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There is a lot of rubbish being peddled by many about non-toxic and old guns. I can’t help feeling plenty in the trade are having a lot of fun. Gentleman comes in with his old Dickson Round action. Its now useless sir. Here is a new steel proofed Beretta for £2,500. Oh don’t worry about your family we will take care of it.

A few months later said Dickson turns up in the US being offered fir sale for several thousand Dollars.

Certainly here in the UK there are now steel shot loads designed for and suitable for old guns that are not steel shot proofed. Gamebore Regal Steel, Eley Grand Prix steel etc. and they are proper 2 1/2” cartridges. The biodegradable wad protects the barrels from the shot - shot doesn’t come into contact with the barrels. It is recommended that you don’t use more than 1/2 choke, but with steel you don’t need much choke to get a tight pattern. And I have found in my old guns that I can kill and miss birds just as well as I used to.

Guns should be in good condition, but to be honest they should be in such condition before you shoot them.

There are fewer option in 16 and 28, but these are coming.

As for rifles, there are now plenty of good non toxic monolithic bullets that work very well. You need drop down a bullet weight or two so they stabilise, but now having shot many deer with different monolithics they kill well, have complete penetration and leave a nice clean carcass with much less meat damage. Put them in the guts the animal will run off and may or may not be recovered. Same is true for any lead bullet. Possibly the very old obsolete black powder fueled slow twist rifles may struggle to find a non toxic option.

But there are companies developing new materials that have softness and density of lead, but non of the toxicity. These are at the stage of trials and load development but results look promising.

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