Improving animal welfare in wildlife shooting: The importance of projectile energy

Abstract

In wildlife shooting programs, the energy profile of the projectile or bullet (i.e., kinetic energy transferred to the animal), as distinct from caliber (projectile diameter), is an important factor for animal welfare. We examined the role of projectile energy in determining animal welfare outcomes for a typical European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) sharpshooting program. We compared 2 projectiles of different energy profiles: low-energy 40-grain .22 long rifle rimfire (.22LR; 198 J) bullets and high-energy 40-grain .222 Remington 1 centerfire (.222R; 1,433 J) bullets, fired under similar conditions on 3 nights in September 2014, on a livestock grazing property near Broken Hill, New South Wales, southeastern Australia. We used a thermal-imaging camera to collect antemortem data from 500 rabbits that were shot at varying distance. We collected postmortem data via visual inspection from 482 rabbits that were killed. We used these data to compare 3 animal welfare parameters: wounding rate, duration of suffering, and ballistic injuries. We then used regression modeling to measure the effect of projectile type on these welfare parameters while accounting for shooting distance. All animal welfare parameters indicated that .222R projectiles were more humane than .22LR projectiles. When controlling for distance, for rabbits shot with a .22LR compared with a .222R, the odds of nonlethal wounding increased by a factor of 8 and noninstantaneous death increased by a factor of 9. All animal welfare parameters declined with increasing distance for both projectiles. Our results show that projectile energy and shooting distance were critical determinants of animal welfare outcomes in wildlife shooting programs. Ó

Effectiveness of pneumatically powered penetrating and non-penetrating captive bolts in stunning cattle

“…The likely explanation for cattle shot with PCB having fewer signs of imperfect stunning lies in the amount of kinetic energy transmitted by the bolt to the cattle's cranium. According to Hampton et al (2016), the kinetic energy delivered is of critical importance when inducing instantaneous insensibility, and, as stated by Gibson, Mason, et al (2015), the kinetic energy delivered to the head during stunning is affected to a much greater extent by variation in the velocity of the captive bolt as opposed to the mass of the bolt. In this study, the average kinetic energy delivered with the PCBs (448 joules) was significantly greater (P < 0.001) than that by the NPCBs (135 joules).…”

Heads in the sand: public health and ecological risks of lead-based bullets for wildlife shooting in Australia

“…Lead-based bullets are widely used for shooting, primarily because of the ballistic qualities of Pb, including very high density, softness (malleability) and low tensile strength (ductility). Lead is also cost-effective, widely available, easily extracted from ore and has the capacity for producing efficient killing (Thomas 2013;Stokke et al 2017), which is important for favourable animal-welfare outcomes (Hampton et al 2016a). Lead-based bullets used to shoot terrestrial mammal species are almost universally of a design referred to as 'expanding' bullets (Pauli and Buskirk 2007;Caudell et al 2012;Caudell 2013).…”

“…1; Stokke et al 2017). Owing to the softness of Pb and the high velocities achieved by modern centrefire bullets (Hampton et al 2016a), expanding Pb-based bullets often fragment on impact into hundreds of small pieces (Hunt et al 2006(Hunt et al , 2009Grund et al 2010;Kneubuehl 2011;Stewart and Veverka 2011;McTee et al 2017).…”

“…We suggest that further animal-welfare studies are required to ensure that newly developed Pb-free bullets achieve animal-welfare outcomes equivalent (or superior) to existing Pb-based bullets (Hampton 2016). Templates have been developed to allow the welfare outcomes of shooting methods to be quantified (Hampton et al 2015) and compared among different bullet types (Hampton et al 2016a). Studies could be designed in a similar way to those that have compared Pb and Pb-free (steel) shot for harvesting of waterfowl with shotguns (e.g.…”

A Ten-Stage Protocol for Assessing the Welfare of Individual Non-Captive Wild Animals: Free-Roaming Horses (Equus Ferus Caballus) as an Example

“…Methods for assessing welfare have been well developed for a range of captive animals [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], including for wild species [24][25][26][27][28]. Although a need to develop methodologies for assessing the welfare of free-roaming wildlife has been highlighted [1], to date, such assessments have been largely restricted to impacts of non-lethal or lethal control of unwanted species, such as rodents, possums, rabbits, kangaroos, camels, badgers, and horses [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Whilst a recent study explored some aspects of welfare in the daily lives of free-roaming wild dogs [8], protocols for purposefully, systematically and scientifically assessing the welfare of free-roaming wild animals undertaking their normal daily activities, remain elusive.…”