It’s been nearly a decade in the making. It felt so shrouded in mystery that some even claimed that very idea was a con to scam the European Union out of development money. The importer, standing on the factory floor watching the production process and telling the rumour monger over the phone that he was seeing it with his own eyes put that one to bed for good.

The concept sounds like it has all the answers: a fully biodegradable material that has all the properties of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) and is strong enough to withstand chamber pressures and to act as a barrel protecting shot cup for steel shot. It should also break down completely into the natural environment. But is it all of those things?

I first became aware of the idea of new biodegradable materials for cartridges when discussions took place about a vegetable starch wads several years ago at the Game Fair. Intrigued I looked into biodegradable materials for cartridge component manufacture and came across Biammo. Truth be told there was not much to find on the internet. But at least the concept existed. Recently, and a long time after my first google search, I got the chance to try them at the Nuthampstead Shooting Ground with the Countryside Alliance as they try to address some of the misinformation that has gained traction about steel shot and biodegradable materials by producing a guidance film.

DON’T GET HUNG UP

Shooting clays with game loads (as this ground permits) is not very instructive but we were there to make the film, and films need B-roll. Pattern testing is on balance best done by someone else with your gun, cartridge and choke combination — someone who knows how to pattern test properly. It’s very easy to get hung up on the minutiae of game shooting. You can spend hours twisting into knots about perfect patterns and Gaussian distribution (you know who you are!). Once you know the combination works, leave it alone and get on and shoot. That way, when the wheels fall off, as they do for everyone at some point, you don’t blame the equipment and can address your footwork, gun mount, or state of mind — the problem usually resides there — perhaps in combination.

LIVE QUARRY

I came away with a few boxes of 32g 5’s and 32 3’s to try at pigeons. First into the breech of a 525 Laminate were the 32g 3’s. The first eight birds killed were of no great range as they were flighting out to the crop they were intent on feeding on over a young wood. But even so, they were on their backs in the air which is a clear indication that they were ‘lights out’ dead. That is good enough for me but it was so emphatic it prompted me to look at bit closer. When I cut one open later that day to measure the shot size on a set of vernier callipers they averaged out at 3.45mm (20 pellets). These early cartridges off the production line are very definitely High-Performance steel and therefore must only go through High-Performance steel proved barrels. The importers tell me that the next batch will be 3.25mm which will be Standard Steel and therefore usable in any 70mm chambered nitro barrels in good condition and under half choke. The 32g 5’s averaged out at 2.89mm which makes them roughly equivalent to a lead shot size UK 4.5. (Lead shot and steel shot is measured by some manufacturers differently which makes it all the more important that it is mandatory to have the shot size labelled in millimetres on all the packaging including the cartridge case in my opinion.) The 32g 5’s I felt also killed well at moderate ranges once I had moved to a patch of standing wheat that was the intended target of the pigeons. One bird in particular quartering fast away from me was killed cleanly at some distance with a 32g 5 — I would like to try more before I am convinced this was not a lucky shot — it left me open mouthed. The 32g 5’s are labelled ‘High Performance’ on the box but they are not, they are standard steel. The marketing team may have got a little excited with the language without realising the consequences although it seems they accidentally got the labelling right on the 3’s.

POSSIBLE ISSUE

One thing noticeable on the early shooting ground test was the wad recovered loaded with 3’s (that we now know were oversize) had some pinpricks in the wall of the shot cup from the pellets travelling up the barrel. Whether this will happen with the standard steel version that will be the next batch remains to be seen. We didn’t check wads loaded with 5’s and in hindsight we should have for comparison. I don’t believe that it resulted in the pellets touching the barrel wall and my barrel is not scratched in any way, but the fact remains thinning of the wad material was evident.

COLLECTIVE FOOTPRINT

The material itself is reportedly maize resin and is slightly less flexible than the plastic cartridge cases with which we are all familiar and appears to have very similar properties. As my children are using spent cartridges for air rifle practice and have been all lockdown, I have noticed that it also has a stringy quality, almost like hard cellulose when compared to HPDE cases that their air rifle pellets have also damaged when pinging them off the target.

This material does not break down through moisture and is completely unaffected by being submerged in water (the spent wads do not float in water either, they sink quickly). It is apparently broken down by bacterial action in the soil and this process is not an overly quick one. The importers tell me that it is “completely gone in two years.” That is not an issue for us as we should all be in the habit of collecting our empty cases after a day in a hide or at the end of the drive. What it does mean is that the collected empties can go to landfill without any cause for concern for our collective ecological footprint. There has always been a concern about livestock consuming cartridge wads although many of the examples cited are often not first hand so the frequency of this issue remains questioned in some quarters. What is not in doubt is that littering the countryside with plastic wads is pretty slovenly thing to do. The rate of degradation may be a concern for some shoots but it should be remembered that this is an organic material consumed by bacterial action. The possible rate of degradation in a cow's rumen I will leave for others more expert in such matters to guess at — it might be that it’s broken down very quickly given the culture in the gut of a grass eater. Perhaps it’s the science experiment that my kids need next week — collect a jar of fresh cowpat and insert a biowad.

COLOUR MATTERS

The cartridge case is olive green and the wad the brown of a woodland floor. These colours may not vary much in the future. The use of different coloured dyes can radically affect the extrusion and curing processes of the ‘plastic’. I’m told black is impossible to use for this reason. ’So what?’ You may ask. Well, it matters. For steel shot cartridges in the UK, the Proof House has mandatory labelling requirements for High-Performance Steel (see my note on shot size in millimetres above where I think they can improve). The problem is that the gold print used to mark the Bioammo cartridges is not all that easy to read on the drab green background. Also because of the nature of the material it rubs off quite easily in a short space of time. In a gritty pocket on a muddy day's ‘fowling or game shooting that might be quite a short time leaving you clueless as to what you have in your gun the second or third time out. All cartridges are susceptible to this but these seem particularly prone.

WINDOW INTO THE FUTURE

Bioammo is a window into our future. There are a few minor issues, but the ones tested were certainly effective, and that for me is the only test that matters. As we move through this transition process they will improve. They have promised much for a long time — now they have delivered.