Fair enough, Destry. You've elevated the issue to another level. I long ago gave up notions of democracy and representation as we learned them in school. They never truly existed. They are words woven into our hypocrisy. Leaders at all levels choose from one side or the other, when both sides may be against the public interest (which is what we would choose if we saw clearly, thought rationally and acted disinterestedly). PETA wins today, NRA tomorrow, each looking after their powerful constituencies, and we wind up with a dissolving phantasmagoria, claptrap. I don't know why educated publics put up with it.

Apathy King, nothing more, nothing less. The notion that "someone else will do it" has long spelled the demise of worthy causes.

Well King last year I fired nearly a 1000 shotgun rounds while crow hunting, more than 600 2 7/8" 10ga. Waterfowling I am lucky if I shoot 150 rounds a year. If/when steel shot is mandated for the general hunting season what are my choices when it comes to crow shooting? Cheap steel rounds through an Remington 870 or about $3000 worth of Non-Toxic shot through the old doubles annually. You basing your point of view on the financial numbers represented by your low volume of shooting.

Off Topic - I gotta come out and go crow shooting with you boys sometime! I've got about 200 rounds of factory loaded black powder substitute rounds in heavy charges of 7 1/2 shot that could be burned up in such activity.

When the non-toxic law comes through it will be the death of vintage guns for anything like trap/skeet, crow shooting, or dove hunting as the cost of the ammo will be too high. That is unless you want to bite the bullet and shoot steel through them which all know I'm against. The vintage style waterfowlers won't be that much affected and the upland gunners like grouse shooters won't know the difference as their volume of shooting is fairly low.

But as I said, I still don't like it just on principle as it's a means to an end.


Destry

It is what it is, J.B. For you it will be steel on crows whether you and the birds deserve the foul stuff or not.

Destry, I don't think a lead ban represents the end of our hunting, only the end of what we've known; we've seen the best of it.

The generation coming along doesn't share our interests in loads and guns. None hereabouts carries a double. They could name maybe one of five common classics.

Standing before a long rack of clickety-clacks last week, I asked Where are the doubles? "No one would buy a double even if I brought one in."

Shells: as look as they go boom.

King,

I agree that most of the gunners these days have no interest in vintage guns. At pushing 41 years old, I'm pretty well the youngest I've met who shoots vintage guns literally for everything. The boys I shoot with in Canada and Michigan all want camoflage, plastic, alloy, whatever is newest must be better. They continually stand amazed and slightly bewildered at me and my arsenal of ancient firearms.

One of the boys was telling me he had his grandfathers old old duck gun but he wouldn't hunt with it because it was worth too much money. When I stopped at his house one day for a viewing, he produced a worn out Model 37 Ithaca with a broken stock. I didn't have the heart to tell him the gun I'd been shooting geese with that day was worth more than his truck.

That's the common mindset I find, can't use an old gun because they might be worth some money plus they wouldn't do the job like a new one anyway. Why would you use a double barrel? It doesn't shoot three times. Why would you shoot shells that are $3 each? I can buy these Winchester X-Pert steel shells for less than $1 each. And the list goes on.....

I'm not saying the lead ban is the end of hunting, but it changes things and not for the better. As I've said, just a means to an end. They could care less about the environment, it's just a left handed way to further the agenda of the anti-hunting and anti-gun crowd.


Destry

FWIW on Trapshooters.com there have been several recent threads about shooting trap and other clay games with steel using real full chokes. A club in Naperville, Il. is steel shot only and members report no difference in performance and no damage to gun barrels using ordinary AA and Claybuster wads. Food for thought.