ORIGINAL: Stonewall308
I am a total layman when it comes to this, but I would have a very very hard time believing that lead rifle rounds have any measurable affect on the environment. Whitetail hunters can go years without firing a shot. I hunted 13 years before I shot my first deer. I got two this year, and on the second the round didn't pass through the animal. So in my 13 total years of deer hunting I have put exactly 165 grains of bullet into the environment, a fraction of that being lead and the remainder being the copper jacket.
Also, waterfowl hunting puts a lot of shot into the water where it can contaminate the drinking supply, and animals that feed from the bottom can ingest them. A round fired at a deer will be lodged in the dirt, frequently in some wooded area where it will never harm anything.
This is totally inaccurate. Rifle bullets will actually do much more harm than shotgun pellets, despite being extremely less prevalent. Duck hunters do a lot more missing than deer hunters. With duck hunters, people are concerned about the pellets that don't hit the bird. With deer hunters, you need to be concerned with the bullet that DOES hit the deer.
The Boone and Crockett Club, in conjuction with a couple other agencies, just reported on a study done on the recovery efforts of the Condor and how they have been effected by lead in bullets. Keep in mind here, the Boone and Crockett Club is a pro-hunting organization (if ever one existed... and I am a measurer and a memeber of it).
You'd be shocked how much lead is in an animal you shoot with a jacketed rifle bullet. Even if you hit him in the shoulder... a perfect shot... they took gut piles left by hunters and put them through X-Ray machines and the amount of lead shards they found IN THE GUTS from deer shot thorugh the shoulder and neck areas was often up the 100s of pieces. Now, a condor is bigger than a duck, and the lead measured often in trace amounts far smaller than #4 or #5 shotgun pellets. Here is a situation where lead can slowly lead to infertility and lead poisioning.
Have a look for yourself.
