HOW TO SWITCH - CENTERFIRE

ADVANTAGES TO LEAD-FREE

  • Less meat loss

  • 90-99% weight retention

  • Lighter, faster, flatter flying bullets

  • Ensure non-target species are not unintentionally ingesting lead

  • Ability to pierce through tough hides like boar, bear, and moose

  • Reliably lethal when shot opportunity is not ideal

  • Feel confident that the bounty you are sharing with your family and friends is lead-free

HOW TO SWITCH STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

 

Quick Guide:

  1. Clean your rifle

  2. Reduce grain weight

  3. Sight in

  4. Try different brands

  5. Shot placement

 

Step 1: Clean your rifle

Superb accuracy requires proper care for your rifle. You need to clean your rifle regularly. Strip any remnant of lead and copper out.

Copper is more rigid. If there are particulates stuck in the rifling, it will cause the bullet to not perform well.

**Follow all firearm cleaning safety precautions**

To ensure the safety of yourself and those around you, remove your magazine (if equipped) and any ammunition that may be loaded within the firearm including the chamber. Only do this while pointing the firearm in a safe direction. Make sure you do a thorough check, visually (look) and tactilely (feel). Never rely on your firearm’s safety because accidents can and do happen.

 

Step 2: Reduce bullet grain weight

Lead is a heavier and more dense metal than copper. For a copper bullet to reach the same weight of a lead bullet necessitates a longer bullet. Therefore, copper bullets are longer than lead core bullets of the same weight.

More details below.

Longer bullets may react differently, depending on the twist rate of your rifle’s barrel. Typically, longer bullets require a much faster twist rate to stabilize them, which are not standard on factory rifles. Thus, choosing a lighter grain lead-free option will result in a similar bullet length and performance to lead bullets.

For example, you may shoot a 180gr lead bullet, but a 165gr copper bullet may be the same length. Don’t worry about losing those extra grains when switching from lead to copper. Copper retains 95-100% of its original weight, which translates to more weight and kinetic energy driving through the animal on impact. 

Pro tip: Some ammunition manufacturers have a recommended twist rate for their bullets. Check with your rifle manufacturer to know what your barrel twist rate is and match that with bullet weight to improve accuracy. 

For example, a rifle may have a twist rate of 1:10 (one revolution of rifling every ten inches of barrel length). The lower the number of the twist, the faster the twist rate or the faster the bullet will spin. If a bullet has a twist recommendation of 1:10, it will be stable when fired from any rifle having a 1:10 or faster. So a 1:9 would work fine, but a 1:11 may not.

 

Step 3: Sight in

Any time you switch ammo, whether it’s from lead to copper or copper to copper, you should take the time to sight in. Lead-free ammunition is extremely accurate but the point of impact may vary from what you’ve previously sighted in with lead ammo.

Know your ammo before you head into the field and practice, practice, practice. How accurately you shoot is far more important than the type of rifle, cartridge, and bullet you choose.

Cool your barrel after every 5-6 shots in warm weather. Your group may open up if not.

 

Step 4: Brand testing

Just like with different brands of shoes (your foot may prefer Nike over Adidas) your rifle may prefer a certain brand and grain weight over another. This ties back to the twist rate discussion above.

If you can, purchase multiple brands at different grain weights and test them at the range. Whichever bullet groups the best is likely your top choice!

 

Step 5: Shot placement

Aside from getting lots of practice at the range, shot placement is the runner up for the most important aspect of ethical hunting. Lead-free ammunition has many advantages, including reliability penetrating through bone and thick-skinned game.

Aim for the front end of the vitals to maximize expansion and increase the chances of breaking the shoulder. Because copper bullets do not fragment, you’ll likely have less meat loss than if you were to take the same shot with a lead-core bullet.

COMMERCIAL LEAD-FREE AMMUNITION OPTIONS**

  • Barnes

    TSX, TTSX, LRX

  • Corbon

    DPX, T-DPX

  • Federal Premium

    Trophy Copper, Barnes Triple-Shock X (TSX)

  • Hornady

    Outfitter - CX, Superformance* - CX

    *Superformance is also loaded with SST bullets which are NOT lead-free, so look closely.

  • Lapua

    Naturalis

  • Norma

    Evostrike, Ecostrike

  • Nosler

    Expansion Tip (E-Tip)

  • Sako

    Powerhead Blade

  • Sig Sauer

    Elite Copper Hunting

  • Winchester

    Deer Season XP Copper Impact

**This list is not comprehensive and only includes brands commonly found on retailer shelves. Updated 9/7/2022.

WHY MAKE THE SWITCH?

Hunters provide an extremely valuable service to eagles and other scavenging wildlife by providing a food source during the fall and winter months, in the form of gut piles left behind after harvesting an animal. Each year, thousands of eagles migrate from Canada and Alaska into the US for the winter. As the population of scavengers more than doubles and food becomes more scarce, gut piles and the unretrieved game become vital to sustaining wintering eagle populations. Maintaining a safe food source for wildlife is a benefit we can provide to our wildlife and ecosystems.

Bullets for hunting are designed to expand and mushroom to release the knockdown power needed to drop your target. During this process, lead bullets can lose up to 40% of their weight and this loss ends up as tiny fragments traveling up to 18” from your bullet’s trajectory. It’s these tiny fragments that end up in your gut pile and processed game that can have negative health consequences for wildlife and people.

For scavengers, like eagles, that feed on your gut pile, the tiny fragments are too small to be noticed and avoided. Birds have very acidic digestive systems which help them easily digest bones and other rotting meat they normally feed on. This acidic system breaks down the small lead fragments and the lead is readily absorbed into their bloodstream. This causes problems ranging from slowing reaction times, shutting down the digestive system, affecting eyesight, or death.

X-ray of a golden eagle with lead fragments (bright white flecks) in its digestive system. PC: Teton Raptor Center

X-ray of ground elk meat with lead fragments (in red circles).