Steel Shot Then and Now

 

All duck hunters are divided into three parts.  The first are those who started hunting after the nation-wide lead ban.  The second are those who stopped hunting after the ban.  And the third are those who hunted on either side of the ban. 

The first group doesn’t really enter into this tirade. They were, at most, boys in 1988-92 and maybe accompanied their dads for a season or two; a lot of them weren’t even born at that point.  All they’ve known is “modern” steel shot, meaning steel shot loads from the 2000’s on.  From older hunters, they’ve heard tell of what it was like hunting waterfowl with lead and how it compared to steel shot, and how steel shot loads have developed and so on, but of these things, they have no direct experience. 

The second and third set of duck hunters are older men who grew up hunting with lead before being forced to switch to steel shot.  Some welcomed the shift away from toxic shot, but most resented it.  Some so much so, that they stopped waterfowling altogether. 

At the time of the ban, the main complaints about steel shot were:

•   Steel shotshells are more expensive then lead
•   Steel shot damages shotgun barrels
•  Steel shot lacks the ballistic qualities of lead and cripples more game. 

All of these were true to one extent or another, though not without a paragraph of context and caveat for each.  However, these statements were made ad nauseum to the point that, like all slogans, they became received wisdom.    

•  Steel shot was rammed down hunters’ throats by an over-reaching government under the influence of anti-hunting groups using crap science to further their unamerican agenda.  Godless commie homos. 

This fourth statement may or may not be true, but fortunately, it doesn’t pertain to what I’m addressing here.*  

As to the first complaint, that steel shotshells are more expensive, this may very well have been true in the mid to late 1970’s, but by the time I started buying shotshells in 2005, they were about the same.  Obviously, at some point in that thirty-year span, the prices came down (I would assume this was a function of economy of scale).  At this point, this is really a complaint only made by those hunters who left the sport at the time of the ban.  And since it’s obviously no longer true, it has faded and doesn’t get trotted out much. 

I'll deal with the second complaint, damage, some other time.

The third complaint was that steel couldn’t take game as cleanly as lead.  This is either true or false depending on our expectations.  In 1973, the standard duck and pheasant load was a 12ga 2-3/4” shell with 1-1/4 oz of #4 lead shot at 1330 fps.  A look at the literature of the day (velocity and energy tables in lyman’s 2^nd for example) makes it clear that this load was expected to take ducks at up to 60 yards.  When held to that standard, yes #4 steel at 1330 fps becomes a poor performer at best.  On the other hand, a #1 steel pellet at 1330 fps can cleanly kill a duck at ~50 yards.**  Manufacturers told hunters to go up two shot sizes when switching from lead to steel, which might work for individual pellet performance, but not for pattern quality since the pellet counts don’t match.***  A new balance between shot size, pellet count, velocity, and recoil had to be found; and this in turn required  a new set of range expectations which took a while to catch on.  But now, most of the verbiage speaks of 40 yards as the border line between “ethical” hunting and skybustin’.    

This leads to another truism we hear a lot from older duck hunters, namely that early steel loads were anemic.  Birds would be hit squarely in the decoys, shrug, and fly off.  Retrieved birds would have shot fall out from under the feathers when picked up.  Hunters could hear the shot bounce off the bird.  I have heard all these stories and been told about all the birds wounded and lost because the pellets didn’t hit hard enough.  Fortunately, about the early 2000’s the manufacturers figured it out, and now we have useable steel shotshells (though still not as awesome as lead loads of yore of course).    

Well, the truth is… not really.  While some of the early Western loads were pretty slow (12 ga 3” 1.5 oz at 1200 fps loads), they were dropped fast.  From the get-go, Remington offered two main steel shot loads: 12 ga 3” 1-1/4 oz at 1375fps, and 12 ga 2-3/4” 1-1/8 oz at 1365 fps, both in #1, #2, and #4.  Over the last 47 years, they’ve added and dropped different gauges, shot sizes, charges, and speeds, but their mainstay is still 12 ga 3” 1-1/4 oz and 2-3/4” 1-1/8 oz loads at about 1400 fps.  The Slower, heavier loads from the late 70’s and early 80’s like Federal’s and Remington’s 3” 1-3/8 oz or the 2-3/4” 1-1/4 oz loads at 1265-1275 fps also got a speeding up to 1300 fps.  The fact is, with the exception of the 3” 1-1/8 oz at 1550 fps load and the 12 ga 3-1/2” shell,† most of the steel loads commonly used by duck hunters have been on the market almost from day one.  I tore open a 12 ga 3” Federal Hi Power Steel shell from 1979, a 3” Federal Classic Steel load from the mid 1990’s and a brand new 12 ga 3” Federal Speed Shok… same wad.  The lack of development is even more striking for the other gauges; the loads for 10 ga, 16 ga, and 20 ga are virtually the exact same as when first introduced in the early 1980’s.†† 

