FYI-
The Montana state fish and game agency has proposed a total lead shot ban for shooting ANY game bird on ANY WMA in MT. The proposed regulations on the MT FWP web site can be found via this link: http://fwp.mt.gov/hunting/oppForPubCommentUGB.html

Comments are welcome from residents and non-residents. The public comment period closes on 22 Jan. 2010 at 5 PM. For further clarification, you may call the Wildlife Bureau office at 406-444-2612. To submit comments electronically, this link http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N2CCH9R can be found under “Opportunity for Public Comment” on the Hunting home page at the http://fwp.mt.gov/ website. Written comments can be sent to: FWP – Wildlife Bureau, Attn: Public Comment, POB 200701, Helena MT 59620-0701.

Speak up now or let those old guns go silent, this is just the beginning...

Geez, here we go again! Last time this came up. with that lunatic Ben Deeble pushing all his fraud, we beat this to death. This forum degenerated into a bunch of"experts" quoting studies and such. How many of us, besides me, actually wrote, called emailed people who could actually do anything about it? It does NO GOOD to preach to the choir......If we get a ban on lead shot, or continue to lose CRP, its because WE let it happen.

Thanks for the reminder.

I'll make sure a bunch of like-minded wing-shooters submit appropriate comments.... We must protect the long-term interest of our sport here in the Last Best Place!

Comments sent. Message forwarded

Have they given any rationale for the requirement? With Montana being outside the Prairie Pothole Region, surely most of their WMA's are not waterfowl areas?

Of course, Grouse Guy is the fellow behind this goofy thought. Don't think for a minute his "like minded" wing shooters include any of us double gun shooters.

Daryl nailed it.."Grouse Guy" is Ben Deeble...and Larry, lets not wander off into the rationale thing again..It doesnt matter, what does matter is fighting it. Use your keystrokes to contact people who can stop it....

LD, I'm far more likely to use my "keystrokes" to fight it in print, as in magazines read by thousands of bird hunters. But I don't believe in drooling at the mouth, or on the keyboard. I believe in presenting whatever "good science" there is to support such a ban (I have yet to see much, where upland birds are concerned) and counter it with pro-lead arguments. In other words, a balanced presentation rather than "the steel shot proponents are enviro-Nazis". I think steel loses on facts; no need to rely on emotion.

Hello Daryl and Last Dollar:

I'm actually not behind this proposed change to the upland bird regs., though I do sympathize with it.

I've spent the last six months or so putting my father in his grave and otherwise trying to keep home and family together.

I did get the rare chance with surprisingly mild weather in Montana yesterday to swing a nice sidelock and Parker at clays yesterday, broke most of them, and left four pounds of lead on the skeet field where it belongs.

I'll try and find out more this week about where the proposal did come from.

Riding towards the sound of cannon,
Ben

with friends like Ben a double gun lover really needs no enemies...gee thanks for all your help keeping our sport alive Ben.....what an A**!

Comment against the ban of lead in Montana sent, unless proven scientifically that it is a real problem.

From the information listed in the first comment on this item, I cannot seem to find either the expanded information on the lead ban in the WMAs that is being proposed, nor can I find an area to comment in. Can someone lead me a bit ?

Daryl,

I noticed the proposal at the beginning of the opening page without any explanations or detailed plan. At the bottom they invite you to comment on the hunting season for 2010-2011 and that's where I left my opinion in the space dedicated for upland bird hunting. It might just go down the drain, but could not find any other area to leave my comments.
Serban

Comments sent (as Sliver described).

A similar ban was proposed and then dropped in MN a year or so ago. I believe due to a whole bunch of us writing and politely pointing out the facts (or lack there of).

Bryan

Minnesota is an interesting case. Their own "Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee" states, in their report:

"The issues are extremely complex and conclusive data on wildlife populations is laking. Furthermore, it is unlikely that conclusive data can ever be obtained due to the cost of this type of research."

Translation: We don't have the scientific data and aren't going to have it, but we support additional lead shot restrictions anyhow.

I talked to Larry Copenhaver, Local Issues Director, Montana Wildlife Federation today. For those of you who want to stay informed on this issue, I suggest you visit their website http://www.montanawildlife.org and get on their mailing list. Or, contact Larry directly lcopenhaver@mtwf.org Those of you who want to keep "drooling on your keyboards" impressing the rest of us with your knowledge, may do so.

IMHO, the communication method for public comments having the greatest effect is a well written letter mailed to the department with copies to the members of the fish and game commission. FYI, here's the link to the webpage which lists the current members of the MT FWP Commission: http://fwp.mt.gov/doingBusiness/insideFwp/commission/members.html

This link http://fwp.mt.gov/hunting/oppForPubCommentUGB.html takes the reader to the web page containing the proposed changes to the UGB hunting regulations.

The proposed regulation reads:
That's all of the information FWP gave out to the public via their website. Go to the end of this posting to read some information I copied from an internal FWP document related directly to their lead shot ban proposal.

At the bottom of the UBG proposal web page is a link to FWP's public comment survey hosted on the SurveyMonkey website. That link is found under the section labeled with this text below: The FWP link to the survey monkey website is colored in red; here's that survey link directly: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N2CCH9R

Once at the survey monkey page, scroll down to box/question number 15 to leave your comments on the proposed UGB regs. But what's really important is the number of comments submitted; more is better - no matter what the transmission method.

If you want more information about the lead ban, aka non-toxic proposal, ask FWP for their two page document entitled for Upland Game Birds. In it, there are four items/points discussed. Here are a couple for you to contemplate:


And another one:



Folks, those words come straight out of an internal MT FWP document, which I believe was written for department management and their oversight commission.

Finally, in case anyone is interested, here's a link http://fwp.mt.gov/habitat/wma.html on the MT FWP website to a page showing all of the state WMAs in MT. Each one of the dots/WMA names shown on the map is *clickable* and will take the reader to a page of information (e.g., acreage, huntable species, etc.) about each specific WMA.

Remember, comments that are calm, rational and reasoned are much more effective than loud, obnoxious rantings. Please take time to comment, and IMHO, comments from non-resident hunters count just as much.

I wonder if a lead shot ban would'nt have a greater effect on Motels, Restruants, and out of state sales than it ever could on birds. Don Hardin

Here's my comment.

"There is no data to support a ban of lead shot. With a little research you will find there was no real data to support a ban of lead shot anywhere."

Sounds a lot like the MN Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee. No proof that lead shot for upland game is a problem, but we're going to restrict it anyhow. I guess that passes for "good science", if what you're doing happens to be politically correct. And anything anti-lead is PC.

Don, that is exactly the point I made in my comment to the MT proposal. We have been seriously considering driving a few more hours beyond NW ND to hunt prairie grouse in some new country.

One of the key influence points is the Department of Commerce in Helena. They are very sensitive to the tourism dollar, particularly in todays economy. They also probably have more legislative influence the the DOWP. Copy them on comments.

Post deleted by bridge boy

I am sure glad that we have resolved this issue, I was worried it wouldnt get done. It doesnt matter if the lead shot ban laws are passed because, every one knows there is no science to support it, AND it doesnt matter anyhow, cuz there are no pheasants........in Santa Barbara

"Where the hell is the game?" isn't a bad question. MT has never been one of the top pheasant states, but Iowa certainly has. During the 80's and 90's, we led the nation in pheasant harvest more frequently than any other state. That's right--we even beat out SD. Since 2001, however, we have been at or below our previous all-time low (724,000 birds in pre-CRP 1984) every year except one (2003, the last time we topped a million). In 2008, it was 380,000. This season--likely lower. Last season was also the first time we ever dropped below 100,000 pheasant hunters. (SD had more NONRESIDENT pheasant hunters in 08 than IA had TOTAL pheasant hunters.) Lower license sales = less money for the DNR, which = reduced $ for habitat. Same story if nontox is mandated for upland hunting: Hunter numbers will fall even farther, as will $ for habitat.

The situation is discouraging enough without the push for additional nontox requirements.

Comment re non tox shot made as well as comments about the poor state of Montana phez populations.

Ben Deeble , I notice you have taken time from your busy schedule to comment on one of your favorite subjects. Odd isn't it, that you just happened to be looking at the board and were able to comment early? Give us a break !

I encourage all of you to make comments about this "no science" subject, contact friends and ask them to comment, too. If you know people on the Fish and Game Board, contact them.

Know that Ben Deeble is not "riding to the sound of cannon", for he actually is the "cannon" when using his position as an upland bird biologist with the National Wildlife Federation (Missoula office) to influence other state agencies and organizations. And I even suspect that NWF applauds his efforts for doing so, in that it meshes with their broader agenda.

If you doubt this, review his archived posts from July and August of 2008 wherein he used the Big Sky Upland Bird Assoc. (BSUBA) and the Montana Wildlife Federation (MWF) to front his proposal to study the removal of lead from the upland equation.

Fortunately, that one failed when literally hundreds of sportsmen and women from both Montana and nationwide responded with comment. The only downside to their collective effort then was that some of these folks actually got lectured by the phone receptionist at MWF as to how their lead shot was costing us bald eagles and other raptors through their thoughtlessness.

Should it ever be needed, I believe there could be a future for Ben at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) out of East Anglia....where more junk science is always welcomed. Meanwhile, 'Ride on', Ben .....as the rest of us express our concerns for ever receiving objective work/data from our various government agencies.


Rob Harris
Conner, MT

This has been a really interesting experience for me. Ten years ago, I too didn't believe there were any issues related to lead-based ammunition and wildlife. As a life-long hunter (ongoing)and old gun nut, I figured anything grandpa did couldn't of been all that bad.

Then I started reading about the accounts of various countries, states, and jurisdictions (including private landowners, police ranges, etc.) prohibiting lead ammunition. The lead ban for waterfowl was underway, for Pete's sake! I was perturbed, but also curious. I heard there had been studies, but hadn't read any of them. I started to get educated. What I found is there is an astounding amount of information out there.

Another one of the things most fascinating about some of the members of this board has been their tendency to shoot the messenger... me. And to deny the existence of documented accounts, science, proof, etc., while simultaneously opposing the collection of additional knowledge or science. It is a circular argument... "there is no proof, so we shouldn't collect any..." "there is no proof, so we shouldn't collect any...." There are probably even better terms for what amounts to a mental pathology.

The effort Rob Harris alludes to above is exactly a case in point. Two years ago I was part of an effort along with some other Montana sportsmen to have FWP "study" using both sociological and biological sciences, the state of understanding of the lead-based ammunition issue here in Montana. I know Rob exaggerates about the "hundreds" of sportsmen he imagines he organized to respond to my suggestion, but his effort was in effect saying there should be no further rigorous understanding of the issue in Montana. It sounds a lot like the strategy the WR Grace company used in Libby,MT as they killed half the town. All my effort called for was a "study" and he and others here were dead-set against it.

Now there is a proposal to ban lead ammunition from Wildlife Management Areas in Montana. I honestly had nothing to do with it. The person who did I'd never communicated with about the issue. I found out about it after the fact, and to my knowledge the actual instigator never knew of my previous effort to get some new science done. And here I am being accused by Last Dollar, Daryl and Rob of being the ring leader. If they continue to assert this, just know they are while generally intelligent men, on the issue of my involvement in this WMA initiative spouting absolute ignorant hogwash. And if they are gentlemen, they will recognize they owe me an apology.

I'm going to start posting here some documentation on occurance and effects of lead (primarily ammunition as the source) in non-target wildlife. The studies and documentation will be not only for the U.S., but also other countries.

Walter and Reese, 2003
Our most startling discovery was ingested
shot pellets in 7.1% of 140 non-empty crops (of wild chukar in Oregon). The mean number of ingested lead pellets was
1.7 (s = 0.5, range = 1-2 pellets, n = 8) and 2
crops had 1 and 3 steel pellets, respectively.
Investigation of 123 gizzards also revealed ingested
lead pellets in 7 (5.7%).

Need any more?

Ben . . . who's opposing the collection of information? You must've missed my above quote, straight from the MN DNR's Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee, in which they clearly state that it is "unlikely that conclusive data can ever be obtained due to the cost of this type of research."

And from the Montana document, posted above: "Lead presence and accumulation under extremely low levels of lead shot shell use has not been established as a significant environmental concern."

Regarding your chukar information above . . . how did those chukar die, Ben? Were they found dead, and the lead pellets in their crops and gizzards determined to be the cause of death? Or were they killed by hunters, perhaps as part of some sort of study? If the latter, that reminds me of the study the Iowa DNR did on pheasants and bird flu. They examined 80-odd pheasants killed by hunters and found that something like 20% of them had antibodies to the bird flu. Bad news, right? Bird flu infecting a very high percentage of our pheasant population? No, as the Iowa DNR correctly interpreted it, that was GOOD news. What it meant was that these HEALTHY birds had been exposed to the bird flu, but not only hadn't it killed them . . . they remained quite healthy.

And Ben . . . police ranges prohibiting lead ammunition--please. Totally different situation than lead shot for upland game. I'm the former senior officer of a local Army Reserve Center. OSHA shut down our indoor range because of lead, but it had to do with the fact that the range was improperly ventilated. Far as I know, none of the soldiers were actually eating the lead bullets. And, as a precaution, we had all the full-time Reserve Center employees tested for lead level in their blood, since they're the ones who were in the building the most. No elevated levels of lead found in any of them.

And speaking of shooting the messenger, Ben . . . since it's the MN Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee to the DNR and Montana FWP that either say there's no evidence of a problem with lead shot for upland birds and there's not likely to be, or that what evidence there is shows that it's not a "significant environmental concern", maybe you ought to be talking to the REAL messengers behind those messages. As the old song goes, Ben . . . it ain't me, babe. I'm just quoting from the MN DNR and MT FWP.

Grouse Guy:

One can reasonably be skeptical that lead shot in the act of upland hunting is significantly harming wildlife.

What chaps my ass is your implication that skeptics willfully choose to ignore data and/or resist any study of the issue. There is nothing wrong with taking a skeptical view. The skeptical view is actually the more rational view.

The burden of proof should rightfully fall on the party calling for changing the regulations. I don't need to definitively prove lead does no harm, you need to definitively prove it does serious harm if you want it banned.

Localized studies using small sample sizes are not anywhere close to definitive proof. Association between lead shot and waterfoul mortality does not prove lead shot used in upland hunting does harm. Police ranges have nothing to do with a hunting debate. If the studies proved what you think they may, the State/Feds would rightfully ban lead shot without seeking any public input. The opportunity for public input is the red herring.

What we are being asked to do is accept a lead shot ban because it could possibly maybe harm wildlife, and not being positive either way, we will take the safe route and ban lead. You want me to fork over $3 a shot on this basis?

Finally, this issue has absolutely nothing to do with WR Grace! Why are you even bringing Grace up in the debate? To pull the old retorical trick of associating those on the other side of this argument with industrial polluters, and demonstrating your own ethical superiority?

Well guess what, people in the science professions are no more or less ethical than chemical manufactures, or anyone else. State wildlife officials don't de facto get the high ground either.

If you fund a study you can generally get whatever results you pay for. Industry trade groups do this all the time.

The people looking for a correlation betwen lead shot and wildlife mortality have a vested interest in finding such correlation because they accepted the funding dollars. They would also love the recognition.

No one or group is perfectly, which is why hard science is rightfully adversarial and the burden of proof falls on the party calling for a change in the prevaling thinking. Skeptics have a role in reaching the truth.

Why are you calling skeptics spouters of ingorant hogwash? I respectfully do not think you are owed any appology.

Here is some science relevant to the lead issue... Want more?

Walter, H., Reese, K.P., 2003. Fall diet of chukars (Alextoris chukar)
in Eastern Oregon and discovery of ingested lead pellets.West.
N. Am. Naturalist 63, 402–405.
Wayland, M., Bollinger, T., 1999. Lead exposure and poisoning in
bald eagles and golden eagles in the Canadian prairie
provinces. Environ. Pollut. 104, 341–350.
Wayland, M., Wilson, L.K., Elliott, J.R., Miller, J.E., Bollinger, T.,
McAdie, M., Langelier, K., Keating, J., Froese, J.M.W., 2003.
Mortality, morbidity, and lead poisoning of eagles in western
Canada 1986–1998. J. Raptor Res. 37, 8–18.
Weir, D., Hanson, A., 1989. Food habits of great horned owls (Bubo
virginianus) in the Northern Taiga of the Yukon Territory and
Alaska. Can. Field Nat. 103, 12–17.
Wiemeyer, S.N., Jurek, R.M., Moore, J.F., 1986. Environmental
contaminants in surrogates, foods, and feathers of California
condors (Gymnogyps californianus). Environ. Monit. Assess. 6,
91–111.
Wiemeyer, S.N., Krynitsky, A.J., Wilbur, S.R., 1983. Environmental
contaminants in tissues, foods, and feces of California
condors. In: Wilbur, S.R., Jackson, J.A. (Eds.), Vulture Biology
and Management. University of California Press, Los Angeles,
pp. 4727–4739.
Wiemeyer, S.N., Scott, J.M., Anderson, M.P., Bloom, P.H., Stafford,
C.J., 1988. Environmental contaminants in California condors.
J. Wildlife Manage. 52, 238–247.
Windingstad, R.M., Kerr, S.M., Locke, L.N., Hunt, J.J., 1984. Lead
poisoning of sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis). Prairie Nat. 16,
21–24.
Wobester, G., Wobester, A.G., 1992. Carcass disappearance and
estimation of mortality in a simulated die-off of small birds. J.
Wildlife Dis. 28, 548–554.
Work, T.M., Smith, M.R., 1996. Lead exposure in Laysan albatross
adults and chicks in Hawaii: prevalence, risk factors, and
biochemical effects. Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 31,
115–119.

Ben,
Go back and re-read Larry's post....There is no conclusive evidence and there is not likely to be that lead used for upland hunting has a significant negative impact on the environment. You have an agenda and it could not be more clear. There are enough folks out there trying to limit our opportunities with out help from "one of our own". The last part in quotes is highly suspect.....do you actually hunt Ben?

Eagles? Tell me it ain't so, Ben! They were used as a "poster bird" when we banned lead shot for waterfowl. And guess what? It WORKED! Eagles have made a remarkable recovery, likely helped by both the lead shot ban on waterfowl (eagles tend to hang around water a lot, and eat a lot of carrion) and banning DDT. Assuming they were once threatened by secondary ingestion of lead when they ate unrecovered waterfowl, they're clearly not threatened now. We're seeing them all over here in Iowa, in places where eagles hadn't been seen for decades. And we're seeing far more of them in places where they have always gathered, like along the Mississippi River and around our large reservoirs.

