doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lead Shot Ban in Montana

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.