Going bird hunting? Skip Walmart and get ammo at your major beef packer. You’ll have a 100 percent chance of finding birdshot or buckshot there. It may not be loaded into shells, but you can pick it out of the fat layer and muscle of a carcass. Birdshot and buckshot have been found in beef carcasses since the National Beef Quality Audit started in the 1990s. It is STILL A PROBLEM! The 2022 National Beef Quality Audit showed 100 percent of packing plants reported shotgun pellets in beef market cows and bulls.
There are 28 categories of foreign material in beef carcasses, but only this one is found in every plant. It’s costly. A single incident can cost $10,000 in lost product and downtime. Don’t blame hunters. There are producers out there handling their cattle with shotguns. They’re ruining it for everyone else.
Source: University of Florida Extension, August 23, 2024. Link.
Source: Progressive Cattle, June 24, 2024. Link.
INSIGHTS: Those who think handling cattle with shotguns is a good thing in 2024 are as addled, if not more so, as those who thought it was in 1924. No matter that my well-meaning dad once told me, “That’ll keep the neighbor’s bull at home,” or “She’s not going over that section of the fence again,” shotgun cattle management is a fallacy at best and an industry trainwreck in reality.