Noted ballistician Tom Roster did a study using steel shot on pheasants. His shooters were experienced hunters with good dogs, and the test was conducted on preserve pheasants--which almost anyone with experience hunting both wild and preserve birds will tell you are far easier to put in the bag than wild birds. They ended up with a wounding loss rate of over 12%. I've kept very careful records for a very long time. I don't claim to be a world class shot, but my wounding loss rate on pheasants, wild birds only, shooting lead shot, is less than half that figure. Roster, who's examined hundreds (if not thousands) of waterfowl killed with steel, also noticed that there's more of a feather balling problem with pheasants than with ducks. So . . . since MT FWP says that lead shot in low use situations (that'd be pretty much all upland hunting, except perhaps doves on public areas) isn't an environmental concern, are we going to end up with more birds that are wounded and unrecovered with steel than the few we might save that would die from ingesting lead?

Interesting that the MN Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee and MT FWP must not consider the "science" you reference to be germaine to the subject of a lead shot ban on upland birds. Can you explain why that is?

Larry and SKB:

Shouting to the mountaintops about a one-liner in a perfunctory briefing note written by a harried staffer at Montana FWP, an agency that has done virtually no study of the lead issue or literature in part because of energetic deniers like those I've cited, is hardly worth taking the time to type about.

Also Larry's hypothesis that live chukar being found with lead shot in their gizzards is "good news" meaning lead must be harmless is a novel hypothesis. Obviously he hasn't read any of the literature proving such in almost all instances causes mobidity and mortality. I'll post some of that later.

Also, this isn't a conversation about me. Note my earlier points on the topic.

Here is some more science....

Clark, A.J., Scheuhammer, A.M., 2003. Lead poisoning in
upland-foraging birds of prey in Canada. Ecotoxicology 12,
23–30.
Clausen, B., Wolstrup, C., 1979. Lead poisoning in game from
Denmark. Dan. Rev. Game Biol. 11, 1–22.
Craig, T.H., Connelly, J.W., Craig, E.H., Parker, T.L., 1990. Lead
concentrations in golden and bald eagles. Wilson Bull. 102,
130–133.
CSTEE, Scientific Committee on Toxicity, Ecotoxicity and the
Environment, 2003. Opinion on the report on Risks to Health
and the Environment Related to the Use of Lead in Products.
Health and Consumer Protection Directorate of the European
Commission, Brussels.
Custer, T.W., Franson, J.C., Pattee, O.H., 1984. Tissue lead
distribution and hematologic effects in American kestrels
(Falco sparverius) fed biologically incorporated lead. J. Wildlife
Dis. 20, 39–43.
Custer, T.W., Mulhern, B.L., 1983. Heavy metal residues in
pre-fledging black-crowned night-herons from three
Atlantic Coast colonies. Bull. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 30,
178–185.

Ryan F,

'Thanks' for your cogent remarks that get right to the 'nuts' of this whole issue.

Although a necessary evil, I, too, have come to understand public comment periods for the 'red herrings' they often are: The respondent feels better for having gotten it off his or her chest, the agency feigns altruism for ostensibly giving them a voice, and then these same regulators do what was their intention all along. (Doubt this?, then take the time to acquaint yourselves with the 2008 CDC study of North Dakota populace's consumption of wild game vs. non-consumers).

May be time to take it to a new level in boycotting the whole system for a good while.

What would MDFWP do to make up these revenues if they lost as many upland hunters/sympathizers through this latest effort as was lost among waterfowlers to steel shot in the 1980's? (Maybe they could require license fees from all the non-consumptive users of wildlife who do little more at present than pay the salaries of folks like Deeble through their contributions.) That MDFWP recognizes the potential for hunter attrition occurring once again is evident in the inter-departmental quote supplied earlier by MTDDFAN. Take the time to read it, if you haven't.

I think it well and good if one cares to submit comments as it does have a place, but we need to do so much more if we ever hope to receive sound, irrefutable science from these people. Just exactly what those measures should be, I'm less clear on at the moment.

What with a world that is blowing itself apart faster these days than we can keep up with, I should think our bureaucratic energies and assets might be better directed.....but then, who am I?


Rob Harris

Ben Deeble, I am becoming more amused with your arguements. Mr. Harris, Brown, Ryan F. and others asked you for specific science that justifies your view. Your response is calling a Montana position as just "a perfunctory briefing note written by a harried staffer at Montana FWP". Other statements using the term "ignorant hogwash" and avoidance of specific questions asked above give your views, at best, tainted value. Arguements about Grace and trying to relate it to this discussion are rather sophomoric , as stated above.

By the way, what are your qualifications to interpret toxicology reports, and the data you index, but do not elaborate on ? I am wondering about the possibility of pandering to funding sources. I have no funding sources, but what are yours and what are those of organizations you may represent ?

Again, answer the questions asked above, if you will.

As a member of the forum living in Belgium, this topic is interesting for me, and believe me or not it is not because I have Daryl as friend that I read it we have also a total lead shot ban in our country for 2 yaers now.The lead shot ban is general and not only for waterfowl.Hunters representatives asked many times about a toxicology rapport to know exactly how much they polluted and the inpact on the environment. Well let me tell you that till now nobody came with some trustable document about our quest.But it became reality despite our justified protest.One of your gunwriters, Michael Mc Intosh mention the lead shot ban in his book "Best guns" in 1989 and his is 20 yaers ago. I can only advise all of you to keep protesting and ask to vieuw documents based on serious research, because one time the law is voted it is for ever.
Marc.

I'm not qualified other than having taken a upper level environmental toxicology course 20 years go to interpret toxicological science. Nor am I technically qualified to talk about shotgun shells other than being an avid upland hunter and target shooter. I assume the latter is adequate to talk about shotgun shells, because it seems enough for ya'all. You might note, I haven't tried to interpret the toxics science, only to supply it. I've asked for others, perhaps more qualified, to study it but ya'all don't seem to think that was a good idea either. Thank you Rob.

Nor have I ever received a dime for engaging in this discussion. All posts come from my home computer. You won't find this appearing anywhere on my professional workplan. I'm just an avid hobbiest when it come to issues lead-related. And a bird biologist. But like I said, this ain't about me....

Here is some more science and rigorous documentation of pertinant observations.... Winter is long around here. Read up!

Dutton, C.S., Bolen, E.G., 2000. Fall diet of a relict pheasant
population in North Carolina. J. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc. 116,
41–48.
Edens, F.W., Garlich, J.D., 1983. Lead-induced egg production
decrease in leghorn and Japanese quail hens. Poultry Sci. 62,
1757–1763.
Eisler, R., 1988. Lead hazards to fish, wildlife, and invertebrates: a
synoptic review. US Fish Wildlife Serv. Biol. Rep. 85, 1–4.
Eldeman, W.M.T., Van Beersum, I., Jans, T., 1983. Uptake of
cadmium, zinc, lead, and copper by earthworms near a
zinc-smelting complex: influence of soil pH and organic
matter. Bull. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 30, 424–427.
Elder, W.H., 1955. Fluroscope measures of hunting pressure in
Europe and North America. Trans. N. Am. Wildlife Conf. 20,
298–322.
Elliott, J.E., Langelier, K.M., Scheuhammer, A.M., Sinclair, P.H.,
Whitehead, P.E., 1992. Incidence of lead poisoning in bald
eagles and lead shot in waterfowl gizzards from British
Columbia, 1988–91. CWS Prog. Note 200. Canadian Wildlife
Service, Quebec.
Falandysz, J., Jakuczun, B., Mizera, T., 1988. Metal and
organochlorines in four female white-tailed eagles. Mar.
Pollut. Bull. 19, 521–526.
Ferrer, M., 2001. The Spanish Imperial Eagle. Lynx Editions,
Barcelona.
Ferrer, M., Penteriani, V., Balbontı´n, J., Pandolfi, M., 2003. The proportion of immature breeders as a reliable early warning
signal of population decline: evidence from the Spanish
imperial eagle in Don˜ ana. Biol. Conserv. 114, 463–466.
Finkelstein, M.E., Gwiazda, R.H., Smith, D.R., 2003. Lead poisoning
of seabirds: environmental risks from leaded paint at a
decommissioned military base. Environ. Sci. Technol. 37,
3256–3260.
Franson, J.C., Sileo, L., Pattee, O.H., Moore, J.F., 1983. Effects of
chronic dietary lead in American kestrels (Falco spaverius). J.
Wildlife Dis. 19, 110–113.

Daniels, C. 2001, Effects of Nitrous oxide on Land Mammals, Journal me vAc V1 #4
Pride, C. 1987. Country Gravity Envi. Tec 19, P.28
Hagard, M. 1998, Flourescent Light and Partridge Morbidity, Can. Wild. #7
Yearwood, T. & Harbaugh J. Couple Therapy For Hungarian Cluckers. Prairie Voice, Vol. 3
Presley, E. Bull Shooting Fun, Music review 17172
Sophamoric, M. Impressions Of A Nitwhit. AMA 1987, Pd. 17
Gulibilly, T. The Importance Of Siting Impressive Lists to Bolster Non-Factual Science, Un-Scientific Review 2009, SDH

And I can site Finkelstien, M.E (my personal favorite!) and his study found lead to be almost non-existant in sea birds...
Fakabdysz could find no heavy metals in white-tailed eagles.
Franson fed European kestels 15 grams of lead every day until they fell of their perches and 3 out of 4 broke their necks.

I've read 'em all, would you like me to present more definitive examples!!!

What an interesting list.

1983 study of Leghorn & Japanese quail
1983 study of earthworms
1955 a study that used a fluroscope!
2001 Spanish Eagles
2003 sea birds eating lead paint chips
1983 American Kestrals.

Really very impressive. So, how about all the copper those earthworms ingested?

Really, if you are going to pull bibliographies from works published on the net, at least be a little more selective. A study of earthworms.... Geez!

Pete

S. Dodd Hughes,

Having seen you in a past photo, you are a much funnier guy than I would have guessed. 'Thanks' for some levity on a thread that could desparately use some at this point.


Rob

I'm a bird watcher as a hobby, and really do care for all forms of life. I can't recall ever reading Ben refer to anything being better for the birds? Seems like it is mostly about being controversial and impressing folks with his knowledge.
I hate being bullshitted, Ben.
MFWP is probably already aware of Ben's brand of bull.

One good thing about MFWP, they normally make decisions based on science, (except of course, when it comes to buffalo).

Here is some interesting reading more to the point for those having trouble connecting dots....

Scheuhammer, A.M., Rogers, C.A., Bond, D., 1999. Elevated lead
exposure in American woodcock (Scolopax minor) in eastern
Canada. Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 36, 334–340.
Sharley, A.J., Best, L.W., Lane, J., Whitehead, P., 1992. An overview of lead poisoning in Australian waterfowl and implications for
management. In: Pain, D.J., (Ed.), Lead Poisoning in Waterfowl.
IWRB Spec. Pub. 16, Slimbridge, pp. 73–77.
Snyder, N.F., Snyder, H.A., Lincer, J.L., Reynolds, R.T., 1973.
Organochlorines, heavy metals, and the biology of North
American accipiters. Bioscience 23, 300–305.
Stendell, R.C., Artmann, J.W., Martin, E., 1980. Lead residues in
Sora rails from Maryland. J. Wildlife Manage. 44, 525–527.
Stone, W.B., Butkas, S.A., 1978. Lead poisoning in wild turkey
(Meleagris gallopavo). New York Fish Game J. 25, 169.
Szymczak, M.R., 1978. Steel shot use on a goose hunting area in
Canada. Wildlife Soc. Bull. 6, 217–225.
Scheuhammer, A.M., Bond, D.E., Burgess, N.M., Rodrigue, J., 2003.
Lead and stable isotope ratios in soil, earthworms and bones
of American woodcock (Scolopax minor) from eastern Canada.
Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 22, 2585–2591.
Scheuhammer, A.M., Norris, S.L., 1995. A review of the environmentalimpacts of lead shotshell ammunition and lead fishing
weights in Canada. Can. Wildlife Serv. Occasional Paper 88.
Scheuhammer, A.M., Norris, S.L., 1996. The ecotoxicology of lead
shot and lead fishing weights. Ecotoxicology 5, 279–295.

SDH, you brought up an interesting point. I was deep into "connecting the dots" as Ben Deeble suggested, trying to figure the metal eating earthworm connection to a large owl in the Canadian Tiaga. Was Ben trying to "add levity" and we all missed it. Or is it really about bullshit, making noise, being controversial, and trying to impress folks, maybe hopefully leading to the next funding grant ?

I do hope that MFWP can see through all of this.

The problem with many, if not all of these studies is that they are biased and flawed from the beginning. A study needs large samples, long terms of study, double blinds to off set any recorder bias if possible, clear review of study material by people not in the study who can offer a honest evaluation of the results. Too often reliance on correlations as facts flaw the results and conclusion reached.

If you go into a study with a fixed viewpoint, it is too easy to set the study up in a way that almost excluded all data outside your desired findings. I have seen it often in studies my wife and I have reviewed for publication. People who do these studies can be intent in proving their viewpoint to the point that they loose perspective. I saw one study that was done three times before it "came out right" and they just threw out the first two data sets a being "flawed". The only reason I knew about the first two data sets was I had been asked to massage the numbers by one of the people who ran the first study. They could not be massaged and they got dumped.

Sample size is often overlooked. One site, two sites or even three sites is too small. Give me 50 to 100 sites for a large sample. One year is too short for most studies. Give me decades to see real trends. How many studies get ruined by one person interpolating all the data with a minor or major bias? A ten percent error in data may be a extreme swing in results in small sample studies.

My pet peeve is the correlations that can become facts if repeated often enough. Understand that most studies cite others before them as proof that they are on the right tract. If one of these studied is off then many of the studies after them can be off if they do not go back and prove the early studies were wrong. So an accepted but wrong fact gets repeated over and over again and becomes an accepted fact when it is not a fact at all.

For example if I published the "correlation" that 81% lung cancer victims carried butane lighters for 20 plus years and draw the conclusions that butane lighters are bad for your health others will cite this "fact". Repeated often enough and that fact will get lost in the other facts and become a commonly held view based on long accepted studies. Look at the data first, look at the way the study was done, look at the number and quality of other studies cited. Then go one step further and look at those studies and see if any of them cite their own works or those of the first study you were reading. I have seen studies cite back and forth so often you that you get to feeling that all the studies were done a just a very few people and they seem to almost be working out of one office or with just one funding source. The money dictates the outcome. You would not pay for a study if it does not support your viewpoint.

Any study that cites their own previous publications is to be taken with a grain of salt. Any study who cites the same two or three previous authors over and over again is to be taken with a larger grain of salt. Any study done in an area the size of your backyard, in just one year, that does not include more than 30 test subjects is to be taken with a even larger grain of salt. Any study who does not tell you the person or group funding the study is not to be trusted at all. Follow the money, find the reason for the study.

I here by nominate a commitee to discover why we in Iowa don't have any birds at all to speak of...

Oh wait it's gotta be the lead shot doesn't it? DEAD WRONG

It has been proven that habitat loss is the number one reason for birds in a massive decline, weather has some to do with it, but we simply don't have the habitat to support these upland birds anymore. Farm chemicals can't help but that is just speculation on my part. With all the money we as sportsman spend to pursue our hobby we should have better opportunity. Perhaps we are going to have to start a "country club" like golf enthusists and tennis gurus do. We have shooting preserves where it's "put and take" but we could try to start something to restablish wild birds. I know each and everyone of you belongs to a conservation organization of some sort IE Pheasents Forever, but much of the money we donate/spend with them is lost in "administration" Long and short of it, sure lead shot probably has a MINUTE effect on the overall bird population but I would venture an educated guess that the impacts of lead shot are about 1/100000th of the problem. I contribute the decline of upland game and birds of the like to an extreme habitat loss all in the name of a profit.

Mind yourselves on the point that there is a reason for this "study" being funded, the persons conducting the study will tell you they "care for the good of the planet" but in my expirience 90% of them are coming up with cock-eyed theories to justify their jobs. They need funding to keep their incomes. Hey they gotta eat too. I just wish that all the money spent on studies could be diverted to creating habitat. It wouldn't suprise me if a company such as Environmetal was behind a little of this, they have a HUGE stake in the race. I understand everyone's concern about rediculously expensive ammo but money talks yadda yadda. If the big corporates want lead banned, they'll get it and a few scientists will make a good living along the way. Let's all hope common sense prevails...

Yep, lose of habitat is the biggest problem and it isn't stopping in any foreseeable future. Notice just recently they tore down a corn field to put up a shopping mall with stores so small vendors can't possibly compete and therfore survive. I give it 5 maybe at best 10 years.
In ten years the property will be for sale or lease and the commercial mortgage will be in default. To make up for it they''ll tear down another cornfield and build another mall to pay off the money they lost in their previous venture and it will go on and on and on.
And all the while they'll be sitting in their offices in their leather overstuffed chairs crying over all that lead poisoning all those helpless animals.

I googled this up and here is the abstract:

Abstract An initial survey of lead levels in American woodcock (Scolopax minor) from Wisconsin was conducted in 1998 using wing bones from hunter-donated woodcock. The results of this initial survey indicated that young-of-year woodcock were accumulating extremely high levels of lead in their bones. Similar collections were made (using steel shot) between 1999 and 2001. The combined results of this collection indicated that 43.4% of young-of-year woodcock (range 1.5–220.0 μg/g dry wt) and 70% of woodcock chicks (range 9.6–93.0 μg/g dry wt) had bone lead levels in the elevated range (>20 μg/g dry wt). Blood samples were collected from chicks at a site considered elevated based on bone lead results (Mead Wildlife Area) and a site considered background (Navarino Wildlife Area). These samples were analyzed for lead concentration and aminolevulinic acid dehydratase activity. The mean blood lead concentrations of woodcock chicks from both sites did not reach levels that are considered elevated in waterfowl (>0.200 μg/ml). However, blood lead concentrations of chicks from the Mead Wildlife Area were significantly higher than lead levels in chicks from Navarino Wildlife Area (p = 0.002). Although the ultimate sources of lead exposure for Wisconsin woodcock currently remain unidentified, anthropogenic sources cannot be ruled out. Our results indicate that elevated lead exposure in Wisconsin woodcock is common and begins shortly after hatch.

I know of a study showing that urban pigeons had higher blood levels of lead than rural pigeons. Now how do we know what caused the elevated blood levels of any bird?

Flushing birds taken around a dove shooting hole have a much higher chance of ingesting lead than ones taken out in the prairie. If there is some loss of grouse, bobwhite, huns and pheasant to ingested lead shot what about to raptors, snakes, skunks, coyotes, bobcats, hunters, etc...

