Highlighting the risk of environmental lead contamination for deer management in Australia

Summary Lead‐based bullets used to shoot deer typically fragment. These toxic fragments are a threat to wildlife scavengers and human consumers of venison. Awareness of this issue is widespread internationally but limited in Australia. The aim of this research was to characterise deer carcass contam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological management & restoration 2023-05, Vol.24 (2-3), p.128-136
Main Authors: Hampton, Jordan O., Flesch, Jason S., Wendt, Alexander S., Toop, Simon D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carcasses
Consumers
Contamination
culling
Deer
Environmental risk
Fragments
invasive species
Muscles
overabundant deer populations
pollution
Projectiles
Radiography
Rifles
Scavengers
Shoulder
toxicology
Venison
Wildlife
Wildlife management
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Summary:Summary Lead‐based bullets used to shoot deer typically fragment. These toxic fragments are a threat to wildlife scavengers and human consumers of venison. Awareness of this issue is widespread internationally but limited in Australia. The aim of this research was to characterise deer carcass contamination via bullet fragmentation associated with lead‐based and lead‐free ammunition in a deer culling program conducted in Australia. We used radiography (X‐rays) to study Hog Deer (Axis porcinus) shot in a professional ground‐based shooting program in Victoria, south‐eastern Australia. Our data captured 33 deer shot with frangible lead‐based bullets in 2021, and 21 deer shot with monolithic lead‐free (copper‐based) bullets from the same rifles in 2021–2022. For lead‐based bullets, the mean number of lead fragments per carcass ranged from seven to 629 (mean ± SD = 256 ± 169), mean fragment size was 1.2 mm2 (74% of fragments were
ISSN:1442-7001
1442-8903
DOI:10.1111/emr.12584