Compliance with existing partial statutory bans on the use of lead shotgun cartridges for shooting live quarry animals in the United Kingdom and European Union has generally been low. However, shooters in Denmark complied with a ban in 1996 covering all habitats after an initial period of monitoring. In the United States of America, the use of lead shot for hunting waterfowl was banned in 1991 and a national system of federal and state wildlife conservation officers enforces the law and monitors compliance. A portable electronic device (HOT*SHOT) enables officers to identify shooters’ intact ammunition as lead or non-lead in the field. This paper describes the first documented tests of the accuracy of this device on brands of shotgun ammunition used in Europe. HOT*SHOT was found to be accurate in identifying shot of all metal types widely used in Europe as lead or non-lead. It correctly identified cartridges containing bismuth and tungsten polymer shot which, unlike steel and tungsten-iron alloy, could not be identified as non-lead by using a magnet. Some rarely-used non-lead types (tin, copper, zinc and an alloy of bismuth, aluminium, tin and zinc) were misidentified as lead. Legal restrictions on the use of lead shot in all habitats will come into full force in the UK on 1 April 2029 and are likely to become law within the EU within a few years. Government agencies, statutory authorities, police forces, shoot operators, wildfowling clubs and retailers of game meat products could use HOT*SHOT to detect covert illegal use of lead ammunition and provide assurance that only non-lead shotgun cartridges are being used. However, additional regulations would be needed to maximise the effectiveness of compliance monitoring.
Green et al. (Fri,) studied this question.