My bobwhite hunting grounds have been used for at least fifty years for this purpose. Same thing for dove hunting, primarily around a windmill and around a pond. I don't hesitate to eat my bobwhites, no matter where they come from on the lease
Even if lead shot injestion caused one percent of the eventually 100% of bird deaths so what?

The last time this subject came up on the board I went through several of the studies Grouse Guy posted and that were available on the internet. I found two where the bodies of dead wild birds were tested. The rest were rehashes of the earlier field
tests of where captive birds were fed lead shot and then analyzed.


Mike

Mike, good stuff. It was two or three years ago, wasn't it, that South Dakota had the "best pheasant season ever" . Since lead shot has been used there "forever", it seems impossible to believe what Ben Deeble wants others to believe.

He doesn't want to inform you or care if you believe anything he posts, he just want to feel like a self-important controversial bigshot.
The more attention he gets, the more it feeds his ego and proves to himself what a bigshot he really is.

Ignor him (as with all internet trolls) and he will go away. Ignor his endless lists of so called data; he hasn't read it, why should you?

Put your time, research and thought into testimony for Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks. Even if you simply say that you are opposed to manditory lead shot for upland bird hunting, as a state resident or non-resident it will surely help the cause. That's what I'm going to do.
Thanks,
Steve

Thank you Daryl.

Steven I find it interesting how tenuous and nebulous the connection between the data and the conclusions are.

Here is another abstract from Grouse Guy's list:
Scheuhammer, A.M., Bond, D.E., Burgess, N.M., Rodrigue, J., 2003.
Lead and stable isotope ratios in soil, earthworms and bones

A study to discriminate among different possible sources of elevated Pb exposure for American woodcock (Scolopax minor) in eastern Canada is described. Undamaged wing bones excised from young-of-the-year woodcock collected from several locations in southern Ontario, southern Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, Canada, along with soil and earthworm (Aporrectodea tuberculata and Lumbricus rubellus) samples from the same sites, were analyzed for total Pb, and stable Pb isotopes. Ignoring six soil samples with high (> 60 microg/g) Pb concentration from the vicinity of Montreal (QC, Canada), the mean soil-Pb concentration for all sites combined was 19 microg/g (dry wt; n = 64), with a mean 206Pb:207Pb ratio of 1.19, values typical for uncontaminated rural soils in eastern North America. In earthworms, Pb concentrations ranged from 2.4 to 865 (microg/g [dry wt], mean = 24 microg/g). Concentrations of Pb in worms and soils were positively correlated (r = 0.71; p < 0.01), and 206Pb:207Pb ratios for worms and soils were also positively correlated (r = 0.54; p < 0.05). However, most young-of-the-year woodcock with high bone-Pb accumulation (> 20 microg/g) had 206Pb:207Pb ratios substantially different from worms and soils sampled from the same areas, even though woodcock feed extensively on soil invertebrates, especially earthworms. The range of 206Pb:207Pb ratios in wing bones of woodcock with elevated Pb exposure was not consistent with exposure to environmental Pb from past gasoline combustion nor Precambrian mining wastes but was consistent with ingestion of spent Pb shotgun pellets.


What they did for this study:

They measured lead concentrations in earthworms and soil in different areas.

They measured lead concentrations in Woodcock chicks.

They found some chicks with a lead concentration relative higher than the soil and eathworms in that area would indicate they ought to be compared to other chicks in other areas.

They concluded that the difference had to be from lead shot ingestion.

I have sure seen a variety of critters in the craws of the birds I have taken over the years. Don't usually see grasshoppers in the January birds' craws but I frequently find them in November. What if I tested my birds' lead concentrations in June rather than January. Would there be a difference. What about plants? Would one area have identical plants and if they did would the seeds mature at the same time? If they did were the seeds mature at the time of the data collection?

Psssh

Best,

Mike

Ben, you keep tapdancing around my question, which is a fairly simple one: WHAT KILLED THOSE CHUKAR THAT WERE FOUND TO HAVE LEAD IN THEIR GIZZARDS? If you tell me that they were simply found dead and that the lead in their gizzards was determined to be the cause of their deaths, you're going to both surprise and impress me. However, I'm guessing that--like the Iowa pheasants that were shot and found to carry bird flu antibodies (which means the bird flu didn't kill them, and examination indicated they were in a healthy, unweakened state), those chukar were probably shot also. Did examination show them to be emaciated or otherwise weakened due to the presence of lead in their gizzards? Or were they healthy? In order to prove that ingestion of lead pellets at a very low level kills birds, you have to come up with birds that have actually DIED from something like a single lead pellet in their gizzards--not from some other cause.

As for any reports about eagles CURRENTLY endangered due to lead shot, the following appeared in the Des Moines Register about a year ago, with the Iowa eagle statistics provided by the DNR:

"In the 1960's, largely because of the pesticide DDT, there were only about 500 pairs of bald eagles in the entire United States. Iowa's eagle population began rebounding in 1977 with a single nesting pair. By 1984, there were still only two."

"Currently, the state has 167 documented pairs of nesting eagles (estimates are closer to 200), said Pat Schlarbaum, a wildlife technician with the DNR."

"The most recent midwinter survey, he said, counted about 3,000 bald eagles in Iowa, including a cluster in downtown Des Moines."

I'd add that the same article includes comments from wildlife rehabilitators that they're seeing "a growing number of eagles brought to them with lead poisoning they think is being caused by eagles consuming the carcasses of dead deer that have crossed the paths of hunters."

One commented that "We have X-rays of lead shrapnel in eagle bellies and we've X-rayed deer carcasses that have the same sort of fragments."

Leaving the "shrapnel" comment aside . . . well, yeah. When you have a hundred times more nesting pairs of eagles than we had 25 years ago, and when we have more eagles in Iowa in the winter than there were in the ENTIRE COUNTRY in the 1960's (and winter happens to coincide with gun deer season in Iowa), no surprise that more will show up sick or injured, for whatever reason. But how worried about eagles should we be, when their population has increased to that extent? It's not like the ones dying from lead poisoning are threatening the eagle population--which seems to continue to grow. Looks like the elimination of DDT, and perhaps going nontox for waterfowl, has solved whatever problem the eagles were facing in the not too distant past. The eagle recovery, in spite of lead bullets and lead shot in the uplands, is nothing short of miraculous.

The way wildlife science works is this: You only worry about individual animals if the population is threatened or endangered. If it's not, and especially if the population is in fact increasing, then you no longer focus on individual fatalities. What's key is the welfare of the SPECIES, not of the INDIVIDUAL. Otherwise, we're treating all eagles like pets. And if we expand that to species we hunt . . . well then, I guess we shouldn't hunt them, because we kill some of them and take them home with us, and others end up running or flying off crippled and dying later. But as long as hunting is not harming the overall status of the species as a whole, we don't worry about it. Why treat eagles (or any other species) differently? That would run counter to the very core of wildlife science, which focuses on the welfare of the species rather than of the individual animal.

WHOA!!! Now you fellers can argue long as you want to about the effects of lead in this or that bird. But don't start talking about how it's killing eagles. Three years ago AmarilloMike and I shot dove in Argentina near Cordoba. Every time the shooting began large numbers of eagles would show up to feed on the shot riven dove. Every one of the eagles would gulp down half dozen or so at each shoot. Golly, they were pros--stripping the feathers and tearing away at the goodies in just a handful of seconds. Then they'd hop back onto a nearby branch and critique the shooting. In a few minutes they'd select a new dinner and have at it. Folks, these birds were eating a large amount of lead daily, 365 days a year and were as healthy as any bird I've ever seen. And most of them were adults. One adult had a favorite limb only a couple yards from me and insult me with derisive side glances every time I'd miss or if the dove fell in brush too thick for him to retrieve. Does he look like he's suffering from lead poisioning? Common....I'm sick to death with all this fake, cooked up "science". Every day I'm confronted with alarms about how such and such is killing us or destroying our environment only to find out later that new research showed the scare to be incorrect. Thanks to the internet every nut on earth has his soapbox and is shouting at the top of his lungs.

Joe, I've seen the Eagles in South America feeding on the doves I've shot too. They seemed perfectly healthy to me, but I went home and they stayed and presumably ate somebody else's doves the next week and on and on till they died, maybe of lead poisoning.

I'm as confused as anybody by 'cooked up science' whether about lead poisoning or global warming. But I do believe that it is established 'good science' that lead poisoning was killing waterfowl, so I have put up with steel shot and expensive substitutes in my old doubles. I don't find it any great leap of faith to believe that other bird including Eagles, upland game birds and songbirds are similarly affected by lead poisoning.

In my mind it remains to be shown whether low level lead deposits from upland hunting are actually being ingested by wildlife in sufficient amounts to be of harm, but if so, I would feel the same way about having to use lead substitutes in upland hunting as I do about waterfowl; I'd regret having to give it up,but I would do it for the good of the environment...Geo

If Grouse Guy is either a hunter or a shooter, I'm an Obama supporter. This jerk keeps creeping out of the woodwork to advance his agenda. He always gets beaten down here and stays quiet for a while, but he's like one of those battered women who keep going back to their abusive spouse. You can tell by his writing and responses that he clearly lacks the intelligence to digest and understand a journal article or scientific research paper. He just gives us a bibliography from a Google search. Mostly though, he just plain lacks any common sense. Several posts here and in the recent past lament lower numbers of pheasants, grouse, and other game birds in recent years. Here in my own state of Pennsylvania, pheasants are practically an endangered species, and grouse are quite scarce when they should be on their cyclical upswing. Yet lead contamination in the environment now is a small fraction of what it was forty years ago when game bird populations were much higher. The greatest source of lead pollution at any time in history was during this time from gasoline with tetraethyl lead. Burning it produced lead fumes and dust at an almost atomic microscopic level that was deposited on the land, water, and in the air. The amount was many many time higher than the amount of lead used by shooters. Of course, there was also much more lead pollution from industrial sources and paint. Our (and wildlife's) exposure was much greater then than what we have now with the small amount of much larger pieces of lead that hunters and shooters leave behind. So perhaps one could conclude that it is a lack of lead pollution that has given many of us lower game bird populations. If lead is a problem now, one would think that most life on earth would have become extinct then. Habitat loss is not nearly the problem in Penna. that it is in other states. This theory is certainly more sensible than a study that concludes that it is better to cripple and lose ten times as many birds with costly steel or non-tox, than would be lost due to a small number who might ingest some lead pellets. But none of this is about sensibility or factual science. It is a small, but pervasive cadre of liars who use selective "science" to advance their real agenda. The lead ban crowd is really anti-gun and anti-hunting. They are not unlike the global warming crowd who expect us to destroy our standard of living in order to redistribute wealth. Grouse Guy is not one of us. Don't fall for his crap. If he's willing to do some experiments on ingesting lead himself, I'll supply the shot.

"Don't fall for his crap. If he's willing to do some experiments on ingesting lead himself, I'll supply the shot."

Were you thinking low pressure, low velocity, light loads or heavy high pressure, max. velocity loads for a full test?

Global warming is one of the best scams of all time. They will be studying that one decades with a never ending series of conclusions based on very little facts, even less understanding of those facts and a every increasing, shrill call for action.

Warmest time in 500 years. Bull----. How many SUV's, how many people were alive 500 years ago. Total world population was maybe 150-200 million total. How could so few people, without major carbon use, cause the same effect then that six billion "carbon users" today cause. Never happened. It is arragont of man to think that his actions alone are responsible for the state of his world. Ocean temperature increases because of increased under water volcanoes, sun spot increases and an entire assortment of natural events are more likely to blame for any changes. Always remember these same "experts" were screaming, just 30 years ago, that we were about to enter another cold period that may become another ice age. Global cooling became global warming and the funding goes on. Scam and soft science at its worst.

Hello Larry B:

To answer your question about the research paper on wild chukar ingestion of shot in Oregon, I'd recommend you contact at least one of the authors of the paper, Kerry Reese at Univ. of Idaho at Moscow. He is a smart guy, an avid upland bird hunter, a respected biologist, and I'm sure would be pleased to answer your questions.

Here is another related study:

Lead pellet ingestion and liver-lead concentrations in upland game birds from southern Ontario, Canada.
Kreager N, Wainman BC, Jayasinghe RK, Tsuji LJ.

Department of Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

One-hundred twenty-three gizzards from upland game birds (chukar, Alectoris chukar; and common pheasant, Phasianus colchicus) harvested by hunters in southern Ontario, Canada, were examined for lead pellet ingestion by manual examination of gizzard contents and by radiography. Lead pellets were found to be ingested by chukars (6/76; 8%) and the common pheasant (16/47; 34%). Further, 13% (17/129) of the bird (wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo; Hungarian partridge, Perdix perdix; chukar; and common pheasant) livers analyzed had elevated lead concentrations (> or =6 microg/g wet weight [ww]). Liver-lead concentrations above Health Canada's guideline for human consumption of fish protein (<0.5 microg/g ww) were found in 40% (51/129) of livers analyzed. Data indicate that the ingestion of lead pellets in upland game birds and the potential consumption of lead-contaminated meat by humans are concerns related to the continued use of lead shotshell for hunting.

Could it be? The claim of lead killing upland birds seemed ludicrous to me. I reported on science for years. Birds picking up lead in wide-open spaces of prairies and deserts, c'mon. Last week my nephew asked about lead in salt-water harbours where we do a lot of gunning. I replied that generations of shooting from the blind on Rum Point alone must have left a ton of lead. Could the same apply where dry-land gunning is concentrated, where habitat favours pheasant, grouse, quail etc?

Ok, I chased down the study Grouse Guy names in his last post:

Lead pellet ingestion and liver-lead concentrations in upland game birds from southern Ontario, Canada.
Kreager N, Wainman BC, Jayasinghe RK, Tsuji LJ.

Department of Environment and Resource Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

1. The study was done on pen raised birds on a game farm. It has been a game farm since the 1930s. The birds were released the day of the hunt.

2. The island also had shotgun target shooting on it. The birds were not fenced off from the range.

3. No analysis was done on the pen raised birds before they were released. That is there was no control group. The birds could have arrived on the island with high levels of lead in their liver.

4. The analysis focused on bird livers because some Europeans and some indigenoos people consider them a delicacy.

5. The study author's target was public shooting ranges.

6. The authors acknowled that the lead levels in the livers could be from shot fragmentation but go on to discount it.

The following paragraphs I copied out of the study. I thought they were intresting. I added the italic and underline.

This is the abstract:
One-hundred twenty-three gizzards from upland game birds (chukar, Alectoris chukar; and common pheasant, Phasianus colchicus) harvested by hunters in southern Ontario, Canada, were examined for lead pellet ingestion by manual examination of gizzard contents and by radiography. Lead pellets were found to be ingested by chukars (6/76; 8%) and the common pheasant (16/47; 34%). Further, 13% (17/129) of the bird (wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo; Hungarian partridge, Perdix perdix; chukar; and common pheasant) livers analyzed had elevated lead concentrations (≥6 μg/g wet weight [ww]). Liver-lead concentrations above Health Canada’s guideline for human consumption of fish protein (<0.5 μg/g ww) were found in 40% (51/129) of livers analyzed. Data indicate that the ingestion of lead pellets in upland game birds and the potential consumption of lead-contaminated meat by humans are concerns related to the continued use of lead shotshell for hunting.

I copied the following out of the full report.

In this study, we examine lead pellet ingestion rates for upland game birds (chukar, Alectoris chukar; and common pheasant, Phasianus colchicus) harvested from a heavily hunted area in southern Ontario, Canada, to evaluate bird health. In addition, the potential for lead contamination of upland game bird livers via the embedding of lead pellets/fragments will also be examined through radiography and electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (EAAS), as offal is consumed by Native Canadians (Tsuji and Nieboer 1999) and some Europeans (Guitart et al. 2002) as a delicacy.

Gizzards (n = 123) from chukars and common pheasants, and livers (n = 129) from four species of upland game birds (wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo; Hungarian partridge, Perdix perdix; chukar; and common pheasant), were collected whole from upland habitat located on a private island (approximately 1950 acres) in southern Ontario, Canada. The island was characterized by mixed woodland with monospecific stands of grass (Gramineae), while some fields also contained wheat (Agropyron spp.), burdock (Arctium spp.), and thistle (Sonchus spp.) (Holdner et al. 2004). Different areas of the island experienced different hunting pressure: shooting stations were used primarily for clay target shooting; fields were generally heavily hunted over, with some fields being tilled annually, while others were never tilled; and the fly pen enclosure area housed the upland game birds prior to release (Holdner et al. 2004). Farm-raised birds were released the day of the hunt, though whatever birds that survived earlier hunts were still in the fields. There is not a large overwinter population of birds. The study area has been heavily hunted with respect to indigenous wild turkeys and imported farm-raised chukars, Hungarian partridges and common pheasants for released bird hunting, since the 1930s.
Sample collection was conducted in the fall of 2000. Gizzard and liver samples were not always matched; that is, gizzard and liver were not always collected for each bird. Only lead shotshell has been used to hunt the upland game birds at this location and hunters are restricted to the use of lead shotshells provided by the hunting club. Lead pellet density ranged from 14 pellets per 0.25 m2 in the hunting fields to 2051 pellets per 0.25 m2 in clay target shooting areas (Holdner et al. 2004). Bird movement was not restricted by any physical barriers between target shooting and hunting areas; however, birds were collected from the hunting fields. Although the present study site was atypical in that it was a private shooting range/hunting club, there are at least 211 active public shooting ranges in Ontario where spent lead pellets are contributing to high lead loadings (tons/year) in the environment (Darling and Thomas 2003). Thus, the pellet densities found on the island (Holdner et al. 2004) are not atypical for outdoor shooting ranges in Ontario. The majority of these active shooting ranges are located in southern and central Ontario where luvisolic soils predominates (Darling and Thomas 2003). Since there is no provincial requirement with respect to site remediation of lead pellets at active public shooting ranges, as well as defunct public shooting ranges and private shooting ranges (Darling and Thomas 2003), lead pellets remain in the environment and a potential threat to upland game birds in Ontario.

However, liver-lead levels must be interpreted with caution because even though there is not radiographic evidence of lead fragment contamination, lead fragments could be so fine (Frank 1986) as not to show up on a radiograph or appear as an artifact.

The nontoxic shot regulations do not apply to upland game species such as the American woodcock, which has shown no decrease in mean bone-lead concentrations since the regulations came into effect (Stevenson et al. 2005). Moreover, Scheuhammer et al. (2003) have shown, using stable lead isotopes ratios, that the elevated lead levels in American woodcock were consistent with lead shot ingestion.

That was the last of what I copied from the report.

