Search the Community

Sorry if this subject has been threaded elsewhere in the forum. I work for a company that supplies clay pigeons to a lot of the shooting schools and gun clubs within the UK, subject to speaking with quite a few of their management members it appears that the issue of lead free shot will primarily affect the game shooting fraternity. However, most agree that the clay shooting community will have about one further season of using lead shot before having to consider the move to steel or a much more expensive alternative. It further appears that most modern guns will already be proofed for steel, in this case the only considerations will be the added expense of steel shot and the period of time it takes to get used to the different characteristics, for some, it will also involve re-choking, but by and large that will be about it. For those of us with older shotguns the problem is not so simple, opinions differ quite a lot, ie: some say all that is necessary is steel proof chokes, and providing your barrels are strong enough to meet the minimum requirements that's it, the theory behind this is the fact that the steel shot is in a plastic cup, the shot remains in the cup until it leaves the end of the barrels at which point the cup behaves like normal wadding and separates. in this case the shot never comes into contact with the inner barrel surfaces, therefore no damage???. Others believe that even the use of steel proof chokes no greater than half could still result in barrel "ring bulge" due to the bottleneck affect caused by the chokes restriction. I may have got the wrong information, or completely got hold of the wrong end of the stick, what do other members think.