# New waterfowl ammo~



## snow (Dec 7, 2007)

Hevi-X is coming...


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## the professor (Oct 13, 2006)

nominee for most informational post of the year.


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## snow (Dec 7, 2007)

Like I said..."is coming...

But just for you pro,off the hevi shot website~
what's new for 2017.
First of all our engineers have come up with the new HEVI-X loads. HEVI-X will only be surpassed by our HEVI-Shot Duck and Goose and Turkey loads in downrange kinetic energy and will be much more affordable. Completely different pellet process than the cast HEVI-Shot products. HEVI-X starts in a tungsten powder form and each pellet is compressed. HEVI-X weighs just under lead @ 9cc and is packed in 25 round boxes.

Our line now has average, good, better, best assortment

HEVI-Steel (average steel shot, we have a better propellant)

HEVI-Metal (the good)

HEVI-X (the better)

HEVI-Shot (the best)


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## dakotashooter2 (Oct 31, 2003)

They don't get it :eyeroll: :eyeroll: :eyeroll: :eyeroll: ....We don't NEED another high priced, supposedly high performance load. We need one that is reasonably priced. Get the cost down on the products you have and your volume will increase significantly...........


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## snow (Dec 7, 2007)

Oh they get it alright,but what they have is what lead was 20+ years ago,the product they are promoting is for folks like myself that hate steel,what makes this ammo so spendy is the metals used to obtain down range energy and lethal kills and less cripples.Metal used in hevi shot is tungsen iron,nickle and tin,plus we see countries buying up as much precious metals as they can from the U.S. to build up they're aresenels which drives up the cost to manufacture this ammo.

I'm all for less expensive ammo but willing to pay extra for performance,I shoot less and cripple few birds,something I can't say about blue box or dryloc.


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## bwfsh (Feb 12, 2009)

What range are you shooting that you have trouble killing birds with blue box?


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## 6162rk (Dec 5, 2004)

bring back lead. we don't have anymore ducks (actually less) than we did in the days of lead. unless you believe in paper ducks and propaganda and numbers that is for budgetary reasons.


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## snow (Dec 7, 2007)

6162~

Couldn't agree more,still have a **** pile of 3" federal preimum copper plated lead,still use it for late season roosters.


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## dakotashooter2 (Oct 31, 2003)

Id be willing to bet that just using a plated lead pellets would have resolved 95% of the "poisoning" and contamination issues claimed to be affecting waterfowl and birds that prey on them. I expect that birds that picked up lead shot probably would have it pass through their systems before the plating wore off and exposed them to the lead contamination.

And think about it. All of that lead used until the 80s is still sitting on the bottom of our lakes and ponds. It didn't go anywhere. The half life of lead is 53,000 years. its not going anywhere for a long time. If the contamination effects were so bad back then why are we not STILL seeing the effects now ?


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## snow (Dec 7, 2007)

Very true,had a friend that owned a sporting goods shop near a waterfowl refuge in western Mn,Lac Qui Parle...we hunted geese together,in the mid 80's the feds shut down lead shot around the refuge firing line and then the entire state later on,well my friend was ****** as we all were and didn't bye the lead poising data so he had a big goose contest one fall just to collect the gizzards for his research,out of 500 gizzards he found 7 pellets! He also had a vetinary license,wilst attending to cattle inside the refuge he said some areas were loaded up with dead geese hit with steel shot that bleed out from the sky busters heading back to the refuge,said these birds looked like they were sliced up from razor blades.


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## Joe Bishop (May 16, 2018)

I never believed that lead poison waterfowl crap. In the marsh land lead has almost the same weight as gold, so it tends to sink deep into the mud over time, none of the fowl tested in CALIF died of lead poison but died of botulism by the thousand, the eco`S convinced everyone that it was lead poison.we have marsh lands for 80yrs were full of lead shot from hunting, i have never found lead pellets in any of the gizards. In fact there is natural lead in our water and soil no ones dying of lead poisoning yet.Never believe politicians.


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## Sasha and Abby (May 11, 2004)

Joe Bishop - you just STOP MAKING SENSE right now.... We don't need any more FACTS to come out about this topic... :lol:


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

I don't often post on the waterfowl form but ---------. Sky busting is a problem no matter what shot we shoot. What we have in our shotgun doesn't make us smarter. I remember the first experimental steel was real bad. At the time I was a biologist for the USFWS so I got some before it was commercially available. I was on a high river bank one day and shot down on a nice male mallard flying about three feet off the water. He was dead center in the pattern at 30 yards and he just wobbled a bit and headed up and over the trees.

