Danish pheasant and mallard hunters comply with the lead shotban

摘要

Denmark implemented a total ban on the use oflead shot for hunting and clay target shooting in 1996.Compliance was not studied systematically until recently.However, sporadic police checks and individual studiesindicated that compliance was far from complete in theearly years after regulation. To assess current levels ofcompliance with Danish regulations, we purchased 730carcasses of pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) and mallards(Anas platyrhynchos) and a further 690 mallard gizzardswere obtained from[14 shooting events distributedacross[10 local authority districts throughout East andWest Denmark in the 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 huntingseasons. All carcasses and gizzards were subject toradiography and those that contained shot wereexamined, pellets removed by dissection and identified toshot type. In all, 3589 pellets (intact or fragmented) werefound in 1420 carcasses/gizzards, of which 799 pellets(some fragmented) were identified. Among the sample ofpheasants with embedded shot (N = 447), 1.8% (in 2016)and 2.2% (in 2017) were lead shot. Among 148 mallards in2017 with embedded shot, 3.1% had lead shot. None of the2017 mallard gizzards had embedded lead shot. Weconclude that Danish pheasant and mallard shootersmostly comply with the lead shot regulations. Steel wasthe most used non-lead alternative. The majority ofingested shot was non-lead, indicating that lead shot isnot generally available to pheasant and mallard andsuggesting compliance with regulations in recent years/decades. The study showed that the possibility to predictthe metal composition of shot pellets from X-ray imagesalone was highly inaccurate, confirming the necessity ofnecropsy to determine shot type.