Are Lead Fragments in Your Venison?

A bunch of anti-hunting types got all involved in yapping about lead fragments. The big problem is that there's no way for lead to move around in the body after it's dead, and there are few fragments ever found in the eating-meat parts. Few deer are shot in the eating meat.

"Fragments": They're generally larger than #8 lead shot, and I've never had trouble finding and spitting out a pellet that was in a dove or quail.
 
I grew up spitting pellets out of rabbits, birds, moose, bear my dad had hunted (although to be honest the bear was killed in camp defense)
 
Studies like that are encouraged by PETA and anti gunners and anti hunters in their quest to outlaw hunting and guns. If lead in deer, or any game, was truly a problem there should be hundreds of thousands of hunters with lead poisoning issues. Can't ever recall hearing, or reading, of a single case of an individual with lead poisoning that was traced back to eating 'tainted' game.

Lead doesn't taste or feel like meat and is easy to spit out in the unlikely event one finds a piece in cooked game.

The study did not have a satisfactory outcome for the sheep however.
 
Wow. They could not have found a less interesting voice-over for that presentation. I can't even sit through it. Only smokes that is the most boring person that I have ever heard speak.

Besides that, yeah, I agree with the previous posters. I've been eating animals that were apparently just riddled with deadly lead fragments since I was born. It is evidently another one of those things that's going to kill me.... that never does. Like radon, asbestos, leaded gas, bicycle helmets, sun-burns, yada-yada-yada.
 
Here's what I've recovered from Rem. .44 Mg 240 gr. JHP's. This is from more than one kill.

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I didn't read that particular link, but if it's the same one I read before, I don't ever recall seeing proof anyone has gotten sick from eating game that had lead fragments in it and ingested them. In fact, if you place your bullet right, it should help reduce the amount of lead in the meat to begin with. Hit 'em in the broiler room and that helps. I know it can fragment and hit the opposite shoulder, but it's better than hitting them square in the shoulder anyway.

NikonHunter
 
I am an avid deer hunter who got sick as hell from lead poisoning.

My health collapsed in 1990, and it has been a real nightmare getting healthy again. It took ten years just to get diagnosed. Most docs don't even test for lead poisoning, and they don't know how to test for it, and they don't know how to treat it.
Once I began treatment, in 2000, it took years to get straightened out, and it was very expensive. I will never completely recover, but I am a lot better now.

When I finally found a good doc who understood how to treat lead poisoning, I asked him, "Where did I get loaded up with lead?"
He told me there is a lot of lead in the environment, there are many ways you could get lead poisoning.


Well this study has got my interest. At the time I got sick, I was killing and eating at least ten deer and hogs every year. I was eating wild game sausage, burger, or steak every day of the week.

This study shows that lead can travel a foot away from the entrance/exit wound.
I don't know if I got toxic lead from eating wild game I had shot, but now I know it is a possibility.

I didn't know Minnesota DNR had an anti-hunting agenda. Down South here the DNR is supportive of guns and hunting.
 
My primary concern with lead has been stay out of its way, if it happened to flying at low altitudes. 'Swallering it' was the least of my worries.

There's a lot of eco-fertilizer circulating and damn near everything I like is hazardous to my health. I guess I could find a doc to keep me heavily medicated and go hide under a Nerf-shelter for the rest of my life; might add 10-15 years to it. The question is whether those extra 10-15 years would be worth living.
 
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simonkenton, I can see where it's possible that your problem came from the lead remnants from your hunting.

The random occasional ingestion by either the average hunter or the recipient of game meat, however, is nowhere near the sort of exposure of which you wrote. And it's this latter condition which is the focus of the alleged danger.

For shooters, an indoor range is the greatest danger; ingestion to the lungs. Other problems arise from just living in a major metro area; I spent a week in Mexico City in 1978 and never felt the urge to smoke: Smog. A doctor specializing in respiratory problems once commented that just living in New York City was equivalent to smoking at least a pack a day.
 
Sorry to hear about the lead poisoning simonkenton...

But it's possible that the lead (as you mentioned) may have come from your environment. My dad retired as a contractor and hobby racer. The sheer amount of lead in older homes and buildings is rather staggering.

A good friend became ill with lead poisoning because--get this--they had a hunting cabin wherein all his buddies would gather after a days hunt, cook, drink, and sleep it off to head home the next day. One of the members was bringing "fire wood" from home. The fire wood was siding from an old barn. The old barn had been painted w/ lead paint at some point (all worn off by the time they were burning it). The guys would have fires in the cabin and--in cold weather--the building was "made tight" with all sorts of foam, insulation, and plastic. They were sitting in a very effective "lead-self-dosing machine." Odd but true, and nearly all of them became ill from lead poisoning...
 
Well, there you go, the North Dakota study shows higher levels of lead in people who eat lots of wild game than in the regular population.

Thanks for your concern longlane.
A major problem I had was in getting a diagnosis.
Most doctors don't know, or care about lead toxicity. They don't even know how to test for it.
I went to 8 or 10 doctors in 9 years, none even suggested that my problems might be related to toxic metals. Of course none tested me, I doubt they even knew how to administer a lead toxicity test.

I have never had a job that exposed me to lead, I did pick up some lead by using black and red glazed pottery from Mexico. I used that stuff for a couple years, in 1977 and 1978.
But other than that I never have figured out where I got exposed to all the lead.
When I finally got tested in 2001 my lead levels were 3 times the toxic level.

By 1990, the year I got sick, I had eaten well over 2,000 pounds of wild game.
I don't know if lead in the venison made me sick, I processed my own deer and hogs most the time and tried to cut out all the lead, of course.

But these studies make me realize that the venison may have made me sick.

I am sure thinking of switching to Barnes all copper bullets.
 
If you process your own game, then the Barnes or other all copper bullet or a bullet that enclosed the lead completely would be a good way of avoiding any more lead from game meat.

Obviously, you should avoid reloading or indoor shooting if your lead levels are high though the rest of us should be fine.

I bit down on a large chunk of copper and lead in some wild pork sausage made from a pig I had killed. That had to have gone through the processor's grinder and there is no telling how many other people got a little lead from it.

As the North Dakota study indicates, most of us should be just fine consuming game meat taken with lead bullets. But if your lead levels are already elevated you should take extra precautions.
 
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