If the woodcock lead levels have not gone down with the waterfowl lead ban why does it mean that lead shot from upland hunters have replaced the source? I got the isotope argument but the lead is not gone from the waterways and woodcock have different habits than snow geese.

What about studies showing higher concentrations of lead in urban pigeons than in rural pigeons.

Did they measure the blood levels of any of the people eating the bird livers for high concentrations of lead.

Grouse Guy and his ilk pay lip service to public ranges and the acceptability of lead shot there but their ultimate goal is the elimiantion of lead shot period.

Like others here I wonder if he has read these reports or gets his stuff from a National Wildlife Federation "Talking Points" email every morning.

What about the loss of birds from the loss of habitat? Monsanto Roundup farming has drastically reduced the quantity and quality of cover and wild bird feed on the farms around here. Where is lead poisoning in the leading causes of human death in the US?

Again, what about urban pigeons having a higher lead content than rural pigeons? Where are they ingesting lead shot.

What about the study showing urban humans having a higher lead content in their blood the rural humans?

This isn't the dawn of man. There are six billion of us and we have changed the enviroment.

Best,

Mike

Edit: I keep editing out grammer and spelling mistakes.

I copied a post I made several months ago in reference to a study about urban and rural pigeon blood levels:

ABSTRACT
Necropsy of a 7-yr-resident peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinis) from Baltimore showed a Pseudomonas infection involving the pharynx as the immediate cause of death. Concentrations of lead in liver and kidney measured 0.74 and 1.40 ppm, respectively. A survey of lead exposure was performed on 40 urban rock doves (Columbia livia). Thirteen additional rock doves were collected from sites removed from lead contamination and served as controls. The mean concentration of lead in the blood of the urban rock doves was 0.96 ppm (range 0.29-17.0 ppm) compared to 0.05 ppm (0.01-0.07 ppm) for control birds. Ninety-eight percent (39/40) of the urban rock doves had elevated concentrations of lead in their blood, while 27% (11/40) had sublethal concentrations. None of the control birds had increased concentrations of lead in their blood. Concentrations of lead in liver and kidney of 13 urban rock doves were 3.48 ppm and 9.53 ppm, respectively, compared to concentrations of 0.43 ppm and 0.50 ppm for four control rock doves. From these data a mean total concentration of lead per rock dove was calculated at 4.60 ppm for urban birds and 0.33 ppm for control birds.

http://www.jwildlifedis.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/2/238

If I read it correctly the urban dove had many multiples more lead concentration in their bodies than the rural doves. It would seem to me that Grouse Guy's efforts would have more effect on Peregrine conservation if he talked to the urban gangs about switching from lead bullets to steel or copper. Is there an urban gang BBS?

Mike, thank you. Just as we thought, uncontrolled studies made by someone paid to make them and someone probably with an agenda. I know many of the WMAs in Montana and have hunted in and around quite a few. They are just a speck in the landscape of Montana, but they would be a "First Step" in much larger changes affecting us all, without a spec of proper science. I think you are dead on when you note Grouse Guy [Ben Deeble] bragging that he just deposited 4 pounds of lead shot at his shooting range "where it should be". Best I can tell his range, and other ranges, would soon be targets of the "professionals" like Ben. Don't think for a minute there is not a much larger agenda for a "small few". They need to be stopped and the funding they so dearly seek, needs to be directed more properly. The NRA fights this type of nibbling at your rights all of the time. The nibbles add up eventually.

I also see the question you raised about the effect of the Monsanto Roundup Ready program and the loss of proper habitat. I have no proof on that, but just observations over the last dozen years. It does make me wonder.

So let me review what the study says:
They raised upland birds in a farm and then released them on an island where heavy hunting and clay shooting had been going on with lots of lead on the ground. Then they shot some birds and a small to fair number had lead pellets in their gizzards. What is the surprize here?
How does this situation apply to general upland hunting?
Most of Montana is not an area heavily polluted with lead.
No news, no correlation!

all of the science ben states is funded, you have to look at the "results of the science" and then see where the money came from for the study, this has way more to do with the results than good science.they compare apples and oranges(as sliver stated).so call the montana dnr and oppose this lead ban until there is unbiased science(you have to follow the money) MC

Mike, I haven't a dog in this hunt---just a lot of curiosity.

"Again, what about urban pigeons having a higher lead content than rural pigeons? Where are they ingesting lead shot."

Wouldn't urban pigeons be exposed to more lead from exhaust emissions?

Woops--My comments start with "Couple questions". Sorry about that.

I don't know.

I do know in cities there are:

Smelters, both abandoned and operating (ASARCO closed a smelter 1-1/2 miles north of my house about four decades ago.

Lead battery factories, both abandoned and operating

Gangs shooting lead bullets.

Water towers with lead paint on them. A few years ago they stripped the lead paint off of a water tower 1/4 mile from my house. A windstorm came, blew away the tarps, and little chips of blue paint could be found swirling in the wind in the parking lot at my office.

I am pretty sure there is lead based paint on the outside of my house, built in 1923.

I am pretty sure there is lead based paint on the inside of my house.

I grew up in a plumbing company and we used to make lead joints in cast iron drainage, waste, and vent pipes.

We also made lead drum trap fittings and wiped lead for the plumbing under the kitchen sink upon occasion.

We used to use a lead flashing where the sewer vent piping penetrated the roof.

A lead shower pan in the bottom of the shower and below the tile used to be universal.

Until a few years ago all copper water piping was soldered with lead solder. It is almost a sure thing that the copper water piping in my house is soldered with lead solder.

Until a few years ago the kitchen sink faucets in my house had lead in the metal used to make them. They wore out and the new ones are required by law to have no lead.

So you tell me where the lead in those urban pigeons came from?

Add mining and lead shot to this list and you can pretty much use the same list to determine where lead in grouse livers is coming from.

And if you eliminate one of the urban sources of lead will the the lead levels go down in urban pigeons?

And though lead in gas is now outlawed (except aviation gas) certainly there is residual lead everywhere automobiles went.

Best,

Mike

Mike,

It sounds like we should test your gizzard and liver, too. Maybe I can get a grant for this?

NOW it all adds up, ole huntin' buddy! Why, after all that lead you're still a perfectly normal person. Here's picture proof that lead is harmless.

AmarilloMike dove hunting:

I've got over 14,000 PIC flight hours, remove the 8,000 or so turbo-jet & turbine hours and that leaves me with about 6,000 hours of pumping lead into the atmosphere with 100 LL & 100/130 octane fuel and some 115/145 in the old days......wonder how many birds-critters and enviornmentalists I've poisened over the years...?

6000 hours times 12 gallons per hour times 2 grams of TEL equals 144,000 grams of TEL equals 323 pounds of lead equals 2,059,223 pellets of #8 shot scattered all over. I hope you didn't fly over any duck ponds.

Mike

Hey Amarillo:

Great quip on gang bangers needing a website. Really!

I'm completely speculating here, but probably the most likely source of high lead in urban pigeons compared to their rural bretherin is all the lead-based paint on peeling window sills, nesting and roosting sites (bridges, etc.), and perhaps to some extent from abandoned industrial sites.

All, as another somewhat tongue-in-cheek suggestion to the ongoing deniers, each of you has a chance to be a citizen scientist at home! Just take a loft of pigeons, Johnny house of Bobwhite, maybe a coop of chickens or pheasants, perhaps even your granddaughter's parakeet, cockatiel, or wife's parrot or macaw (caution- this can get expensive real quick), and just add lead shot.

Put a couple ounces in their grit tray or cup, maybe a square load of #8 from our favorite gauge the 16, a spreader load of #6, and a high brass load of #5... I'm talking a real smorgasbord here. Then just sit back and enjoy! Take careful notes... depending on the bird or situation you may have mortalities within hours or days. If breeding, you may see the chicks die, especially squab getting pumped full of pellets by the adults. Hens may stop laying. Some adults may grow listless, and even be cannibalized by their pen mates! There is just no end to the entertainment and learning opportunities for the whole family! Report back and tell us what you discover!

Seriously, I appreciate some of the discussion that is now occurring here. Nice to see people actually examining some of the record, picking it apart where they can, and saying "hmmm" where they can't. Much more valuable and instructive than just lobbing bombs at me. Maybe not nearly as much fun for you, but whatever...

Here is some more science:
Artmann, J.W., Martin, E.M., 1975. Incidence of ingested lead shot in Sora rails. J. Wildlife Manage. 39, 514–519.
Baksi, S.N., Kenny, A.D., 1978. Effect of lead ingestion on Vitamin D3 metabolism in Japanese quail. Res. Commun. Chem. Path.
Pharmacol. 21, 375–378.
Beintema, N.H., 2001. Lead poisoning in waterbirds. International
Update Report 2000. Wetlands International, Wageningen.
Best, T.L., Garrison, T.E., Schmitt, C.G., 1992. Availability and
ingestion of lead shot by mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) in
southeastern New Mexico. Southwestern Naturalist 37, 287–
292.

Some duck ponds I'm sure...and lot's of lakes and cities....the DC-6 and DC-7 burned 450 gallons an hour + (X-2500 hrs in these a/c) and at METO another 50++ per engine....so, lot's of #8 shot all over the place.....

Grouse Guy, why didn't you say to put lead shot in a one acre lot confine the birds in a flight pen.adjust the lead or the amount of birds and look at the results. it would be more accurate then putting lead in tweetys feed bowl. you also use the word MAY in all your descriptions of what WILL happen.a lot of studies use excessive amount in there analysis i.e. if you eat one ton of alfalfa a day your hair will grow back. m.c.

My wife feeds the birds. I have dozens of White Wing, Mourning, and Eur-Asian doves in my yard every day. Do you think any of that urban lead is getting into them? Could that be a major source of lead in dove?

Ben I could get the same effect only quicker by going out to my lease, trapping some quail, tying a string to one each of their legs, and tying them out to some bushes. The hawks would have them within a half hour. I have located covies this season by watching hawks work an area.

How about the bobcat I killed last year. I found a covey that had been busted up for some reason and then I found the bobcat in the epicenter of the singles.

Instead of making us switch shot couldn't we all pledge to shoot one quail harming varmint per season, wouldn't that be more effective in protecting grouse and flushing birds?

The effect of lead shot on grouse in the Montana wildlife areas is so small it is unmeasurable, it is negligible, it is miniscule, it is 1 divided by infinity.

Any of the following has 1000 times more effect on the Montana WMA birds than lead:

Weather
hawks
predators
nest raiders
hunters
parasites
microbial disease

Best,

Mike

Mike:

A lot of the points you make I can tell we could have a fascinating and largely agreeable conversation lasting late into the night. Save one... you think hunters affect upland birds? Even I won't bite off that one! You and probably your progeny will be getting nasty-grams into the 22nd century!

MC:

Good research idea. Just don't get a grant to fund it... Rob and Daryl will accuse you of bias!

Well said Mike, but again, these proposals to ban lead ammo aren't about lead poisoning. Like many others here, I can well afford to shoot a few boxes of bismuth for my hunting. But if and when we permit the liars like Grouse Guy to have their way, and lead ammo is banned (please go back and read the post from Belgium), it will quickly become ALL ammo. Simple supply and demand will dictate that the shells that are $3.00 a shot now will skyrocket to many times that amount. Shortages will be inevitable, even at the higher cost. And it won't just affect the relatively few rounds you use to hunt. They will use their junk science and hysteria to push for an overall ban that will include everything from .500 NE to the lowly .22 RF and even air rifle pellets. Imagine .22 LR at about $1.00 per round. How many average people will be able to afford to shoot? When our numbers fall, so will our strength and ability to preserve the Second Amendment. Oh, those skeet and trap ranges... they will be closed down and designated as toxic waste sites. Superfund cleanup areas. And where will we get the billions of dollars for the Hazmat clean-up? Why, we'll just have to put onerous taxes on guns and lead free ammo. So shooting will become even more unaffordable. Take a good hard look at the end game of Grouse Guy and his kind. Don't let them bullshit you. You all know the shooting sports are a very minor source of lead in our environment and that lead poisoning is rather low on the list of things that endanger humans or wildlife. They want our guns and will patiently attempt every kind of attrition possible. Again, Grouse Guy is not our friend. He is not one of us. He is the enemy and should be regarded as such.

So, if lead shot on the ground affects doves adversely, that would really be good news for the farmers around Cordoba, Argentina, where they are a virtual plague to the crops.

Luis Sier took me into his privately owned 1600 acre roost early one morning for a look-see. Amazing. He has a biologist come in once a year for several days to try and determine the overall health of the population by checking for disease, changes in the rates of death by other means and to estimate the total population, whether it is increasing or decreasing and by how much. He told me in 2003 that the population in that one roost was increasing by roughly one million per year. The total number at that time was around 25 million, in that roost alone. In 2008 that number was still increasing.

With the hundreds of thousands of rounds fired in the fields surrounding that roost each year it's a "wonder" he has any doves left, what with them eating all that lead every day.

Stan,

Your friend's biologist did not read all those studies?

He may have read them, but thankfully, the doves haven't!

I don't have an opinion on any harmful effects on wildlife but I can tell you we had a couple of police officers become very ill when they used the police range when the ventilation system wasn't working properly and their level of lead went through the roof. They had to undergo painful treatments to remove the lead from their systems.I realize that wildlife would not be exposed to such high amounts from shooting.,but lead is something you do not want to get into your system.

A couple OUNCES, Ben . . . darn, if you're talking a small bird, like a woodcock or a quail, now you're feeding the poor critter maybe 30% or so of its weight in lead. If nothing else, he'd sure have a tough time flying with all that lead in his a$$.
But that's a whole lot of lead, even for a larger bird like a pheasant.

Mortalities within hours or days . . . if mortalities occur within hours or days, then how come perfectly HEALTHY birds that have been SHOT are found with lead in their gizzards? That's recent ingestion, and it's the lead with which they've been SHOT that killed them, not what's in their gizzards.

You really need to apply the "logic test" to some of the "science" you cite, Ben. And even more, some of the conclusions you reach based on that science. And you still haven't told us where those southern Ontario chukar came from. Can you cite something pointing to a wild, huntable population of chukar in southern Ontario? To my knowledge, that'd be maybe 1,000 miles or so from the nearest huntable native chukar population in North America. So . . . are we talking game farm birds here, or what? Certainly different than wild, in terms of concentrated shot fall on a hunting preserve. But even on a preserve, something stinks to high heaven here--because typically, preserve birds aren't out and about for all that long before they're shot. Maybe it's the evil bird food people, mixing lead with what the people who run the preserves are tossing into the flight pens. In summary, you need to explain: 1) How wild chukars got to southern Ontario; or, alternatively 2) How even preserve birds would accumulate very much lead in their gizzards if, as is typical on preserves, they're shot on the same day they're released from their pens.

If you're taking an honest and objective look at the information you're presenting, Ben, you'd ask yourself those questions--and you'd have answers ready before you post the references. Otherwise, you're just throwing random crap up against the wall and waiting to see what sticks. And as research, that approach seriously sucks.

Chuck in California with his light guns for quail in those rocky canyons and those pictures of pheasant hunters in the Dakotas as properly spaced as good infantry in cornfields made me wonder about concentrations of lead along firing lines. I think of taking grandchildren to grouse haunts that I call Blood Alley. All of us hunt where we know there are birds. But chukars in Ontario, no.

Just read that the Blackhawk county Iowa conservation people had an eagle die of lead poisoning. Bird tested several times the toxic dose.They went on to say that of the 130 eagles that they have tested 60 had died of lead poisoning. They say they get it from scavenging deer carcasses and from fish with lead in their systems. I do know that lead is not excreted from your body once it is in.I can't imagine that gallinaceous game birds could get enough in their systems though.

I see this thread is still going, just like last time, with lots of science being tossed about. It is interesting and I think Deeble is ahead on points. I hope that all of you contributors are remembering to send your comments, pro or con, to the State of Montana folks. I will attest to the hard fact that lead kills birds...3 Roosters and 1 chicken today..Tommorrow afternoon I will be performing more scientific testing on the toxcidity (did I spell that right Ben?) of steel shot on Geese...

Hello Larry and others:

A couple ounces is a lot of lead. But I still dare you to put even just five pellets into your parakeet's grit dish....

I don't have an explanation for lead shot being found in the gizzards of those wild chukar in Oregon, except that they ate it and were still alive long enough to get shot. It might not be as simple as bird eats shot, bird dies instantly. I'll allow that depending on the conditions it might take a while. If it happens to be a bird that is on soft foods that time of year, like chukar can be when they have grass greens available, maybe they don't experience toxic effects as quickly. But when they are on a cured seed diet like most summers in chukar habitat, they may succumb more quickly. By the same token, I would never expect sage-grouse to die from eating shot... they flat don't eat grit at all because they only eat soft foods and don't have a muscular gizzard. Maybe eagles have so much trouble because of stronger stomach acids to digest meat. It would kinda make sense, wouldn't it? Have you called Dr. Kerry Reese in Idaho like I suggested earlier? Be up front, tell him you are a skeptic, push some of your ideas at him, and see what he has to say.

I think Amarillo gave a great summary of the Ontario chukar and pheasants at post #173891. I never said they were wild birds; even I know that wild chukar don't exist in Canada.

Here are some more studies:

"Large die-offs or consistent mortality, such as that of swans in northwestern Washington, prompt concern that lead poisoning could negatively impact populations. In 2000-01, over 300 trumpeter swans died in Whatcom County, WA from ingestion of lead shot (WDFW, unpublished report to the Commission, 2001). The 2001 population of trumpeter swans in this area was 916, and it is likely that lead poisoning is affecting the population in this area."

Here is a case where population level impacts have been documented from lead alone. Larry, you suggest that documented population level impacts are the ones we should care about as wildlife managers. Would you recommend we keep shooting lead in a place like coastal WA? Would you recommend we keep shooting lead in Montana at Freezeout Lake Wildlife Management Area (allowed there on the shoreline, cattails and adjoining wheat for pheasant, sharptails and huns) where the majority of Montana's trumpeter swans stage during migration?

