Heper shot?

[Frank Srebro]

Heper lead shot is fairly new on the market and it has some Trap shooters all in a buzz. It's imported/distributed through dealers by CAC Associates here in PA. From what I understand it's made in Turkey using a modern drop tower and is extra hard with 6% antimony, supposedly the hardest shot available - and believe it or not - less expensive than US premium brands like West Coast, Remington, Lawrence. Plus it’s confirmed to be right on US diameter sizing within a very tight range which probably assumes modern screening equipment as compared with older screens in use by other makers.

Pic shows bags of 7-1-2’s and 8’s each with a cool “pour spout”. Has anyone here used Heper as yet? Opinions?

[Harold Lee Pickens]

The pouring spout is a good idea--have you tried it out?

[Frank Srebro]

No Harold I haven't but my Trap shooter friend has and he ties off the spout with a string after filling the press canister. He says the spout is really cool. Also told me his first buy for test had thin bags and only ~24 pounds of shot (probably 11 kilos) but CAC now has much heavier bags and 25 pounds of shot. Those are the ones pictured here. Lastly he said he prefers Heper over one of the other familiar “magnum shot” brands for Handicap yardage.

[edgarspencer]

I remember reading an article years ago about shot alloying and dropping. The author had done some testing of shot hardness of different alloys. Alloys might be a little generous, since the only element, other than lead and tramp amounts, was antimony. If I remember correctly, he was of the opinion that anything over 4-5% yielded no noticeable increase in hardness.
Linotype lead is pretty high in antimony but in the increasing trend to digital information, typeset printing isn't what it used to be, so that source of scrap lead may be drying up.
Electric Boat was one of my major customers, and virtually every casting I made for them required umpteen pages of testing results and certification. In every NAVSEA spec, antimony, arsenic and tin had to be reported, and arsenic was always present, hand in hand with antimony. Those two elements do not break down, ever. I occasionally think about the amount of lead we deposit on all our sporting clay courses, but I guess I will now have to ponder the amount of arsenic (with the antimony) we are also scattering.

[Frank Srebro]

Egdar, a good theoretical point but practically speaking, elemental arsenic is relatively stable and unaffected by air and water. Also it’s a minimal percentage of the antimony that's bound up in the lead pellets. Hence it would seem that reaction of arsenic the surface of the pellets with acid rain etc would take a very long time and runoff would be largely diluted.

Nowadays it seems we as a nation are perhaps overly sensitized to environmental "contaminants" with the latest one today having to do with July 4th aerial firework displays. Granted, the variety of colors result from salts of bad actors like barium, copper, strontium and others added to the pyrotechnic mix, but all told the dilution factor is never considered by those with little scientific background but are adept with google and then call loudly for outright bans on this or that.

All this with a grain of salt from a guy who's kind of desensitized on relatively minor environmental pollutants, having grown up in a town with the smoke of burning coal culm dumps heavily laden with H2S and SO2 when the wind was from the south, and while managing in a pulp mill and breathing NH3 and SO2 from inevitable process leaks.

All this just my take on things.