Excerpt of article by Mike Swan, GWCT Senior Advisor
In early 2020, when our various organisations announced a joint plan to phase out the use of lead in live quarry shooting, no one could possibly have known about the glitches that would get in the way. Five years seemed like a sensible target, but no one was thinking about the effects of disease. As if the covid pandemic and its lockdowns were not enough, we then had avian influenza and its impact on supplies of birds for releasing.
Many shoots will have lost two complete seasons, and most will have been significantly disrupted, so most shooters have probably fired significantly fewer cartridges than they would normally over the last four years. I am certainly one of those, and I confess straight away that I am still burning up supplies of lead loads, including some extras given to me in the meantime by chums who have retired from shooting.
However, I made myself a promise when the voluntary phase-out was announced, that I would no longer buy lead cartridges if I did not need to, and I have stuck to that, and only bought steel. My little caveat, which I have not had to invoke, was that I would still buy lead if there was not a non-lead cartridge to suit my needs for a particular situation. Meanwhile, despite genuine difficulties over world trade during the pandemic impinging on the development of new non-lead loads, there are now over 120 different steel cartridges on the market in a whole range of bore sizes. There may still be some way to go, but the manufacturers are to be congratulated on their progress during difficult times.
One of the features of the 2023/24 season for me has been hearing about shoots that are going lead free. The first came from Arthur Leigh-Pemberton of Torry Hill in Kent, when we were wildfowling together in the autumn. Arthur said that he was actively encouraging folk to go lead free on the home shoot, and that it will become the rule for 2024/5. The following day I received an invitation for what turned out to be a delightful driven day at Bisterne, just south of Ringwood in the Avon Valley. In his instruction my host Hallam Mills said that the shoot is now lead free, and everyone seemed quite happy about that. The same applies at the GWCT’s shoot at Loddington, where there has been an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the lead free rule from our many visiting Guns.
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