Just what is WDFW, and why was their report to "the commission" unpublished? Considering the first sentence said, "Large die offs, or consistent mortality....", I would expect that this came from the DRD (Department of Redundancy Department). But Grouse Guy is suggesting we stop using lead ammo based upon a so called study from some biased group of bird lovers with no proof of what they studied, and no peer review. Apparently, these trumpeter swans are leaving shoreline and water areas where only steel or non-tox shot has been used for a generation, and they are feeding in uplands and ingesting the very sparsley scattered lead shot that was fired at pheasants or chukars. One can only marvel at the strange evolutionary process that evolved swans with a preference to expend large amounts of energy seeking out widely scattered lead far away from normal feeding areas to fill their gizzards. Of course, this report does not specifically blame lead shot as the villian which killed about 25% of the total population in this particular county. The source of the alleged lead is not mentioned at all. But even if it was from mining activities or industrial waste or remnants of tetraethyl lead from vehicles and aircraft, that does not stop the narrow minded Deeble from suggesting a ban on lead shot everywhere. Hell, those swans may have eaten the four pounds he recently claims to have deposited on a trap range. I am not suggesting that lead is not a toxin. Not now, not ever. I am saying that it is not anywhere near the problem some of these zealots claim it is, and the alternatives will have a far greater negative impact. RHD45 mentions some police officers who had to undergo "painful treatments" to get lead out of their systems after being poisoned in an unventilated indoor range. I have a friend who had to undergo chelation therapy to remove lead from his system. His high blood lead levels came from years of exposure at a battery manufacturer where he routinely blew lead dust out of electrical panels without even a respirator. He reports that his chelation therapy was not at all painful, and his lead levels are within a normal range now even though he continues to be exposed to lead, just not so much as before. RHD45 also tells of reading a study that claims Blackhawk county Iowa conservation people found 60 out of 130 dead eagles had lead poisoning. Was this in one year or the total for fifty years? With almost 50% mortality from eagles eating fish and deer carcasses, it is astounding that eagle populations are increasing! Hopefully, the other 50% of eagles aren't feasting on fast food with trans fats. Sounds "fishy" if you stop and digest the so-called facts and numbers. Oh, tonight Fox News reported that 2009 was a record year for bird strikes by aircraft, and this number has been rising for some time. There were over 12,000 incidents last year including the one that put Cap'n. Sullenbergers' jet into the Hudson river. Figures lie and liars figure. And Grouse Guy... I think his real name is PETA Guy, and he doesn't want you shooting any of his precious bird friends with anything. Banning lead is the fastest way to approach that goal. The use of lies, bullshit, and junk science is OK because the ends justify the means.

So then Ben . . . why do you cite a study involving birds that are obviously NOT wild, when you're trying to make a point--or at least I think that's the point you're trying to make--about the threat to birds in the WILD from lead shot? Like I said, tossing stuff up against the wall to see what will stick. Well, that one just slid right off the wall. And by the way, there ARE wild chukar in Canada. Just not in Ontario.

I don't think anyone here has problems with lead shot restrictions for waterfowl, or for upland birds in areas that see a lot of use by waterfowl. Iowa already does that, for example. But the MT restriction is a BLANKET restriction to ALL WMA's. How many of those WMA's consist of waterfowl habitat? And can you show studies involving WILD upland birds, shot on either public or private property (NOT on preserves, please!) in which a significant percentage of those birds have ingested lead? Any reports of finding upland birds that have died, without having been shot, in which lead can be identified as the cause of their demise?

In recent years, the Dakotas and Minnesota have recorded their highest pheasant harvests in decades. If all the lead we've been tossing around for ringnecks for the last 90 years or so were really a threat to the pheasant population, how did those states end up with so many birds? How come the population hasn't evidenced a long-term decline? Inquiring minds want to know.

Hey Keith:

Good one!

I just told my gal I've been accused of being a member of PETA, and she is laughing so hard she is choking on her toast and getting crumbs all over the zebra hide table cloth. She just cleaned up after dinner last night including scrubbing out the pot we cooked the venison meatballs in.

But like I said, this discussion ain't about me....

Ben

The eagles in Iowa I mentioned died within the last 5 years. I have no dog in this fight but I do know that lead poisoning is serious stuff. The "pain" the police officers endures was reported in the article in the paper and I am just mentioning it. I do know the range was very poorly ventilated. I certainly am not trying to get lead shot outlawed anywhere,but I am aware that many years of shooting over certain areas will lead to the build up of lead shot.I have "mined" it out of the backstops on ranges myself.

I think if you want to outlaw lead for upland hunting, go out and harvest the wild birds and study them. See if there is any impact directly to the point.
Do a study directly on the wild birds harvested during the hunting season for example. It should be easy to harvest the gizzards and the liver at the game check points.
My common sense tells me that the results will show no significant impact of lead on the health of the birds. But I can be grossly wrong. I would accept it should I see the PROOF.
But when you come up with such proposal and claim studies that don't have much relevance to the current topic I will not accept it. It is ludicrous.

RHD45, you may have missed my post with figures on the Iowa eagle population, straight from the DNR. Eagles in Iowa are no longer either threatened or endangered. It's a shame that the occasional eagle may die from eating lead, just like it's a shame that the occasional deer dies when hit by a car. But because our eagles are no longer threatened or endangered, we need to focus on what's happening to the SPECIES as a whole, not individual birds. If we start worrying about individual birds within an otherwise healthy species population . . . well then, where does that concern take us, logically, if we follow it? It takes us to the point that we'd better hang up our guns, because we're killing things with lead too--and darn it, I guess we ought to stop.

There are 100 times as many nesting pairs of eagles in Iowa as there were 25 years ago or so. Why are rehabilitators encountering the occasional eagle that's sick from having ingested lead, when we never used to hear about that? Well, we never used to hear about that because eagles in Iowa were so doggone rare! Now we have lots, and the population is growing. If the population is growing, whatever is happening to the occasional individual bird may be unfortunate, but it should only be of serious concern when it threatens the population as a whole. That's far from the case with eagles in Iowa becoming sick and/or dying from ingesting lead. Rehabilitators express their concern because, as rehabilitators, they work with individual animals. But if we all adopt that attitude, then we're in the process of standing modern wildlife management on its head.

You want to worry about something in Iowa? Worry about the decline in our pheasant numbers, which is not due to lead poisoning but rather to a combination of habitat loss and weather. Worry about the ruffed grouse we used to have in the NE corner of the state, but scarcely have any these days because most of our timber is mature and they need young regrowth. Worry about the quail we used to have in good numbers in the southern part of the state but don't any more, again due to habitat loss. Worry about species that can be shown to be in decline, and why they are declining--not about individual mortality of birds in an otherwise healthy, growing population. Even if they happen to be eagles.

EXACTLY!

L.Brown, I agree completely with you and was just reporting the news as I read it. I remember the first time I saw an eagle in Blackhawk county. It was on Dec.6 1972 and I didn't see another one for years and now if I want I can go down by the Cedar river and one will probably be along soon.I am really worried about the loss of riparian habitat in Iowa and elsewhere. The numbers of song birds have dropped drastically and we still see wood lots cut out for some strip mall that will be out of business in 10 years.
The pheasant numbers have me puzzled as I can go to good habitat and still not see even a track!The "Big Marsh" near Parkersburg used to be full of pheasant and for the last 10 years or so it is rare to see more than a few,if any.Quail used to be common in southern Iowa where my dad grew up and now they are practically gone. We definitely need to be planting more young trees and encourage weedy fencerows and brushy draws but more and more farmers are tiling the waterways and farming every available acre. Much more of an immediate problem than lead shot by and standard.

Here are some more studies:

Keel, M.K., Davidson, W.R., Doster, G.L., Lewis, L.A., 2002. Northern bobwhite and lead shot deposition in an upland habitat.
Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 43, 318–322.
Kendall, R.J., Lacher, T.E., Bunck, C., Daniel, B., Driver, C.E., Grue,
C.E., Leighton, F., Stansley, W., Watanabe, P.G., Whitworth, M.,
1996. An ecological risk assessment of lead shot exposure in
non-waterfowl avian species: upland game birds and raptors.
Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 15, 4–20.
Johnsgard, P.A., 1983. Cranes of the World. Croom Helm, London.
Jones, J.C., 1939. On the occurrence of lead shot in stomachs of
North American gruiformes. J. Wildlife Manage. 3, 353–357.
Franson, J.C., Thomas, N.J., Smith, M.R., Robbins, A.H., Newman,
S., McCartin, P.C., 1996. A retrospective study of post-mortem
findings in red-tailed hawks. J. Raptor Res. 30, 7–14.
Frenzel, R.W., Anthony, R.G., 1989. Relationship of diets and
environmental contaminants in wintering bald eagles. J.
Wildlife Manage. 53, 792–802.
Garcı´a-Ferna´ndez, A.J., Sa´nchez-Garcı´a, J.A.,
Jime´nez-Montalba´ n, P., Luna, A., 1995. Lead and cadmium
in wild birds in south-eastern Spain. Environ. Toxicol.
Chem. 14, 2049–2058.
Gill, C.E., Langelier, K.M., 1994. Acute lead poisoning in bald
eagle secondary to bullet ingestion. Can. Vet. J. 35, 303–304.
Gonza´ lez, L.M., Hiraldo, F., 1988. Organochlorine and heavy metal
contamination in the eggs of the Spanish imperial eagle
(Aquila (heliaca) adalberti) and accompanying changes in
eggshell morphology and chemistry. Environ. Pollut. 51,
241–258.
Grandjean, P., 1976. Possible effect of lead on eggshell thickness
in kestrels 1874–1974. Bull. Environ. Contam. Toxicol.
16, 101–106.
Grasman, K.A., Scanlon, P.F., 1995. Effects of acute lead ingestion
and diet on antibody and T-cell-mediated immunity in
Japanese quail. Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 28, 161–167.

This is the abstract of the Keel study, the first of the last list:

"Abstract. We estimated total lead shotshell pellets expended,
resultant pellet availability near soil surface, and the frequency
of pellet ingestion by northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus)
attributable to nearly a quarter century of bobwhite hunting on
a 202-ha upland habitat at Tall Timbers Research Station, Leon
County, Florida. A total of 7,776 shots were fired, resulting in
the expenditure of approximately 4.5 million pellets (
22,519/
ha). Sixteen of 235 (6.8%) soil samples collected in 1989 and
1992 contained one or two pellets. Soil samples indicated that
approximately 7,800 pellets/ha (about 35% of the projected
24-year deposition) were within 2.54 cm of the soil surface.
Pellet ingestion by bobwhites was evaluated by examining 241
gizzards collected from 1989–92. Three bobwhites (1.3%) had
ingested pellets (x
 1.3 pellets). No instances of suspected
lead poisoning were noted in bobwhites over the 24-year period.
Sport hunting of wild bobwhite populations on upland
habitats appears to produce a low potential for lead poisoning
compared to lead deposition in association with waterfowl and
dove hunting."

Grouse Gay, I don't beleive you have a zebra hide table cloth, I don't believe you had venison for dinner last night, and I sure don't believe you have a gal. This really is about you, because it is you who is trying to use pseudoscience in order to ban the use of lead ammo. You have been refuted on so many levels, and have not yet answered the simple question of where wild game birds are in decline soley due to the ingestion of lead shot. I suppose I could Google "plastic", "Plastic toxicity", "burning plastic", etc., and come up with thousands of results that show how our use of plastic is killing us due to the phthalates, dioxin, and so forth that is a byproduct of plastic production and burning. Then I could push for a ban on plastic shotshells and plastic gunstocks. But I don't. Then there's you... The all around outdoorsman... hunting, shooting, flinging tons of lead on trap ranges, going home and eating venison off of a zebra tablecloth with your gal. All the while disseminating bullshit studies you haven't read and could not comprehend in an attempt to ban lead ammo, which would severely curtail the shooting sports. Nice try. Kind of reminds me of John Kerry trying to pawn himself off as a pro-hunting, pro-shooting guy by talking about "deer hunting with his trusty 12 gauge shotgun, crawling around on his belly to sneak up on them" Then there was his "goose hunt" in, of all places, the democratic stronghold of Mahoning County, Ohio. He was pictured on the front page of the Youngstown Vindicator, wearing camo and carrying two dead geese that no one was permitted to witness him shoot. Two geese, almost certainly killed by someone else, sacrificed to help propel an avowed anti-gunner to the White House. Fortunately, voting hunters didn't buy either lie any more than we buy your lies. But it illustrates the lengths you anti-gun PETA types will go to in order to perpetrate your true agenda. I wonder what your girlfriend, "Bruce", will say when "she" reads this Grouse Gay?

Kinda makes you wonder whether Ben actually READS the research he posts, doesn't it? Like I said earlier, tossing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. Tall Timbers, which is like a preserve in terms of shot fall . . . 1.3% of 241 birds ingested lead. And that last sentence is pretty much the same thing MT FWP admitted in their document--even though they're pushing for further lead restrictions.

Restricting lead for upland hunting in areas not frequented by waterfowl is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Hey Keith:

You gotta admit, that was a pretty nice sidelock Kerry took goose hunting (an H&H, or a cheap knock off Arrieta?), and undoubtedly charged with non-toxic shot. If even John Kerry can figure it out, why can't you? I think in the above post you make an excellent case for family planning. In mammals lead toxicosis can also cause high blood pressure... take care! But I digress. This discussion ain't about me, or you, or John Kerry.

It is about birds and lead.

Larry, as you can see I'm providing a wide range of citations here, whether they support my viewpoint or not. I think it is important that people review all the information that is out there. This is why I've been pushing for a review of the information by our state game agency here (not the EPA, or DEQ, or PETA... isn't the latter some kinda Greek sandwich?).

I'm not an expert, and I'm not saying this is what happens with certainty, but an alternate explanation to the observation that the detected occurance of consumed lead shot in harvested upland birds is generally <10% is that poisoned birds die before hunters enter the field, say in Montana anytime during the months of January through August. Wouldn't such non-harvest mortality cause lower occurance in "healthy" birds harvested by hunters?

Speaking of "healthy" birds, how many of us have shot clearly underweight birds? Or birds that flush late, or won't flush at all and our dogs catch them? I would posit that any of us who might have shot hundreds of birds over our years of hunting have seen this. We often might dismiss these as "cripples" even if we don't see wounds. They certainly could also be suffering from something else, after all every bird dies of something. But at least some of these might be birds sick from lead ingestion. Maybe we should take these odd birds to an expert to examine and try to figure it out instead of disposing of them however we do.

I'll post you some more studies later...

Grouse Gay, My blood pressure is typically around 100/60, give or take 5 points, so maybe I need to move to the city where lead in people and birds is problematic... not in rural areas where upland game is shot as you suggest. You obviously missed my point in comparing you to John Kerry. The only thing he "gets" is voting consistently through his career for gun control legislation. His fake goose hunt was a staged event in an area where a multi-millionaire would not go for a hunt. But there was concern by sportsmen in this strongly Democratic area that a Kerry presidency might lead to more gun control. Kerry did not use any non-tox because he did not shoot those birds, despite what the propaganda photos were intended to portray. Reporters asked to accompany his entourage on the hunt, but had to wait, hear a couple gunshots in the distance, then see the new pro-gun, pro-hunting Kerry emerge triumphantly carrying his geese. I was trying to point out that he is a fake and a liar like you. But you were too stupid to get that point the first time around. Nothing to get the old blood pressure up there. I just want to join in with so many others here in exposing you for what you are, and are not, lest anyone be on the fence or not consider the long term ramifications of what you propose. I prefer not to use nice kind little terms like "troll" for a filthy fake who is trying a sneaky backdoor approach to weaken the Second Amendment. You go on proving your anti-lead ammo zealotry citing a portion of some purported study stating that less than 10% of game birds harvested contain ingested lead. Your immediate and predictable explanation is that all the others must have died and decomposed from some new form of extrene rapid acting lead poisoning in the months before hunting season. You go on to "posit" that any birds which flush late, or not at all, or are underweight must be filled with poisonous lead shot. You expect that we should take our birds to an "expert" to have an autopsy done to eliminate crippling, parasites, disease, or plain old age as a cause of their lethargy. How many bird autopsies have you paid for? What were the results? I know the answer. You have had none done. But that doesn't deter you from posting your gay and shrill belief that we should all be petitioning our game departments to ban the use of lead ammo. You and I both know that lead ammo is not a problem compared to the mercury already in the environment, and the mercury that will be entering the waste-stream from increased use of CFL light bulbs. But you, the liar who masquerades as on of us, continues to push lead ammo bans. We see who you really are Grouse Gay. As far as "family planning" goes, I have zero tolerance for gun controllers, either the straightforward types or the "backdoor boys" (pun intended) like you. So I wish someone would do an extremely late tem abortion on you.

keith, please remove your death wish against another member.

I thnk a lot of what"Keith" said is way out of line. Ben Deeble and many of us arent going to agree on a lot of things, but I think Ben is keeping his arguments on a pretty high level. And some good points are being made on both sides. We dont need stuff like "Keith" is posting..........

Ben, we've been shooting pheasants in Iowa for about 85 years now. Hundreds of Iowa roosters . . . I'm a bit beyond that. I don't normally focus on season bags, but I once went into 3 figure range in a single season, wild birds only, without ever leaving the state. And of all the pheasants I've cleaned--that's a bunch of autopsies, because I also guided on wild pheasants for 4 years, and cleaned my hunters' birds for them--the only unhealthy roosters I can ever recall were ones that suffered from lead poisoning. However, that lead poisoning came from lead pellets they'd been SHOT with (old, nonfatal wounds), not any other cause I was unable to identify (like ingested lead).

Here's what I'm looking for, in specific: A study on upland birds (wild only, please) that were found dead (NOT shot) in typical upland settings--either private or public ground, but not preserves--and which died as a result of having ingested lead. Anything else, as far as the POTENTIAL impact of lead on upland birds, is pretty much that: POTENTIAL, unproven as far as mortality goes. All other studies are either of no relevance, or marginal relevance. Eagles . . . we have so many more of them than we did 25 years ago that we're bound to find more of them sick or injured than we used to. But their numbers also continue to increase, which means whatever is harming them is a threat only to INDIVIDUAL birds, not the population as a whole--which means we should pay no more attention to it than we do to deer hit by cars (where we only worry about the people in the vehicles, not the deer).

Can you cite any research that meets the above requirements?

King Brown and Last Dollar, Gee, I took Grouse Gays' above response as a wish that I had been aborted. I guess that's keeping the arguement on a "pretty high level". I have no plans on apologizing to, or being nice to a fake whose sole purpose here is to ban lead ammo, which I'm certain will reduce the number of shooters, which I'm equally sure will make it easier for his kind to eventually gut the Second Amendment. If you wish to consort with the enemy, that is your choice.

keith, for god's sake, you're a good guy and we're just exchanging opinions about lead and we all have a bad day, please remove your last sentence because in civil society you'd have a cop at the door for it. Fake, gay, liar is deplorable but that last sentence is criminal. Kind regards, King

I forgot to mention I still have about 30 pellets of #6s in me I received while pheasant hunting in 1980. Does that mean my body will be hazardous waste when I pass on to that great lead free happy hunting ground in the sky?

