Smudger687

I was mid-way through typing a reasoned response to the points raised on the podcast, then realised I'd already done the same thing not too long ago and it got me nowhere. I just can't be bothered to argue anymore. What I will say is that there are far worse problems to shooting's future than lead/non lead. The main ones being punitive firearms licensing and a lack of public land. It's demoralising trying to find permissions in some parts of the country.

Of course, but that's when you have the luxury of using lead. Steel shot just accentuates the shortcomings of the smaller gun. Steel/tss duplexes in the .410 may be good enough to keep the gun going. A few grams of tss 10's or 9.5's won't add a huge amount of cost to the cartridge, then small steel pellets can fill out the pattern.

That was the point of my post? I.e. even a 22g 3 steel cartridge that none of us would even consider is still superior to that .410 load.

As already shown, steel .410 loads do exist, but there's a definite upper limit on how much you can expect to achieve with 118 pellets of number 6 (3/8 ounce). To put this into perspective, that's about the same number of pellets as a steel 22g 3 load, a cartridge which almost all of us would disregard for its low pellet count if it were a 12 bore.

I've used a bit of factory bismuth too - I've not been particularly thrilled with current market offerings, the shot quality is quite poor from my experience. Are your steel cartridges biosteels or plaswads?

I seem to recall most of what you do is rough shooting, a discipline where steel is generally not required. Do you use non-lead for most of your shooting? What cartridge, if so? Thanks

I provided empirical evidence and mathematics on the topic of steel shot performance. You were repeatedly invited to provide contradictory evidence and you never did. It is not a difference of opinion. If you have evidence that shows steel performs as well as lead, let's hear it, better late than never I suppose. We all refer to the "voluntary transition" as a lead ban. Don't be a pedant, it's silly. My comments on biowads stem from extensive use of fibre cups in homeloads, from decomposition and field tests of market offerings, and researching the polymers used to produce them. I know that your colleagues probably tell you that steel is great and the biowads are fantastic, but last I remember you do walked up days and I can't imagine you use much steel on them. I would hazard a guess that your first hand experience of biosteels isn't particularly extensive. God bless you Conor. I can understand that the regular slatings you take on this forum every time steel is mentioned can make you quite defensive. I wouldn't like it either. But repeatedly ignoring everyone's objections does you no favours. You're not like this on other unrelated topics, it's very disappointing.

A senior BASC representative told me in person that the reason for the lead ban was because the continental market for shot game needed to be kept open. Again, you may disagree with this, but this is what was told to me, and your recent post does suggest there's some truth to this. You've just said that biowad availability was a factor in the transition - if this were the case why did manufacturers need 5 years to move over? Why did the manufacturers all come together and publicly state that they'd not had discussions with BASC about a move to non-tox, and that achieving it within a 5 year timescale was delusional. Even now, there's no biowad that even comes close to the performance of a standard plaswad. 5 years ago the Gamebore silver steel cartridge was the only biodegradable steel shot option on the market, and was offered in a 3 inch 32g 4 option only. Hardly what anyone could describe as widely available. I would also point out that BASC has repeatedly published demonstrable falsehoods when it comes to steel shot performance, and refuses to listen to criticism or take correction. Taken in totality, very few people feel that BASC is being truthful. You are of course free to label myself and others as conspiracy theorists, but our opinions are the result of BASC's unforced errors.

So when Konor (I think) said earlier in this thread that BASC proposed the transition so as to allow the big commercial shoots to keep shooting big bags under the guise of "harvesting" for consumption, you pushed back on it. Yet here you admit that it was done at least in part to ensure a market for game. And of course the biggest sellers on the game market are the big commercial shoots. I also have to say that the rest of your reasoning doesn't quite make sense to me either; BASC proposed a move away from lead and plastic partly because of the availability of biodegradable shot cups for steel, yet a 5 year transition period is needed because manufacturers don't have the tooling or machinery to make steel biowads?

Knocked it right the head

Out of interest, what are BASC going to do when, at the end of the 5 year period, the official figures will show the inevitable? By any unbiased measure you would have to judge the whole initiative as being less successful than BASC would have wanted: 1. Uptake of non-tox has been insignificant (on some shoots the new biowad offerings are banned). 2. Opinions on steel shot have not changed significantly, despite frequent (and often inaccurate) public statements by BASC on steel's lethality. 3. Biowad performance is still a long way from what we are accustomed to from a standard plaswad, questions remain on the true biodegradeability of some of these offerings, and prices are usually much higher than even the most premium lead loads. 4. Sales of game shot with non-tox by supermarkets and game dealers have been insignificant. 5. BASC, rightly or wrongly, are widely perceived to have completely mishandled the whole affair. This is not to be confrontational, but the writing is on the wall and I'd like to know what BASC's future plans are.

