SWINGING THE LEAD

I’m concerned. Over the last few weeks we’ve been preoccupied by coronavirus, and rightly so. But before that it was the environment that was top of the agenda.

The shooting industry isn’t immune to the mounting pressure to change our ways, and BBASC and a number of other countryside organisations have already said they would like to see lead phased out from shotgun cartridges over the next five years.

After all, the manufacturers haven’t been sitting on their hands; lead-free pellets have been around for years, catering to those whose environmental conscience has been pricked, or those for whom such ammunition is a condition of their permission.

I’m looking at a range of lead-free pellets from H&N and Gamo. I’d hoped to include some from RWS, but they didn’t leave the factory before the coronavirus lockdown.

To set a benchmark, I shot a target with the lead ammunition normally used in my rifles – Air Arms Diabolo Field lead pellets – 5.52 for the BSA and 4.52 in the HW100, which returned power outputs of 11.7 ft-lb and 10.81 ft-lb respectively. The .22 recorded a centre-to-centre