Best,

Mike

Hey AmarilloMike:

Doubtful, but let me guess how it happened....
You told Keith you were considering pulling the lever for Carter?
(Sorry, I keep doing that digressing thing!) This thread isn't about me, Keith, AMike, Carter, or Reagan.

PLEASE, no more death threats. Such behavior can't be good for any of our futures.

Here is some more reporting of lead research.... sorry but you probably really aren't going to like this one.

http://www.peregrinefund.org/Lead_conference/PDF/0307%20Tranel.pdf

Actually, Ben, I kinda like that link. Did you take the time to read it? If you did, you'll find the same references to chukar and pheasants in Ontario (remember when I questioned you about those before--obviously birds from PRESERVES, where shot fall is far heavier than birds would encounter in the wild), a reference to pheasants on shooting estates in Great Britain (same situation--way more shot fall than in upland settings in this country), etc. In other words, a compilation of "same old, same old". Interesting also the connection to the Peregrine Fund. The veterinarian whose claims about lead fragments in deer resulted in ND dropping the policy of donating deer to homeless shelters etc . . . he's a falconer. Might that indicate any sort of bias . . . just maybe, possibly? And when that happened, the Iowa DNR reviewed the same information--and continued its "Hunters for the Hungry" program, donating deer to homeless shelters.

Ben, it's fairly obvious your mind is already made up. You might try reading the research with a bit more of an open mind. Does the amount of lead to which a bird on a preserve is exposed have much of anything to do with exposure in typical upland hunting settings? No. Lead bans for waterfowl (and maybe even for doves, on public land where they're shot) make sense, because of the heavy concentration of shot fall. Lead bans for upland birds, in areas not frequented by waterfowl . . . that's an apples to oranges deal, and you can't really compare. Likewise, other species impacted by lead shot . . . the question is, what's happening to the SPECIES overall, not individuals. If you're talking about an endangered species, like the California condor (or eagles, a couple decades ago), then you worry about individual birds. But if the population is healthy and growing (like bald eagles today, for example), then you no longer concern yourself with occasional individual mortality. Because if we start to concern ourselves with individual mortality of a species that's not endangered, well then, guess what? We've just given the antis all the ammunition they need to SHUT HUNTING DOWN, whether we shoot lead or steel or depleted uranium. "That poor pheasant was shot. And died. How awful!" Well, it's only awful if pheasants are endangered because they're being shot. They're not, which means it's not awful at all. It's just hunting.

It's also interesting to see the reference to the MN DNR's Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee, which did its own thorough review of the research available, and concluded in their report to the DNR: "The issues are extremely complex and conclusive data on wildlife population impacts is lacking. Furthermore, it is unlikely that conclusive data can ever be obtained due to the cost of this type research."

No one asked you to apologize, keith. No one asked you to be nice to anyone. You crossed the line of the rules of this distinguished international board.

I don't raise this as a goody-goody. I've left a trail of minor misdemeanours around the world. Casting those who disagree with your opinion as the enemy is no ornament to our board.

It's another example of the my way or the highway, with us or against us, I'm a patriot and you're not of the dread polarization that pulls us down. It's not the way of the Fathers of Confederation or the Founding Fathers there.

Grouse Guy I wan't making it about you or me but trying to make the point that lead is widespread in our nation. Any creature is going to have some lead levels because of:

Ubiquitous residuals of leaded gasoline
Aviation gas
Ubiquitous lead paint
Smelters, closed or operating
Lead mines
Other mines
Lead in the potable water supply

Repeating Larry as long as we have enough of some critter if one in 100 or 1 in 1000 dies from eating lead shot it doesn't matter.

The number of WILD UPLAND game birds dying from lead shot ingestion is negligible. It is minisucle compared to the number dying from:

Weather
Weather
Weather
Predation
Impact with automobiles
Impact with powerlines
Loss of habitat

What about the urban Peregrine falcon with the higher than normal blood levels in the link I posted above? How would a lead shot ban have lowered his lead levels?


Best,

Mike

Larry, you suggest that documented population level impacts are the only ones we should care about as wildlife managers or sportsmen. AmarilloMike, you seem to agree. Well, wait a second here….

Sportsmen all over this nation have accepted a whole range of regulations which have nothing to do with preventing population level impacts. Things like seasonal restrictions, daily bag limits, night hunting prohibitions, sink box bans, gauge or equipment restrictions, trophy zones… the list could go on and on. Why shouldn’t I be able to shoot a buck with a crossbow at midnight with a spotlight in its face? Is there any more biological impact than shooting a buck at dawn with a 30-30? Why shouldn’t I have a season limit for quail (say, 100 a year) which I can shoot all in one day if I’m that good, instead of only six or eight or ten a day? Why can’t I shoot all the cock pheasants I want any day during the non-breeding season (this is generally agreed to have no biological impact, because pheasants are polygamous, with one rooster capable of inseminating fifty or more hens), particularly on my private land?

Haven’t sportsmen already accepted, in fact suggested, a whole bunch of restrictions of their behavior and equipment for something going on 100 years in the U.S.? Restrictions which have nothing to do with population level impacts, but in fact addressing some higher level of behavior or responsibility afield?

From one who has known him for some years, arguing with liberal-minded Ben will get you nowhere. But I can at least elevate the discussion by setting the record straight on a few counts:

Keith, Ben is not ‘gay’. He likes the ladies, irregardless of whether he has had much long-term luck with them or not. And he actually does hunt a fair amount; and likely has a zebra-hide tablecloth….having gone to Africa a couple of years back.

And, in general, he is not the ‘goody-two-shoes’ type some assume….after having been on the wrong end of a MDFWP citation book a few years back for some serious violations we won’t go into.

But what Ben IS, is a ‘water-walker’ who is happiest when asserting his perception of the world’s problems irregardless of our need for him to do so. One of the things I’ve done over time is to save all of his personal e-mails to me (back when we actually had some mutual respect for one another)……and not all of which pertained to lead shot bans.

However, just one of several which illustrates that Ben’s mind is already made up on this issue was an e-mail lecture I received about the lost Franklin Arctic Expedition of 1845. Ben related to me that the crew all died from lead-poisoning via food consumed from metal cans whose seams had been lead soldered. No mention of other reasons or circumstances of death beyond plumbism. His pitch seemed a bit simplistic, so I ‘googled’ up all that I could on Franklin and his crew, and sure enough, discovered that lead poisoning was a factor. Problem was it was about fourth on the list after 1) hypothermia, 2) pneumonia, and 3) probable cases of tuberculosis. (It is also theorized that the bulk of the lead poisoning originated from the engine plumbing of the ship’s sea-water conversion apparatus, and not so much the food tins.)

But no matter, for in Ben’s mind, their demise was wholly attributable to lead consumption…or else ‘why’ write me this page and a half to support his lead-ban study initiative of 2008? I also have another e-mail where he puts on a white lab coat and suggests that my chronic dealings with systemic lupus are very probably a result of a higher-than-normal lead burden caused by my shooting activities. He was concerned enough that he suggested I be tested. As usual, a helpful sort short on science….. but long on supposition.

Ben is one of those who seems happy to accept all science, just as long as it supports his position. We think of him here in Montana as our own little mini-Gore, who refuses to recognize that contemporary ‘science’ can often be manipulative. And why should he, when it is flowing his way for the moment?

For me, however, just seeing how the CDC reported the North Dakota ‘contaminated meat’ study of 2008 is enough to create suspicion of our Federal government’s ever supplying objective data on this subject. Read the entire report thoroughly, if you care to, and you’ll learn that sportsmen and women from ND eating wild game harvested with lead bullets/shot for as long as forty and fifty years duration have lower lead levels than our national average! But, read just the abstract and conclusion of same report and you’ll only deduce that pregnant women and young children should not consume game harvested with lead components……no mention of the long-term insignificance of lead upon long-term consumers. For that you’ll have to dig deep and read all fifty-some pages.

I won’t belabor this further other than to again mention Ben’s initial proposal of 2008 which was intended to induce MDFWP to contract or perform the necessary studies that would support his proposal’s resolution points. If any of you are interested in that document, I’m sure Ben would be open to supplying you with a copy. If not, it can still be found here in the message archives of July and August of 2008. Or just look up the posts for 'Grouse Guy' and myself and you’ll come upon it. You might even ask him how he advanced his 2008 effort on the local level, as I’m sure he is real proud of that too!

Ben keeps saying throughout this thread that "it is not about him",..... but in truth, it is very much about him, and others just like him, who assume the moral authority to alter our lives only because they ostensibly know better. In short, and as a retired wildlife biologist of 35 years experience, I still need convincing....


Rob Harris
Conner, MT

Rob,

Thank you for your detailed input.
It brings clarification about this thread. It is a waste to keep arguing with Ben anymore.

What I find very sad is that if we want it or not, if it's right or not what Ben has been pushing here will happen. However, I sent my opinion to the MT FWP.

It is an infringement on our liberty forced on us by the powers that are. A form of extremism.

Ben, your laundry list includes a whole lot of "fair chase" issues. That's what many of your "restrictions" on behavior and equipment amount to. Likewise seasonal restrictions. Much of The non-hunting months of the year are largely off limits because the birds need time to breed and nest, and because the young need time to mature. If you hunted them in the spring, summer, or very early fall, that would surely impact populations. Spotlighting deer violates fair chase, just as shooting turkeys off the roost after dark does. Restrictions on hunting are usually related to "what's enough" (the establishment of limits, both daily and possession) and "what's fair chase" (no night hunting for most species of birds and animals, restrictions on equipment, etc). That's a different story entirely than the issue of population levels--which is not the only issue we should care about, but a key one when we make a decision to limit or eliminate the use of lead shot because other individuals, from otherwise healthy (and even increasing) populations are dying from the ingestion of lead.

Whatever "higher level of responsibility" we aspire to, we need to proceed with caution in anything as significant as a blanket changeover from lead to nontoxic shot (and bullets). Where shot is concerned, nontox proponents state that steel is no longer at an economic disadvantage compared to lead. Agree . . . but only for those whose guns are capable of shooting steel. If you have to buy a new gun because the one you own won't handle steel, then that's not an economically viable solution for that particular gun owner. And there are hundreds of thousands of Browning Superposeds and A-5's out there through which--according to the Browning website--steel should not be shot. Not to mention a lot of the guns used by the audience of this BB, which are off limits for steel due either to the hardness of the shot or the pressure generated by the load, or both. All those people would have to choose between one of the other (VERY expensive) nontox alternatives, or buying a new shotgun. And for those who hunt with either the 28ga or .410, although there are now steel loads available, they don't come close to matching the performance of lead loads. So the real smallbores are also consigned to the dustbin of history.

Then there's the question of whether steel performs as well on upland birds as does lead. Although this has been answered satisfactorily where waterfowl are concerned, it has not been answered for large upland birds, such as pheasants. In fact, in a steel shot lethality test Tom Roster conducted, in which some 300 pheasants were shot, he made the following comparison between lethality of loads on pheasants vs ducks:

"On a typical going-away pheasant shot, a pellet must penetrate the massive gizzard to reach the heart and lung area. As shooting distance increases, the gizzard is more likely to stop pellets. A gizzard presents the same obstacle for duck and goose hunters, but few of their shots are at birds going straight away."

Add to the gizzard the fine, hairlike underfeathers of a rooster's tail end. 'One of the great lessons we learned from doing this test,' Roster commented, 'is that there's a much higher rate of feathers that get balled up around pellets trying to penetrate a pheasant, than we were ever able to notice with waterfowl.'"

So, because most waterfowl shots are from different angles (incoming or crossing) versus pheasant shots (mostly going away), there may be entirely different dynamics at work than have been observed with waterfowl. That may be why even those pheasant hunters who also hunt waterfowl have not rushed to switch to steel for pheasants--even though steel is now as cheap (or sometimes cheaper) as quality lead loads. In an attempt to save those (relatively few?) pheasants killed due to ingesting lead, might we actually be killing more--by crippling them through mandating less effective steel loads?

The 'Nanny' state concept applies...we, the government, MUST protect you and make sure you are all safe.
Reminds me,
'Trade your liberty for safety and you deserve neither'
or maybe
'A government big enough to give you everything is also strong enough to take everything'.

MT FWP site has changed slightly since January 14th. Now try and leave a comment!

Hey Larry:

Bag limits have nothing to do with fair chase. That sounds to me like some sort of ethics argument on what is enough killing. What is enough killing for you isn't necessarily what is enough killing for me. Don't try to regulate my ethics, you one-worlder. If I want to go to Cordoba and shoot a flat of shells a day, then give away the pile of pigeons for hog feed that's my business. Don't try to cram your ethics nonsense down my throat.

Neither is restricting cock pheasant harvest to the non-breeding season a fair chase issue, say allowing hunting in February, March and April as well as the fall. Any pheasant with enough color to identify as a rooster is flying well enough to make a sporting target. I shoot pheasants from winter cover in December... why not in March too? I say "if it flys, it dies!" Just what statistically valid studies can you site proving such extended season harvest would have population level impacts on pheasant? Just where, exactly, has such harvest been proven to be the sole cause of a pheasant population crash? I want studies from wild populations. Otherwise you are just a patsy for PETA.

Here are some more studies on lead and birds:

Bishop, R.A., Wagner, W.C., 1992. The US cooperative lead
poisoning control information program. In: Pain, D.J., (Ed.),
Lead Poisoning in Waterfowl. IWRB Spec. Pub. 16, Slimbridge,
pp. 42–45.
Keymer, I.F., Stebbings, R.S., 1987. Lead poisoning in a partridge(Perdix perdix) after ingestion of gunshot. Vet. Rec. 21, 276–277.
Kennedy, S., Crisler, J.P., Smith, E., Bush, M., 1977. Lead poisoning
in sandhill cranes. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 171, 955–958.
Bloom, P.H., Scott, J.M., Pattee, O.H., Smith, M.R., 1989. Lead
contamination of golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) within the
range of the Californian condor (Gymnogyps californianus). In:
Meyburgh, B-U., Chancellor, R.D. (Eds.), Raptors in the Modern
World. Proceedings of the 3rd World Conference on Birds of
Prey and Owls, Eliat, Israel, pp. 481–482.
Calvert, J.H., 1876. Pheasants poisoned by swallowing shots. Field
47, 189.
Campbell, H., 1950. Quail picking up lead shot. J. Wildlife Manage.
14, 243–244.
Demayo, A., Taylor, M.C., Taylor, K.W., Hodson, P.V., 1982. Toxic
effects of lead and lead compounds on human health, aquatic
life, wildlife, plants and livestock. CRC Crit. Rev. Environ.
Control 12, 257–305.
Hall, S.L., Fisher, F.M., 1985. Lead concentrations in tissues of
marsh birds: relationships of feeding habits and grit
preference to spent shot ingestion. Bull. Environ. Contam.
Toxicol. 35, 1–8.
Hoffman, D.J., Franson, J.C., Pattee, O.H., Bunck, C.M., Anderson,
A., 1985a. Survival, growth and accumulation of ingested lead
in nestling American kestrels (Falco sparverius). Arch. Environ.
Contam. Toxicol. 14, 89–94.
Hoffman, D.J., Franson, J.C., Pattee, O.H., Bunck, C.M., Murray,
H.C., 1985b. Biochemical and hematological effects of lead
ingestion in nestling American kestrels (Falco sparverius).
Comp. Biochem. Physiol. 80C, 431–439.
Iwata, H., Watanabe, M., Kim, E.-Y., Gotoh, R., Yasunaga, G.,
Tanabe, S., Masuda, Y., Fujita, S., 2000. Contamination by
chlorinated hydrocarbons and lead in Stellar’s sea eagle and
white-tailed sea eagle from Hokkaido, Japan. In: Ueta, M.,
McGrady, M.J. (Eds.), First Symposium on Stellar’s and
White-tailed Sea Eagles in East Asia. Wild Bird Society of
Japan, Tokyo, pp. 91–106.
Janssen, D.L., Oosterhuis, J.E., Allen, J.L., Anderson, M.P., Kelts,
D.G., Wiemeyer, S.N., 1986. Lead poisoning in free-ranging
California condors. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 189, 1115–1117.
Kaiser, G.W., Fry, K., Ireland, J.G., 1980a. Ingestion of lead shot by
dunlin. Murrelet 61, 37.
Kaiser, T.E., Reichel,W.L., Locke, L.N., Cromartie, E., Krynitsky, A.J.,
Lamont, T.G., Mulhern, B.M., Prouty, R.M.S., Stafford, C.J.,
Kendall, R.J., Scanlon, P.F., 1981. Effects of chronic lead ingestion
on reproductive characteristics of ringed turtle doves (Streptopelia
risoria) and on tissue lead concentrations of adults and
their progeny. Environ. Pollut. Series A 26, 203–214.
Kendall, R.J., Veit, H.P., Scanlon, P.F., 1981. Histological effects and
lead concentrations in tissues of adult male ringed turtle
doves (Streptopelia risoria) that ingested lead shot. J. Toxicol.
Environ. Health 8, 649–658.
Kenntner, N., Krone, O., Altenkamp, R., Tataruch, F., 2003.
Environmental contaminants in liver and kidney of
free-ranging northern goshawks (Accipiter gentilis) from three
regions of Germany. Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 45,
128–135.

Kenntner, N., Tataruch, F., Krone, O., 2001. Heavy metals in soft
tissue of white-tailed eagles found dead or moribund in
Germany and Austria from 1993 to 2000. Environ. Toxicol.
Chem. 20, 1831–1837.

Ben, we know you haven't been reading the links you've been posting. That's well established, since you keep throwing up crap about preserve chukar in southern Ontario ingesting lead, which has absolutely nothing to do with wild pheasants in Montana. Now we also know you're not even reading the (much shorter) posts to which you're responding. But I boiled it down to the key sentence fragment concerning limits, since you missed it last time. As for seasons . . . why not shoot rooster pheasants, right up through April? Well Ben, maybe a real smart guy like you could do that, because I'm sure you'd be able to go out and hunt ONLY roosters--without disturbing the hens, which may already have been stressed by a hard winter. I'm positive you wouldn't flush those stressed hens out of their good winter cover and into the open, where they're much more likely to fall victim to predators in a weakened state . . . now would you, Ben? You're not far off track on roosters being excess baggage, but it appears you never considered what the impact of hunting pheasants into late winter/early spring would be on hens. And if you've read the same studies I have, and hunted pheasants as long as I have, then you also know that some hens get shot accidentally, due to misidentification. Straight from the Iowa DNR "The Ring-Necked Pheasant in Iowa": "Examination of pheasants killed by non-hunting (vehicles and blizzards) means after the close of the season showed that about 24% of the cocks and 3% of the hens carried lead shot. Using these data, it was calculated that 9% of the fall hen population was killed during the hunting season." So, just so you can shoot a few more roosters, you want to make the season longer--which means more hens (and you can't deny that they're critical to the long-term population!) will be wounded or killed. Actually, I think the stress of pushing them out of good winter cover, more so than is already happening due to other predators, would be even worse on them. But that's a really bad idea, Ben. Thought you studied wildlife management. I'm beginning to think maybe . . . art history? Underwater basket weaving?