There is a lot of crap I don't believe either, like global warming. The gov has screwed up so many times that people often don't believe them when something is real. Back in about 1980 I run about a thousand canbasback through a portable x-ray in a van. We used an airboat with a million candlepower on an arm off each side. The birds when cornered would try escape up the center between the lights and that's where I stood with a large dip net. So for a couple weeks before season opened anywhere we started x-raying canvasback. Body shot isn't going to poison them, but 33 percent of adults had shot in their body. Three percent of the young had shot in their gizzard. Birds that ingest a single pellet do not survive long. The odd thing is they can't be poisoned in the traditional sense that fast. What looked like was happening is the lead inhibited the gizzards ability to grind good and they just plug up and die. I'm not sure how that works, but that wasn't part of the study. I suppose since then some people have studied that also.

Heavy objects sink in liquid, but normal mud consistency doesn't allow lead to sink. It does get covered by agricultural sediments over time. I have run soil cores in prairie wetlands that have six feet of sediment since about 1900. Poor ag practices has put a lot of rich topsoil into wetlands which is unfortunate for the upland and the wetlands. The only good thing is within ten years most of that shot will be unreachable. In prairie wetlands away from ag runoff it may be a problem for 20 or 30 years depending on wind erosion deposition.

The complaints about lead bullets from rifles is crazy, but every time you pull the trigger on a shotgun were talking hundreds of pellets. We are also talking upland with rifle bullet and much of shotgun shooting is still over water. The lead pellet problem I can personally attest to.

I really liked the copper plated lead when I used it years ago. I still use that for turkeys.


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## Chuck Smith (Feb 22, 2005)

https://qctimes.com/news/local/lead-sho ... 1ab44.html

This study I have posted I have known about for a few years. I have taken my brother on a Disable Deer Hunt in the Lost Mound Army Depot in Savana IL. They make you use "lead free" slugs. Because they found bullet fragments in eagles. It is kind of interesting. But for a few years they would take the gut pile from deer shot on the hunt and examine them. They would find bullet fragments of lead. Then when they found dead eagles... they found those fragments. They put trail cams on dead deer, gut piles, etc.

But "lead" posioning is an issue but not in the sense of lead in the body from a bullet. But from the eating of lead. Or like plainsman stated the led in the gizzards and also the fact about what snow said as well.

But steel shot has come along ways in the past decade. Or "non toxic" shot.... plus people making choke tubes or using "specific" type of choke tubes. But this past year i hunted the Mississippi river this year and all the sky busting that goes on is crazy. I think more and more education is needed... so I am glad to see more trap teams and stuff out there.

I know I was all over the place on this thread... but lots of info both ways.


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## dakotashooter2 (Oct 31, 2003)

I've always questioned how much grit waterfowl actually picks up in wetland areas. Every spring and summer I see duck along the roadsides or in fields, where I suspect they are ingesting their grit. And I have never encountered any grit in a gizzard that has been bigger than a 7 1/2 or 8 shot size pellet. Which leaves some doubt in my mind. And lead ingested that passes through the digestive system likely does so reasonably fast so absorption of lead would seem to be quite limited there also. But I'm not a researcher so I can only make judgement on casual observations. A thought that has crossed my mind is if it is the lead itself that is poisoning the birds or the antimony in the lead. Which brings me back to as whether a plated shot would have adequately resolved this problem.


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## NDHunt354 (Feb 17, 2019)

9g/cc is what the old hevi-steel was before it went to an all steel load.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

Diving ducks are most affected. I don't remember what the machine was called, but it looked like a micro wave, but was an xray. I run about 200 canvasback through that machine. I captured them on a lake in Stutsman county a week before duck season opened. About 30 percent of adults had body shot from previous seasons which was not going to kill them. However about 5 percent of the juveniles and adults had ingested lead shot. A single 8 shot will kill them within days. It's not so much the poison affect, but the digestive system shuts down with lead ground to powder in the gizzard. It's much like glueing your rear shut and seeing how long you live.


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