A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Late fall and early winter is deer hunting season in many parts of the U.S. Most hunters headed into the field will be armed with bullets made of lead, which is toxic for predators that eat animals shot by hunters and left behind. As Maine Public's Peter McGuire reports, some hunters are now pushing to ditch lead bullets for good. And a warning - this story includes the sound of gunfire.
PETER MCGUIRE, BYLINE: At Avian Haven in Freedom, Maine, it's feeding time at the bald eagle enclosure. Executive director Barbara Haney says that out of the three dozen eagles brought into the wildlife rehabilitation center last year, 75% had lead poisoning.
BARBARA HANEY: That's a lot. That actually corresponds with the statistics that we're getting from other rehab centers as well.
MCGUIRE: Sick birds are so weak that they can't hold their heads or wings up. They're confused and unfocused. Some live, but others are too far gone. And Haney says hundreds of lead fragments left in animal remains after they're hit with a bullet is the only source of that contamination. She says a lead fragment the size of a grain of rice is enough to kill an eagle.
HANEY: If we can do a simple thing like cut back on the amount of lead that's in the environment, it's going to make a huge impact on our wildlife.
MCGUIRE: Decades after the U.S. banned lead in gasoline, paint and water pipes, lead hunting bullets are still very common. But Bryan Bedrosian thinks it doesn't have to be that way. He's a Wyoming hunter and founder of Sporting Lead-Free, a group that has ambassadors across the country persuading hunters to pick solid copper bullets instead. Copper bullets don't fragment when they hit an animal.
BRYAN BEDROSIAN: Hunters are the original conservationists. This should be something that we should all try and get behind.
MCGUIRE: Bedrosian says the effort could take a couple generations, but momentum is growing. He says copper bullets used to be uncommon but are getting cheaper and more available all the time, even though lead bullets still cost less. And most hunters care about wildlife and the environment. That's why Bedrosian says persuasion is more effective than government bans on lead ammo.
BEDROSIAN: If you encourage and inform people why they need to make the choice, you're going to be much more successful than trying to force them to make an action where they don't understand the why.
TIM SUMMERS: All right. I'm going hot.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.
MCGUIRE: At a gun range in Scarborough, Maine, Tim Summers (ph) peers through the scope of his deer rifle and gets ready to squeeze off a shot to sight in the gun.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOT)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's on the target. That would have killed a deer.
MCGUIRE: Summers says he's never tried copper bullets. But he eats the meat from the animals he kills, so he's willing to give nonlead ammo a try.
SUMMERS: You think about it, it's a little pellet, at the end of the day, of lead. You know, if that shatters and gets into the meat and stuff of an animal, then, you know, you could be ingesting quite a bit of it, I guess.
MCGUIRE: Charlie Largay is the supervisor at the range. He's been a hunter and a competitive shooter most of his life. These days, Largay only uses copper bullets.
CHARLIE LARGAY: It's just as accurate, if not more so, and it doesn't leave the residue behind. I mean, we don't need the woods full of lead.
MCGUIRE: There's precedent for this kind of phase-out. It's against federal law to hunt ducks and geese with lead shot. And Largay says lead ammo is still fine to use for target shooting.
LARGAY: Typically, if you're a deer hunter or you're hunting most game, you're going to get one shot.
MCGUIRE: And Largay says there's no need for that bullet to contain lead.
For NPR News, I'm Peter McGuire in Scarborough, Maine.
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