Nope, much better idea to let them alone--both roosters and hens--when the season ends in January. Shooting only roosters, unfortunately, does not mean that you're KILLING only roosters--when you're talking about hunting pheasants in late winter/early spring. How long does the season have to be, anyhow? Another question of "what's enough"--settled by the game biologists. Just like 3 pheasants a day is also "enough"--everywhere, I think, except KS where they let you shoot 4. Not so much a "fair chase" issue as an "enough" issue.

"Patsy for PETA" . . . Ben, that's rich. You've been looking in the mirror, for sure. Let's see . . . a guy who wants to get rid of all lead shot, which would mean some people would no longer own a shotgun with which they could hunt--without paying $2-$3/shell. Ben, you get rid of enough hunters that way, and you won't have to worry about hunting pheasants in November and December, let alone in Feb/Mar. The antis will walk all over what's left of us after you're done.

Hey Larry:

Apparently one of plumbism's symptoms is an inability to detect sarcasm?

I support both bag limits and pheasant seasons which limit winter stress on populations and hens as they begin to build their physical reserves for viable egg production.

Back to Roster and his tests on steel shot effectiveness for pheasant harvest. Let me quote him....

"Of all birds struck with the No. 2 steel load, 108 were retrieved and 10 were lost, an 8.5 percent wounding loss rate. No. 6 steel produced a 13.6 percent wounding loss, and No. 4 steel came in with a 14.3 percent wounding rate. Interestingly, hunters lost only two of 68 birds hit at distances of less than 30 yards with all three loads combined, a wounding rate of 2.9 percent. All test loads together produced 15.1 percent wounding loss at shot distances of 40 yards or greater.

For the entire test, wounding loss was 12.2 percent. "That's a pretty low wounding rate," Roster noted, especially when compared to findings of 15 shotshell lethality tests on waterfowl, some of which examined both lead and steel. Trained observers in those tests detected 30 percent or more of birds hit by hunters with either shot type were not retrieved."

Roster also found that shots at pheasants were generally closer than those for waterfowl, and a going-away presentation, an easier shot to make for most shooters. Using #2 shot he found steel highly effective for pheasants, without the "balling up" of feathers you cite above.

Here are some more studies on lead toxicity to birds and other wildlife:

Lewis, J.C., Legler, E., 1968. Lead shot ingestion by mourning doves
and incidence in soil. J. Wildlife Manage. 32, 476–482.
Locke, L.N., Bagley, G.E., 1967. Lead poisoning in a sample of
Maryland mourning doves. J. Wildlife Manage. 31, 515–518.
Locke, L.N., Bagley, G.E., Frickie, D.N., Young, L.T., 1969. Lead
poisoning and Aspergillosis in an Andean condor. J. Am. Vet.
Med. Assoc. 155, 1052–1056.
Locke, L.N., Friend, M., 1992. Lead poisoning of avian species other
than waterfowl. In: Pain, D.J., (Ed.), Lead Poisoning in
Waterfowl. IWRB Spec. Pub. 16, Slimbridge, pp. 19–22.
Locke, L.N., Smith, M.R., Windingstad, R.M., Martin, S.J., 1991.
Lead poisoning of a marbled godwit. Prairie Nat. 23, 21–24.
Lumeiji, J.T., Wolvekamp, W.T.C., Bron-Dietz, G.M., Schotman,
Martin, P.A., Barrett, G.C., 2001. Exposure of terrestrial raptors to
environmental lead: determining sources using stable isotope
ratios. International Association for Great Lakes Research
Conference Programand Abstracts 44. IAGLR, Ann Arbor, p. 84.
Martin, P.A., Campbell, D., Scheuhammer, A., 2003. Lead exposure
in terrestrial foraging raptors in southern Ontario, 1999–2001.
International Association for Great Lakes Research Conference
Program and Abstracts 44. IAGLR, Ann Arbor, p. 269.
Mateo, R., Cadenas, R., Manez, M., Guitart, R., 2001. Lead shot
ingestion in two raptor species from Don˜ ana, Spain.
Ecotoxicol. Environ. Safety 48, 6–10.
Mateo, R., Estrada, J., Paquet, J.-Y., Riera, X., Domı´nguez, L.,
Guitart, R., Martı´nez-Vilalta, A., 1999. Lead shot ingestion by
marsh harriers (Circus aeruginosus) from the Ebro Delta, Spain.
Environ. Pollut. 104, 435–440.
Mateo, R., Molina, R., Grı´fols, J., Guitart, R., 1997. Lead poisoning in
a free-ranging griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus). Vet. Rec. 140, 47–48.
Mateo, R., Taggart, M., Meharg, A.A., 2003. Lead and arsenic in
bones of birds of prey from Spain. Environ. Pollut. 126,
107–114.
Miller, M.J.R., Wayland, M.E., Bortolotti, G.R., 2002. Lead exposure
and poisoning in diurnal raptors: a global perspective. In:
Yosef, R.M., Miller, M.L., Pepler, D. (Eds.), Raptors in the New
Millenium, Proceedings of the Joint Meeting of the Raptor
Research Foundation and The World Working Group on Birds
of Prey and Owls, Eliat, Israel, 2–8 April 2000. International
Birding and Research Centre, Eliat, pp. 224–245.
Miller, M.J.R., Wayland, M.E., Dzus, E.H., Bortolotti, G.R., 2000.
Availability and ingestion of lead shotshell pellets by migrant
bald eagles in Saskatchewan. J. Raptor Res. 34, 167–174.
Miller, M.J.R., Wayland, M.E., Dzus, E.H., Bortolotti, G.R., 2001.
Exposure of migrant bald eagles to lead in prairie Canada.
Environ. Pollut. 112, 153–162.
Mudge, G.P., 1992. Options for alleviating lead poisoning: a review
and assessment of alternatives to the use of non-toxic shot.
In: Pain, D.J. (Ed.), Lead Poisoning in Waterfowl. IWRB Spec.
Pub. 16, Slimbridge, pp. 23–25.
NationalWildlife Health Laboratory (NWHL), 1985. Lead poisoning
in non-waterfowl avian species. USFWS unpublished Report.
Pain, D.J., 1990a. Lead shot ingestion by waterbirds in the
Camargue, France: an investigation of levels and interspecific
differences. Environ. Pollut. 66, 273–285.
Pain, D.J., 1990b. Lead poisoning of waterfowl: a review. In:
Matthews, G. (Ed.), Managing Waterfowl Populations. IWRB,
Slimbridge, pp. 172–181.
Pain, D.J., 1991a. Lead poisoning in birds: an international
perspective. Acta XX Congressus Int. Ornithol., 2343–2352.
Pain, D.J., 1991b. Why are lead-poisoned waterfowl rarely seen?
The disappearance of waterfowl carcasses in the Camargue,
France. Wildfowl 42, 118–122.

Once again, Ben, ducks and pheasants ain't the same critters. I've kept careful track of my "wounding loss" rates for about 35 years, and it's way lower than 15%. Matter of fact, it's way lower than the 8.5% Roster's guys experienced with steel 2's--and they were shooting preserve birds, which virtually any pheasant hunter with experience on both the wild and the released variety will tell you are a good bit easier to bring to bag. And I have large enough numbers on wounding losses on wild birds that my own statistics are, I'd venture, pretty reliable. Back when we were shooting more pheasants than we are in Iowa these days, during one 5 year period, I and my hunting partners shot and recovered 437 wild roosters; 12 were wounding losses. That's less than 3%. In any season in which I've shot a reasonably good number of birds (like 3 dozen or more), I've never had a wounding loss rate higher than 5%. So while loss rates of 8-12% may not look bad compared to waterfowl (which are typically shot at longer ranges than pheasants--and I'd note here that I'm not a waterfowl hunter so can't compare my own rates), they look very poor compared to my own wounding loss rates. Which, again, are on the harder to bag wild pheasants vs preserve birds.

And you need to work on your sarcasm, Ben. Sure sounded to me like you were serious . . . and I'm still suspicious that you may have been, until I pointed out the problems with disturbing hens in late winter/early spring. But whatever, glad you understand that issue now, whether you did or not previously. I'd also point out that the Iowa DNR won't even allow you to run dogs on WMA's from March 15-July 15.

Finally, I'd add that of your latest laundry list of "research", there's NOT A SINGLE STUDY that pertains to lead ingestion by upland gamebirds in the wild. Do you have something that actually pertains to the subject at hand? Something on upland birds, other than those on preserves? Something that establishes upland gamebird mortality from ingesting lead in the wild? The lack of such data must be why both the MN DNR and MT FWP say that the research just isn't out there. Guess they're more interested in specific research on upland birds in the wild, rather than stuff like urban pigeons eating paint chips. When the switch was made to nontoxic shot on waterfowl, it was because waterfowl were dying from ingesting lead. Shouldn't we be looking for the same kind of data if we're going to switch to nontox for upland birds? Seems only reasonable to me.

Larry, what do you know?
The guy is a bird biologist!

Sliver, I was thinking a somewhat shorter word than biologist, but also beginning with "b".

What can we all know?

That should this MDFWP regulation proposal go through, Ben Deeble will not only be highly esteemed by his current employer, the National Wildlife Federation.....

but will have positioned himself quite well for being part of the junk science to follow. How could it not be 'junk' when he is already convinced that it is far past time for such measures to be instituted in Montana? I'm convinced 'Nobody' can possibly know at this point in time what is warranted - but Ben. "Riding to the sound of the cannon", .......hardly.

I don't think it's that clear, from these posts, Robert. Taking personalities out of it, usually the weight of evidence wins. I don't think it's there---yet.

I was a principal in Canada's biggest environmental controversy 30 years ago. A group of university scientists said forest spraying was causing Reye's Syndrome, killing children.

I exposed it as bad science at an international forestry forum in Maine. The medical scientists had cooked the books to come down on the side of the environmental movement.

The rogue scientists caused more of a health problem by creating unwarranted anxiety among young parents. Aspirin, not forest spray, was fingered by Health Canada in the etiology. Public policy usually favours good science.

King Brown:

Good point above. And I appreciate the kind of response you gave earlier to "Keith" when he went off on his rather frightening tirade.

Larry and Rob and All:
Many of you have been more than accommodating in reading this string over 2,800 times. Many of you have made many great points. Some have made other points. Some of you are just pointy.
Many other contributors to this string initially asserted there was no science supporting my notion that lead kills non-target wildlife in the uplands. Well, I’ve now presented volumes of that data, and many of you now are switching your argument to the case that this mortality doesn’t cause population level impacts. Essentially this argument has gone from “there is no non-target mortality” to “I don’t care if there is non-target mortality”.
Maybe this is good enough for some past generation or ethics sets. But some of the tenets of modern Hunter's Education are "know your shot’s destination,” "become proficient with your weapon," “never waste game” and "leave only footprints." Roster’s experiments prove that selecting the correct steel load for pheasants minimizes waste to levels below those observed for waterfowl shot with anything including lead. Larry, you note that 30% of live male pheasants at the end of regular hunting season are packing around lead pellets in their flesh. Data like this about lead and other studies many other people have collected and interpreted over the years in many countries and parts of the U.S. support my hypothesis that many bird hunters using lead shot today can't meet the fundamental tenets enunciated above. Hunters are causing primary and secondary poisoning of wildlife days, weeks or years after lead shot is fired. Not because they are bad or ignorant people, but because they are using antiquated ammunition materials, mostly because it is cheap and abundant. Unfortunately many hunters using steel shot can't meet the standard either, because they haven't practiced with the ammunition they take afield because they don’t know they need to, or their traps clubs prohibit it, and they are thus not proficient shots with it.
But today's non-toxic shotshells, even relatively inexpensive steel ones, in proficient and practiced hands have been proven again and again to be as lethal as any lead ever made. More expensive Heavy Shot may be the most lethal projectile ever dropped into a shotcup, and is non-toxic. Bismuth is better than it used to be, and Eco-tungsten is excellent; I use all four. They can't all be used in the oldest, tightest choked smokepoles, but unstated by any of you “experts” here is the fact that the barrels of many fine old fluid steel guns can also be bulged or ringed by even mild loads of large lead shot run through them. Why aren’t you warning shooters of vintage guns to not ruin their barrels with large lead?
I think the type of extreme responses I’ve seen here, and the omissions from the discussion like the one immediately above, can only be explained by fear. Fear that vintage shotgun collections might become less valuable or their firearms transactions less lucrative if older guns become more expensive or geographically restricted. And fear that their wives will find out they are playing with poison in the garage and collecting extremely expensive toys, ahem “investments” that may turn out to be as valuable as buggy whips to Model-T drivers. As we all know, if Mama ain’t happy, nobody happy.
Well gents, don’t fear. Lead isn’t about to be banned across Montana, or probably even in the limited Wildlife Management Areas in Montana as the proposal is currently written, even if it does make sense in my mind in places where there is high volume shooting for upland game. For those who don’t pucker everytime they spend money on quality modern ammunition, there are safe alternatives at your fingertips in the common gauges for your old guns. Others need to learn to reload non-toxic for the scarcer gauges or do that painful bend-over and grab your wallet to create the market by paying for someone to load it commercially. Come on, Capitalists!
I suspect most of us on this board don’t fire a box a year at wild game. Rob’s health is so poor he can’t even hunt some years. I understand why he is so frustrated. For those of us who can still climb a hill, is $10 in ammo too much to pay for the privilege of shooting a limit of roosters on a premium public hunting site? What do we pay for gas, the motel, the boots, the shock collar, the dog food, or the cocktail and steak afterwards? In my mind, the cost of non-toxic ammo is the cost of doing our hunting recreation responsibly.
But I’ve also just bought a pre-war Winchester double with full choke last week. Really. Does that sound like the rational behavior of a man that believes lead shot is about to be banned? It doesn’t. I’ll be running Eco-tungsten or Bismuth through it when I’m hunting afield on the local Indian reservation where lead shot is already banned (and has been for a generation… hundreds of us are used to it). I’ll be practicing with it using lead on a range where it will be reclaimed. I won’t be running any lead larger than #4 through it, because I don’t want to damage it. I’ll sleep well at night believing many things… that my health is protected when I eat these tasty birds, that the health of the land and our amazing quarry is secure, and that my investment is a sound and sustainable one.
Damn, my gal just figured out I bought a new shotgun last week. I got some ‘splainin to do…. “Honey, I’m pretty sure the dimensions are just right for you!”

Ben, you're doing a little "book cooking" in that last post. Roster's test didn't prove anything as far as comparing lead to steel on PHEASANTS--because he tested ONLY STEEL. In order to compare the lethality of steel vs lead, you have to put them against each other in a head to head test. All Roster concluded was that pheasant wounding losses with steel are lower than waterfowl wounding losses. Well . . . waterfowl shots are longer, on average, than pheasant shots. And the comparison was with preserve pheasants, which are significantly easier to bring to bag than are wild ones. You can take that from a guy who's shot a whole bunch of both (but FAR more wild ones) over the course of several decades. A "low" wounding loss rate compared to waterfowl isn't necessarily a low wounding loss rate compared to pheasants shot with lead. And in fact, my own wounding loss rate on pheasants, using lead shot over a period of 30+ years and over 1,500 wild pheasants bagged, is about 1/3 of the 12.2% Roster characterized as "low". In order to establish that steel is as lethal as lead on pheasants, one would have to repeat the Roster test, but with the shooters unaware of whether they were shooting lead or steel. Then, as in his test, the birds would have to be examined to determine the damage caused by steel vs lead pellets. Since feather-balling was identified as a problem with #4 steel--probably the most popular shot size used by those shooting steel at pheasants--there should be a comparison to the equivalent lead shot size (#6) to determine whether it's more or less of a problem with steel than with lead. That's "science" the way it should be done--not to just say "Well, we know that we can kill pheasants with steel, and we don't lose as many wounded ones as we do ducks." The REAL question is, by restricting lead shot, are we killing more pheasants by crippling them with steel than we are losing as a result of birds ingesting spent lead shot? We can't know that without testing both types of ammunition, side by side.

And I'm still waiting for the research that establishes losses of wild pheasants (or other wild upland species, other than doves) from the ingestion of lead. All I've seen so far are studies showing that there's an elevated lead level in the blood (or lead pellets in the gizzards) of some wild upland birds. But those birds have been SHOT--which obviously means that they died not from the lead they ingested, but from the lead with which they were shot.

What it comes down to is how many pheasants (or whatever other upland species we're discussing) are dying via ingestion of spent lead pellets, versus how many more MIGHT die as wounding losses if we switched to steel--which we know is less ballistically efficient than that "antiquated ammunition material" called lead. Were that not the case, other than for those guns that can't shoot steel because it's too hard on the barrels, ammo makers would not have spent nearly as much time and effort coming up with nontoxic alternatives that are ballistically superior to steel--which is ballistically inferior to lead. We'd all be perfectly happy campers if there were a nontox alternative out there that works as well as lead, can be shot safely in older guns, and doesn't cost any more. But at present, if we get rid of lead, steel is the only economical alternative. And it's both inferior ballistically and can't be used in a whole lot of guns--some of them not all that old.

And Ben, you're talking to the absolutely worst group when you tell us that we ought to be warning shooters about what might happen if they shoot the wrong loads through old guns. If those old guns handled large lead shot just fine at the pressures for which they were originally designed, then they will handle equivalent loads just fine today. It's a question of shooting what the gun was originally meant to be shot with--and I don't know of a resource anywhere on the Internet with a group of more knowledgeable shooters and hunters than doublegunshop.com, when it comes to advising the vintage gun crowd on what they should or should not run through their older guns. Large shot was around before WWII, and if your gun was used to shoot geese with lead 2's back then, it will shoot lead 2's just fine now. You may have to reload to keep the pressure down, and you ought to stick to a shot charge that's no heavier than what was available when your gun was made, but there shouldn't be any other concerns.

As for the "health" thing . . . kids eating lead paint chips is a different story than people eating game shot with lead. The North Dakota study of lead levels in human blood established that the participants had a lead level lower than the average American, and far below the CDC's "level of concern". Likewise, those participants who were hunters had a lead level lower than the average American. Lead poisoning is certainly real, but to suggest that it's a real danger to hunters and others eating meat from animals shot with lead projectiles is a pretty poor scare tactic.

