Because I didn’t do enough of them, I learned at Colby College that “studies” are important.

When Maine’s grouse season ended on Nov. 15, my professors would ask me who I was.

I can’t think of a study more important to my fellow hunters and all other wildlife advocates than the one proposed by LD 1364, a bill to “Authorize a Study on the Impacts and Risks of Lead-based Ammunition,” sponsored by IFW committee member Rep. Jim Dill and co-sponsored by Rep. Tiffany Roberts (committee co-chair) and Rep. Bill Bridgeo. This legislation forces nothing. It promises knowledge.

I’ve been doing the same study for decades with my friends Dan Ashe — former U.S. Fish and Wildlife director — and Elaine Leslie, former chief of the National Park Service’s Biological Resources Division.

Ashe issued a rule (overturned by Trump 45) that would have banned lead ammunition on all 567 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management units. Leslie drafted an order to ban lead ammunition from national park units open to hunting. Her superiors never rescinded it but never implemented it.

Copper bullets weren’t developed for the health of humans or wildlife. They were developed strictly to kill game more efficiently, and they do. I polled the most hardcore big-game hunters I know about their thoughts on copper bullets. They serve with me on the Outdoor Writers of America Association’s Circle of Chiefs. Here are their responses:

“Highly accurate, sturdy, excellent expansion and weight retention.”

“I have found copper superior in every way.”

“Nothing but stellar performance.”

“Accurate, hard-hitting, no fragmentation.”

“As I hunted deer today, I sat within sight of the gut pile from the doe I killed two days ago. What remained was dined upon by two bald eagles, three ravens, two pileated woodpeckers, one hairy woodpecker, several blue jays and numerous chickadees and nuthatches. Which is why I switched to [nontoxic] copper bullets. Copper bullets are every bit as effective.”

The North American Non-Lead Partnership — committed to protecting wildlife from poisoning by lead bullets — includes 46 organizations and agencies that support and promote hunting. The partnership sponsors demonstrations in which copper and lead bullets are fired into water-filled plastic bags housed in plastic drums. Slugs and fragments fall to the bottom of the drums.

In one typical demo, Allen Zufelt of the Arizona Game and Fish Department fires a Federal Nosler AccuBond 180-grain lead bullet, then a 180-grain Federal Trophy Copper bullet. The retrieved copper slug weighs 179.9 grains. The lead slug weighs 137.5 grains, having shed and scattered 42.5 grains of fragments.

Lead poisoning symptoms include anemia, memory loss, depression, convulsions, brain damage, stillbirth, paralysis, kidney and liver failure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports: “No safe blood lead level in children has been identified. Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to negatively affect a child’s intelligence, ability to pay attention and academic achievement.”

It baffles me why so many of my fellow hunters insist on poisoning wildlife (including their game), themselves, their children, their wives and their friends when they can use nontoxic copper bullets, which perform better and cost something like $2 more per box of 20 than lead. The added expense amounts to roughly the cost of a cup of coffee per hunting season.

Hunting organizations donate venison to food banks. But because lead ammo breaks apart on impact, that venison is frequently impregnated with poison. As a result, health departments of North Dakota and Minnesota impounded 17,000 pounds of donated venison.

I won’t forget the day when Mark Pokras of Tufts University’s Wildlife Clinic in North Grafton, Massachusetts, opened a giant freezer and two dozen stiff bald eagles tumbled out around my feet. Most were from Maine, and most had been poisoned by consuming lead bullet fragments.

The toxicity of lead hunting projectiles is ancient news. In 1894, George Bird Grinnell published this warning in his sporting weekly, Forest & Stream: “Until they reach the gizzard where the wildfowl grinds his food, these pellets do no harm, but, when reduced to powder … they become a violent poison.”

It wasn’t until 1991 that we got around to banning lead shot for waterfowl hunting.