Yep. It's a con, and it would fall flat were it not for the likes of BASC propping it up.

Conor, no manufacturer has developed a satisfactory biowad. I have even made you personally aware of this and yet BASC continues to bury its head in the sand. Why is that BASC never listens? To be clear once more - the "biocompostible" wads used by Hull, B&P, bioammo, lyalvale etc are made of polylactic acid (PLA). PLA does not break down in real world conditions, so they are no different in practice to a plaswad. They are also brittle in cold weather and prone to splitting. The water soluble wads will degrade but they foul the bores terribly, significant enough that barrel obstruction becomes a real risk. They are also not amenable to long term storage or available to the homeloader due to their sensitivity to atmospheric moisture. The paper cup wads are not strong enough for steel shot. Myself and others have tested these extensively and barrel and choke scoring is commonplace.

Don't burn them please. If they're lead shot you're going to melt the shot and cause a portion of it to vaporise. Just cut cartridges open and salvage the components or give them on to someone that reloads.

Some form of wax that could be applied to the lenses would be your best bet at this stage.

Yes, along with Brent Geese.

Mandel and Gemini sell Baikal chokes if you can't get any here.

Place your bets on calls to ban crossbows

You're not technically wrong; having no opportunity to use a gun certainly would reduce the chances of having an accident with it, much like not driving a car would reduce the chances of having a crash. But guns are meant to be used, what's the point otherwise?

Why must we tackle it head on? So that BASC can meet their B-corp mandated DIE criteria? Could it possibly stem from the fact that most women aren't interested in shooting? By far the biggest barriers to shooting are lack of land and permissions to shoot on (especially true for firearms certificates), and our very restrictive licensing system. Why doesn't BASC try and tackle these two instead? Just imagine the difference it would make if public land existed to hunt on, like in the States.

The only downside about is the location of the return spring, which is wrapped around the magazine tube rather than in the stock like the benellis. This makes the gun a bit more front heavy, but easier to clean, so pick your poison I suppose.

Having a rifle above the fireplace used to be part of our cultural heritage too. Didn't seem to make much difference, our overlords want us unarmed and docile.

Velocity is not the way to get more lethality out of steel shot, more payload, bigger pellets and tighter chokes are. An 1800 fps steel cartridge would need to use a miniscule payload to keep pressures down, and at 40 yards it's barely faster than if it were doing 1350 fps. High velocity shells do, however, give much more recoil, more blast, and faster pattern degradation.

Complete non-issue. Stomach acid isn't actually that concentrated, it's mostly there to make life difficult for pathogens and provide the correct pH for optimal protease activity. Iron powder (with a massively higher surface area) is added to some breakfast cereals as a form of iron supplementation. So swallowing an errant pellet isn't going to cause an issue (unless you're about to have an MRI scan). @Conor O'Gorman It may be worth having discussions with our price-gouging cartridge manufacturers, for if bio-steel cartridges were offered at competetive rates or cheaper than existing lead cartridges, takeup would be greater, but when you're paying more money for a product which: 1. Has inferior ballistic performance; 2. Has a risk (perceived or real) of causing damage to your gun; and, 3. Has an unknown shelf-life, then it's not difficult to see why people just don't bother.

In my opinion, a 3.5 inch gun only offers an advantage when the majority of the carts you put through it are 3.5 inches. As you've said crows and pigeons will be a main use for the gun, I'm going to assume that the vast majority of shells you put through it will be 70mm. That means for 90% or so of everything you put through it, you're getting 3/4 of an inch of chamber jump and gas blow by. I'm also going to guess that most of your wildfowling will be using either 70 or 76mm shells? If so, the same argument applies. Why buy a gun that offers an advantage for perhaps 5% of your total shooting, yet gives a disadvantage for the remaining 95%? I would get a 3 inch gun, and if you find you need more firepower than a 3 inch steel cartridge, then you'll be much better served by swapping to a denser non-tox like bismuth or tungsten.