I have been away from home for a bit and have read the posts I have not seen. Thanks to all who wrote. I would like to respond a bit.

Firstly, Ben Deeble seems to think if he publishes countless internet search lists on various subjects that the reader or listener might succomb to his "baffle them with bullshit" technique. Ben has not "connected the dots" as he says , to show any "good science" connecting his list with the proposal to ban lead shot in Montana's WMAs. He only lists countless unrelated studies hoping the reader or listener will tire and nod off, accepting his conclusions, which were arrived at without any "good science".

If Ben Deeble is intested in "good science" will he explain why , after maybe 80 years or so of South Dakota using lead shot for pheasants, South Dakota had the best pheasant season on record a few years ago. That is a good case study on lead shot and pheasants.

I think we all suspect that Ben, who willingly admits to depositing lead shot in Montana, but at his chosen sites, is not really in this fight , except to rattle enough sabres to get some "grant Money" for a study on the subject. I admonish all of you to watch closely the activities of Ben Deeble's employer, the National Wildlife Federation, and , I think, the Montana chapter of the same. These people solicit your funding -----how would you like your donations spent ?

Here's a link to a story in today's (1/21/10) Helena (MT's capital city) Independent Record newspaper:
http://www.helenair.com/news/article_e9fa7014-065a-11df-a28a-001cc4c002e0.html

And a quote by the head spokesman at MT fish & game from that story:


The comment period is still open until 5 PM Mountain time on Friday, 22 January 2010. Here's the link to the proposed changes to MT's UGB hunting regs:
http://fwp.mt.gov/hunting/opportunityForPublicComment/uplandGameBird.html

And here's the link to the web-based SurveyMonkey tool where you can leave comments (scroll down to comment box #15):
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/N2CCH9R

This story was run in most of the major MT daily newspapers, so IMO, it appears the comments are being heard.

Thanks MTDD, for posting something with content!

MT DD Fan-----------Thanks for your update. Hopefully the FWP and other interested parties can see through the thinly disguised proposals by Ben Deeble an his ilk.

Well, there it is, after all the smoke and mirrors: lead isn't a danger to upland species (other than doves), there are no biological reasons to ban it on WMA's in MT, but the issue is "consistency" with federal restrictions.

I always have nontox with me, in case I hunt an area where it's required. But I don't have any problem swapping back and forth, and continuing to use lead where nontox is not required.

Same story in the Livingston Enterprise this evening, I was pleased to see...
but you guys can go on debating with ben anyway...

Perhaps we just need to follow the money.

How appropriate for the vintage top end gun merchants and their hangers-on to wrap up the same string they started. This has been the elephant in the room during this whole discussion, and readers should listen for more of it.

How many tens-of-thousands of dollars of vintage shotguns do you Daryl, and Steven, buy, sell, repair, or create a year? How many of us have a Purdey 20 as our go-to game gun? Or write books to market to the men who do?

Clearly the greatest profits are to be made by people who fight to keep lead cheap, abundant and readily usable across all landscapes, public and private, to enhance the market, demand, and perception of the trade in luxury arms these men profit from. A trade greatly enhanced by maintaining the illusion that the realities of the modern world shall not intrude on the sporting gent. Can you see the pipes puffing?

Hughes is also a great craftman, while Daryl is just an avid collector and disposer of all those fine guns which no longer interest him. Both men serve a purpose, and are rewarded well for it. But mostly what they've got is more old double guns to sell. And I don't.

And where we really depart ways is to declare that a single biologist by sharing existing science is therefore vying for some unnamed mysterious grant monies... and this (ahah!) is the hidden profit motive really fueling the lead vs. non-toxic shot debate.... Now that just doesn't pass the straight face test.

I ain't the one with a Purdey in the corner, or living on acreage along the Gallatin or Bitterroot rivers in a fine log home. Or traveling to Vegas for gun shows, and who knows what else. I'm not a retired physician or beneficiary of my wife's family money daily pimping English side-by-sides to the unwashed. I'm living in a duplex with a muddy bird dog in the side yard reloading on a Duo-matic.

Vintage gun merchants is where we need to follow the money to, because this is where the profits are in this debate. This is where all the purple faces and stupid accusations come from. I'm sure the top end of the gun market has been a bit slow the last few years. And I genuinely sympathize until you start telling ridiculous and very personal lies about me. In this regard, you "gentlemen" should be ashamed of yourselves, because you are probably better than this.

Readers just need to tune their ear to this reality as they look at which information has really been of substance in this discussion, and distinguish it from that which contributed largely false personal accusations, name calling, and little else.

Time for the Commission to deliberate.

You know Ben, there are a whole lot of guys out there that fall into your income bracket and living situation, hunting with dad's or granddad's old Model 12, Parker, Fox, Browning Superposed, or A-5. And they really resent it when people try to use junk science to tell them "Sure, you can keep shooting that old gun. All you have to do is spend $2-3 per shell, and you can shoot it just as much as you want. Or, you can buy a Mossberg 500 and shoot the cheaper steel stuff."

You're way off base to make this about rich guys who want to keep shooting their London bests, Ben. Fox made 36,000 graded guns, in all gauges, compared to 153,000 Sterlingworths. Which means you're over 4 times as likely to run into someone who owns one of Fox's entry-level doubles as you are a guy who owns a fancier Fox. AND IT'S PRECISELY THOSE GUYS WITH THE STERLINGWORTHS, AND THE MODEL 12'S, THAT WILL HAVE TO THINK TWICE BEFORE THEY PAY 10X MORE PER SHELL, IF THEY WANT TO KEEP USING THOSE GUNS.

Not many people hunt for food any more. Sure, we eat what we shoot, but we'd be way ahead to buy a chicken at the local supermarket. It's about recreation. It's about tradition. It's about passing down your dad's or granddad's gun to your son or daughter. And I think a whole lot of people would rather hand down that gun to be used afield, just like dad or granddad did, rather than as a wall-hanger.

Could be the biologists have figured out the difference between research focused on urban pigeons eating lead paint chips and the nonexistent research about the threat posed by spent lead shot to wild upland bird populations. Could be they also realize that hunting in this country is an everyman's sport, unlike in many other parts of the world. And especially given today's economy, if you put everyman in the position of either having to buy a new shotgun through which he can shoot steel--a shotgun that lacks the memories and the "soul" of the one that's been in his family for 2 or 3 generations--or spending $3 a pop for shells, everyman might just decide it's time for him to give up hunting. And given the fact that fish and game departments rely on money from the licenses that everymen buy, and on the federal $ they get back based on how many licenses their state sells (under the Pittman-Robertson Act)--that money in turn based on a hidden tax on firearms and ammunition, which means if people aren't buying guns and shells, that pool of money also decreases--might just be that those DNR people recognize that this is not a good time to reduce the number of hunters. In addition to the economic impact, fewer hunters also means a greater threat to the sport (and to the DNR's) from anti-hunters.

Summary: There are a whole lot of reasons to take a really hard look before expanding requirements for nontoxic shot, especially when the "best science" does not support a threat from lead shot to the game populations in question.

I'm no arbiter. I'll say this: My father was a good man who spent years in close company of men, three years in Stalag Luft III, one of the key organizers of The Great Escape. We were close, shared a craft, collaborated on nearly everything; I nursed him the last year of his life. Sixty years ago he told me: "Report, write. Never impute motives. It's a dangerous thing."

ahhhhhhh class warfare that's what's needed for the debate.money fuels junk science that is all there is to it.after your last rant(grouse guy ) you are no longer credible. MC

Ben Deeble, after his fiasco of a year or more ago, has never been credible, to me. After reading all these comments I think one thing (maybe) we can all agree on emerges: If the science, real science, actually proves the case one way or another, we will live with it. Like Larry, I hunt areas, Nebraska , where non tox is required, and Put one of my Purdeys back in the truck to hunt there, using a CZ with steel. My purdey 20. or was it the 16, got scratched the other day when I threw it in the back of the pickup, where it must have banged against one of the Hollands...Come on Ben, enter the real world...

[quote=MT_DD_FAN] And a quote by the head spokesman at MT fish & game from that story:


Aw hell, now I do feel silly! Had I only known that there wasn't an actual need other than to be "consistent" I would have been cheer-leading right along with Komrade Deeble.

The following sent to me by a friend on the importance of being consistent:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

from R.W. Emerson


Rob Harris

Ben Deeble, again you can never answer the questions. What about the South Dakota question ? Now it's about rich guys like SDH and myself. Maybe I need to be rich to keep my 11 year old car running. Sadly, can this be your best points ?

It may be about money,though. Is it about study grants you hope for ? It's not about lead shot, because , as you say, you scatter it by the pounds in your chosen places. I again admonish all of you to look at how your dollars are spent when you are asked to contribute to he National Wildlife Federation an it's Montana branch.

Oh, I cannot for he life of me see what your "muddy dog" has to do with all of this. You need to send more time caring for the poor critter.

Sir,

I thought I had made my last post on this thread. Bad enough you list studies about earthworms and fluoroscopes from the 50's.

So, all vintage gun sellers are dealing in Purdey's. Well that must be a very small business indeed. There was just a show in Nevada with hundreds of sellers and thousands of attendees. So perhaps this niche is not as limited as you assume.

Vintage guns is the reason this forum exists, in case you every wondered what all those other threads are about. There are several thousand members here and hundreds of regulars.

I am not a dealer. My "collection" would never interest the majority of gun owners. I get several emails a month asking about vintage guns. The guns in question are often family heirlooms. Guns that sold for $5 to $20 from catalogs and hardware stores. Many want to be able to shoot these. Perhaps a few rounds of sporting clays or an occasional bird hunt. For some it is the only shotgun that they have ever owned. Mostly they want to use it out of respect for their grandfathers and fathers. They want to understand and feel the joy that their family members felt. For some, it will be as close as they ever come to being with them for a day in the field.

So, before we run out and write legislation that makes the use of these guns so prohibitive monetarily, would it not make sense to talk it out? Perhaps allowing a loop hole for guns that are 100 years old? I do not see that happening unfortunately.

Pete

very good amigo best, Mike

Ben the above argument is silly. You may know your way around the government bureaucracies but you obviously understand nothing about what goes on on this BBS.

Best,

Mike

I thank God every day he made me a Texan. Why, the government doesn't own enough land in the Republic to make a decent parking lot for our SUV's.

Latest update: MT FWP commission meets this week.
http://www.missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_87e84d12-1535-11df-b8b5-001cc4c03286.html

I thought the reason they said they proposed the lead ban on all WMA was to see what the MT hunters will say. It sounded somewhat like if California did it we should follow.
Now hunters and the golden eagle are in danger.
I don't see any raptors on the endangered or threatened list on MT FWP.
I bet we'll have a lead free MT state in the next 5 years. You can call me Ben if not.

Question: Do they shoot a whole lot of lead shot in that part of the world? Did they look for lead pellets? My guess would be, if it's ingested lead from carrion the eagles are eating, it might be from bullet fragments in big game. But it could be from other sources as well. No indication that it's from either lead shot or bullet fragments.

Our bald eagle numbers in Iowa have increased enormously--right through the period when we were the #1 pheasant state in the nation. Lead shot and/or bullet or slug fragments might be hurting some eagles, but certainly not enough to keep the population from increasing quite steadily--at least not in this part of the world.

The MT FWP commission voted today to totally KILL the lead shot ban...
http://www.helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/article_a7fbcf8e-1760-11df-bd63-001cc4c03286.html

FWP received over 2,600 comments via the survey monkey web site and more than 325 comments via letters and email on their proposed hunting regulations for 2010-11. If you're interested, you can read that information plus much more via this link: http://fwp.mt.gov/news/publicnotices/notice.html?action=getPublicNotice&id=2285


You might also be interested to know that BEFORE today's meeting FWP staff modified their original proposal from a total ban lead shot on all WMAs to only add the Freezeout Lake and Canyon Ferry WMAs to the restricted list along with existing Pb shot bans at NinePipe and Pablo. And FWP staff did it because of the public comment they received. The following quote comes directly from the FWP COMMISSION AGENDA ITEM (for UGB & Turkey) COVER SHEET prepared for today's commission meeting:


The MT FWP commission, at least a majority, listened to their constituents.

Very Good news!

Common sense prevails. Good job, you Montanans!

If members here were in my home, I'd say this but on an international board I don't want to appear rude and crude. I'm going to say it anyway.

I work in social and natural resource development, adult education, activism. I don't do thinking for others. At meetings I say, in effect, O.K now, get your shit together.

Reason does not always prevail. It can't prevail without responsible citizenship. As Larry said, Good job, you Montanans.

I'd also like to thank a couple Montanans for their stand on this issue, the two of five Commissioners who voted for the lead birdshot prohibition on the state's two major wetland-based upland hunting areas.

One, reponding to the charge that there was no "site specific" data that lead birdshot was harming waterfowl said "you don't need to drop a match into a can of gasoline to know what is going to happen." The other said the decision to ban lead is "biologically correct" and took issue with a suggestion that his support for it was based on "political correctness."

MT_DD_FAN,

Thank you for keeping us informed.

I notice in the legislative arena, Idaho either follows Montana's lead on a particular topic, or Montana follows Idaho's lead. Hopefully, the outcome of the leadshot ban in Montana, will be the impetus needed for the ID Dept of F&G to drop their quest in banning lead from the WMA's here in Idaho.

Way to go Montanan's!

An updated story from the local newspaper in Helena:
http://www.helenair.com/news/local/state...1cc4c002e0.html

FYI, Commissioners Moody and Ream voted in favor of the Pb shot ban. Here are links with backgrounds on the current MT FWP commissioners:
http://governor.mt.gov/news/pr.asp?ID=405
http://governor.mt.gov/news/pr.asp?ID=644
http://www.montanawildlife.org/news/Commissioners.htm

For those not wanting to read the above links, here are brief summaries of the FWP commissioners' backgrounds:

Bob Ream, Helena. Ream is a former legislator, and taught and conducted research in wildlife management for the University of Montana’s School of Forestry. Ream directed a study in the relationships between elk and logging in the Sapphire Mountains elk herd, and was the director of the wolf ecology project for UM. He has a B.S. in agronomy from the University of Wisconsin, an M.S. in botany/zoology from the University of Utah and a PhD. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin. Ream served in the Montana House of Representatives for 16 years, elected to this position eight times. Ream retired from the University of Montana in 1997 and also stepped down from his legislative position at the same time. Ream was elected Chair of the Montana Democratic Party, and was re-elected in 1999, 2001, and 2003.

Ron Moody, Lewistown. Moody is on the BLM Central Montana Resource Advisory Council and is a director of the Public Land/Water Access Association. He is retired from FedEx, and received a B.A. in journalism and political science from the University of Mississippi. Moody has also served on the Montana Library Commission. Moody writes a bi-monthly column on the future of hunting in the 21st Century. His column, titled “NIMROD’S TRACE,” is published in ‘Montana Wildlife’ and online at: http://www.huntingandfishingjournal.org/misc_page.html
Moody's last (?) "Nimrod's Trace" column can be read at this link: http://www.mhfj.org/PDFs/NimrodsTrace.pdf

Dan Vermillion, Livingston: Vermillion is the vice president and co-owner of Sweetwater Travel Company in Livingston and is the founder and developer of Taimen Conservation Fund in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He worked as an attorney in Billings for close to a decade. Vermillion received his bachelor’s degree from The American University and his juris doctorate from the University of Montana.

Willie Doll, Malta: Doll owns and operates a 27,000-acre farm and ranch in south Phillips County. He is an avid hunter and has an active interest in streamside management, improved range conditions and waterfowl production areas. Doll will assume the role of designated member with experience in breeding and management of domestic livestock, a role previously held by Commissioner Shane Colton of Billings.

Shane Colton, Billings, Chair. Colton is an attorney with Edmiston & Colton Law Firm. He earned his undergraduate degree from Montana State University-Bozeman and his J.D. degree from the University of Montana-Missoula. He is a member of the Spotted Ass Sporting Clays Club and the Billings Rod and Gun Club. Colton grew up in the Denton, MT area.

Good luck to our counter-parts in Idaho!

THANKS!

That commissioner who made the match into a can of gasoline analogy did indeed find out what happens: you learn that a whole lot of reasonable Montanans are looking for some good science that shows ingested lead shot poses a threat to wild upland bird populations. From MT FWP: "Lead presence and accumulation under extremely low levels of lead shot use has not been established as a significant environmental concern."

Thought some of you might find this interesting for the spotlight it shines on Montana 'politiks'. Gary Marbut is the current president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association and a vigilant defender of our shooting rights.

I'm certain Komrade Deeble will be along shortly to disparage Mr. Marbut and his remarks.......but here you have it......we are not done with this issue yet.


Rob Harris

P.S. 'Thanks' to MT_DD_FAN for the many informational links.....as they're much appreciated.


From: "Gary Marbut-MSSA" <mssa@mtssa.org>
To: <mssa@mtssa.org>
Subject: Lead shot ban narrowly defeated - report
Date: Saturday, February 13, 2010 10:54 AM

Dear MSSA Friends,

You may have read or heard that the FWP Commission turned back the FWP Department's proposed lead shot ban for upland game bird hunting on a narrow 3-2 vote.

The Missoulian/Lee Bureau story is located
<http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_93f2a4d8-1763-11df-a285-001cc4c002e0.html>HERE.

From the story: "Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Joe Maurier suggested looking at such a ban in certain areas in Montana after returning from a conference of wildlife managers."

You may remember that Maurier has little experience in Montana and maybe little or no experience hunting, and was hired primarily because he was Governor Schweitzer's college roommate and buddy. Apparently Joe heard about this California-style idea at a conference of western F&G directors and thought it would be California-groovy to run it in Montana.

As you probably know, there was no scientific basis offered for the lead ban, and little or no consideration of unintended consequences.

However, encouraged by the narrow vote, Maurier expressed intent to attempt the ban again. And, somebody who attended this meeting of the F&G Commission told me that the strong public comment against the ban was largely discounted and dismissed when the ban was presented.

Of the seven people primarily responsible for setting FWP policy, the five members of the Commission plus the Department Director and Deputy Director, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that none of them are hunters, especially big game hunters. And, remember, they are all appointed by Governor Schweitzer.

Bottom line: Expect the lead ban proposal to be proposed again with enough new justification to attempt to peel off one more vote on the Commission. And, expect a bill in the next session of the legislature to prohibit FWP from regulating ammunition for hunting.

Thanks to Commission Chairman Shane Colton of Billings for making the motion to dump the lead ban proposal.

Gary Marbut, president
Montana Shooting Sports Association
http://www.mtssa.org
author, Gun Laws of Montana
http://www.mtpublish.com