On a recent morning, Tim Summers peered through the scope of his deer rifle downrange at the Scarborough Fish and Game Association and squeezed off a few shots.
The private association holds a free rifle sighting session every year to let hunters make sure they're shooting accurately ahead of hunting season that starts in November.
And when hunters like Summers head into the woods when the deer season opens at the beginning of November, most of their rifles will be loaded with lead bullets covered with a thin copper jacket.
Decades after the U.S. got rid of toxic lead in gasoline, paint and water pipes, lead core bullets are still the most common form of ammo on the market.
But the debris a bullet leaves behind when it's shot can taint wild game meat and poison wildlife such as bald eagles.
Wildlife officials and volunteers in Maine and across the country are ramping up efforts to convince hunters to switch to nontoxic bullets, and curb one of the last frontiers of lead contamination in the environment.
Like a lot of hunters, Summers cares about wildlife and eats the meat from animals he kills. Lead bullets can be an issue, he said.
"You think about it, it’s a little pellet at the end of the day of lead," Summers said.
"But you know, if, if that shatters and gets into the meat and stuff of an animal, then you could be ingesting quite a bit of it I guess," he added.
Summers said he has never tried nonlead ammunition, typically made with solid copper. He has a store of lead cartridges to get through and he hasn't seen copper ammunition around much. But he's open to trying, Summers said.
"Honestly I haven’t been looking too hard for it, but I might try it," he added. "I might try it this season, I don’t know."
That's the kind of response that Maine wildlife officials want to hear.
"Many hunters have already tried it or are using it and the majority of those that haven’t are open to the idea. So that’s a pretty good place to be," said Nate Webb, wildlife director at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
When an animal is shot with a lead bullet, the projectile shatters into more than 100 pieces that are released into the flesh, Webb said.
Those toxic slivers can sicken or kill wild scavengers looking for a meal at one of the piles of entrails hunters sometimes leave after field dressing a deer or other large game.
"There also has been some research that there can be some health concerns for people that harvest wildlife with lead-based ammunition, that research is a little more debatable," Webb said.
In recent years, the department has increased outreach efforts to convince hunters to try out copper ammunition instead. That includes demonstrations, a social media campaign and information provided when hunters get their licenses. It has also considered a program to help hunters pay for new copper ammunition, similar to an ongoing effort in federal wildlife refuges across the country.
The effort seems to be paying off. In a 2022 survey, 30% of hunters said they'd used nonlead ammunition. And a similar proportion of those that had not used nonlead said they would be extremely likely or very likely to try it out.
The effort to switch to alternative bullets is entirely voluntary, and attempting to ban lead ammo would likely fail, Webb added.
"Whether it failed or not, it would certainly alienate a lot of hunters that at this point, are open to the conversation and open to considering it, but they don't want to be told they have to do it," he said.
At Avian Haven, a wildlife rehabilitation nonprofit in Freedom, it's assumed that any bald eagle that comes in will have lead poisoning.
"What we're looking at is about 75% of all the bald eagles we have have some sort of lead," said Executive Director Barbra Haney.
"So that's a lot, that actually corresponds with the statistics that we get at other rehab centers as well," she added.
Sick birds are so weak they can't hold their heads or wings up. They're confused and unfocused. Some live, but others are too far gone, Haney said.
Lead bullets are the only source of that contamination, she added. And eagles are particularly vulnerable — eating a piece of lead the size of a grain of rice can be fatal.
Haney thinks most hunters care about wildlife and don't want to accidentally harm an animal they didn't mean to.
"If we can do a simple thing like cut back on the amount of lead in our environment, it is going to make a huge impact on our wildlife," she said.
Back at the Scarborough gun range, Charlie Largay was supervising the rifle sighting event. Largay has hunted and shot competitively his whole life and these days he only uses copper ammo.
"It's just as effective if not more so and it doesn't leave the residue behind," Largay said. "I mean, we don't need woods full of lead."
This kind of phase out has precedent. It has been against federal law to hunt ducks and geese with lead shot since the early 1990s. And it is increasingly hard to buy lead fishing tackle.
Advocates aren't trying to eliminate lead ammo completely. Largay said it's fine to use for target shooting, for example.
And out in the field, hunters aren't shooting a lot of rounds anyway.
"Typically if you're a deer hunter or you're hunting most game, you're going to get one shot," Largay said.
And he said there's no need for that bullet to contain lead.
