Proof Houses whittled those three marks down to one. Now all you need to look for is the ‘Fleur de Lys’.

NECESSARY STEPS

I believe this proof mark should be in several places for the public to have confidence in understanding what they are buying. It has to be on an HP steel proof gun by the rules of proof, that much we know. But it should also be on the cartridge case of an HP steel shot cartridge, the box label of 25, and on the cardboard outer of 250. Not only that but to avoid the insane confusion over shot sizes (which measure differently all over the world) they should be labeled in all three places in millimetres. This already happens on many continental lead cartridges it is surely not beyond the wit of man this side of the channel.

The noise about change has gradually receded - probably in part because we have more important things to focus on such as burying our Covid dead, mourning them, and life and work after lockdown.

We are, however moving towards a greater understanding in the mind of the shooting public at large about what a non-lead shot future means in practical, not hysterical terms. The plural of anecdote is not ‘data’. There is a long way to go and some questions remain unanswered as yet, but we are making progress towards a more secure future of live quarry shooting in the UK. I strongly suspect we will look back in five years' time and wonder what all the fuss was about.

© simonreinhold.co.uk May 2020