But those are all numbers on a page—what about field results?  In 1973, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife decided too many birds were dying of lead poisoning at Sauvie Island Wildlife Area, and they mandated steel shot only starting with the 1974-75 season.  Outrage ensued with frothy predictions of damaged guns, increased crippling and lost birds, and complaints about the high cost of shells (which had to be purchased at the check station for $5/box (?)).  In light of which, the following table from ODFW’s harvest statistics for SIWA is boringly monotonous. 

season	Total birds	Daily bird average	Total hunters	Daily hunter average	Birds per hunter	Hunt days per season
1976-77	28996	617	9954	212	2.9	47
1975-76	25659	546	9015	192	2.8	47
1974-75	15573	331	7737	165	2.0	47
1973-74	15684	341	8327	181	1.9	46
1972-73	19789	412	10296	215	1.9	48
1971-72	19302	411	11445	244	1.7	47

 

As you can see, there wasn’t a drop in the number of birds taken per hunter in the first year of the steel mandate.  The only change was in the total number of hunters, though only by 600 over the year previous (the last lead shot year).  And that wasn’t the lowest it had been in recent years: in 1964-65, they had only 168 hunters a day taking home only 1.6 birds a day.  The main problem with that first year wasn’t crippling or gun damage—or even fewer birds bagged.  It was hunter push back.  A longish quote from the Oregon Wildlife Commission’s mid-season update on the lead ban:

“We asked [SIWA manager, Frank] Newton what the reactions of hunters have been during the first month of using steel shot at Sauvie Island.

One of his first comments was that hunters had been skeptical about the new shells at first but most accepted them after use in the field. Generally, the hunters who used to get lots of birds using lead shot are still getting lots of birds. The hunters who brought in few ducks before now have a brand-new alibi which, Newton says, some of them are using liberally.

The secret of consistent success on ducks at Sauvie Island, as in most other areas, is to use decoys, learn to use a call effectively, and let the ducks get closer than 40 yards before shooting. The hunters who can do this are bagging as many ducks as they did before using steel shot, Newton said. [Emphasis added.] Some even feel the new loads are more effective at the closer ranges than lead.

So far no one has pointed out any damage to shotgun barrels which have been used with the steel loads. Many hunters called the Commission before the season opened to ask about this. They feared the hard pellets would score the insides of their gun barrels or that continued use would ruin the chokes on their guns. Heavy plastic liners in the shells have apparently prevented any scratching of shotgun bores but it is probably too soon to tell what the long-term effects on shotgun chokes will be.

As to effectiveness, hunters say the steel loads seem to do the job if they are used within reasonable ranges. Although the harvest of ducks is lower so far than it was last year, the take of geese is up by nearly 50 percent. Hunters who have taken these hardy birds say the steel loads were very effective on them.”‡

I highly doubt the story will change; it's become a part of our Hunting Heritage.  Chatter in duck blinds, gun shops, and on the Information Superhighway, reinforced by articles like this one, will continue to form a feedback loop.  But in some ways that's reassuring: it's the way culture forms, and as long as we don't end up dragging people behind a truck or give up on toothpaste, it's nice to know it's still working.  

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* Let me just say, that if it is true that anti-hunter groups are successfully lobbying for more restrictions, the hunting community has no one to blame but itself.  Hunters should be the most aggressive about defending the quality of habitat—but how often do you find beer bottles, Skoal tins, cigarette butts, pop cans, hulls, wads, and other trash littering public hunting areas?

** We’ll leave out the question of how many folks were actually successfully making 50-60 yard shots with either shot material…

*** 1-1/4 oz of lead #4 = 169 pellets

  1-1/4 oz of steel #2 = 156 pellets

  1-3/8 oz of steel #2 = 172 pellets

  1-1/4 oz of steel #1 = 129 pellets

  1-3/8 oz of steel #1 = 142 pellets

† Itself a product of the 1980’s

†† Now, one might say, “yes, but were they actually achieving those velocities?”  Well, what makes you think they’re achieving today’s advertised speeds?  Why would they lie back then, but not now?  For that matter, velocity wasn’t printed on the box for the most part till the 2000’s so it didn’t fill nearly the same marketing role it does today.  For what it’s worth, I shot three c.1993 Remington Nitro Steel 12 ga 3-1/2” shells  containing 1-9/16 oz #TT at 1300 fps over a chronograph.  Not a meaningful sample size, but I got an average of 1330 fps.  I stopped after three because my shoulder hurt.

‡ “Steel Shot, A Status Report” by Ken Durbin. Oregon Wildlife, December 1974, Vol. 29 No. 12. Pg. 7