doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lead shot increasingly under fire

Geo.
I wasn't directing that comment at you, quite the contrary. Just the world in general and the i-net in particular. Seems pretty common that when the facts tell one something that that doesn't fit with one's political position - just hell it is all a lie, and claim common sense for your own side, do it loudly and often and eventually, it will become the truth.

And yes scientists have lied. But not often and they have a long way to go to catch up to politicians. But science should always be questioned and tested = and generally speaking, it is. So, eventually, the liars and the cheats find themselves with their backs to the wall and that wall turns out to be in front of a firing squad.

How does this strike you for common sense? Globally, in about a quarter of the predator/prey interactions out there, the prey population is larger in the presence of a specific predator species than when the predator is absent.

Geo,

The symbiotic relationship that a raptor provides a prairie dog town is thus:

Prairie Dogs breed at a high rate of speed. They annex new territory quickly. The higher their numbers, the increased odds of disease and in particular, bubonic plague. (for which they are hosts) Pressure from raptors kills the weak, the dumb and the frail of the prairie dog town keeping the stock healthy and in check.

Further, the pressure from the raptors reduces feeding opportunities for the prairie dogs (keeping them close to holes) which reduces their sprawl and consumption of limited sage habitat desirable for other members of the ecosystem.

For more than half a century there was a double eyrie (nest) of Ferruginous hawks in Wyoming not far from Medicine Bow on BLM (Bureau of Land Management, Public Land) The primary eyrie was at least 15' tall and produced as many as 6 chicks per year. The secondary (backup nest) eyrie was only 30 yards away and was perhaps 8' tall.

In the tremendous valley adjacent the eyrie was a huge prairie dog town that provided enough food to create a sustainable food base for the largest hawk in North America. (A species so large Audobon called them "spotted eagles")

When I went out about 6 years ago to check in on the area all the prairie dogs were gone. Not half, not 95%. Every prairie dog out of the hundreds and hundreds that existed were gone. In the valley there was thousands of .223 military trash-grade brass cases where it was clear a group of yahoos came in, came onto WE THE PEOPLE'S LAND and exterminated an ecosystem.

The Ferruginous hawk eyries are still there but the nests are no longer active. Did the wholesale slaughter of all the dogs force the hawks to move from their 50 year home? Or, did the pile of lead infused prairie dogs become foraging ground for them until lead toxicity took hold and eradicated the hawks directly?

Either way, this is the kind of BS that varmint hunters do for pleasure on national lands with little understanding of the harm they are causing. These animals weren't "varmints" hurting a farmer or rancher's land, they were part of a natural, intact ecosystem. Some schmucks just came along and exterminated that ecosystem for pleasure using lead ammunition where 100% certainty is that they left the carcasses to rot in the open until another animal consumed them and received secondary poisoning.

As hunters we have to be better than this. We have to prune our own ranks and ostracize these marginal, fringe hunters, self regulate and protect our sports from these people's negative PR.

Well, it strikes me as common sense that the greater the prey population, the greater the predator population will be...what doesn't follow in my mind, is the idea that the predator presence causes the prey population to increase. Or, as Rookhawk pointed out above that population increase in the prey population is a healthy thing in the first place...Geo

Geo. Indeed, it is not so obvious, but can and does happen about 25% of the time. The clue it the general mechanism is almost apparent in Rook's argument above. But it is not quite completed.


Also, the killing of the weak and and the sick etc. generally is NOT a benefit accrued to a species in an adaptive sense. It requires a group selectionist argument that doesn't stand up to the math.

But right now, I have to solve some paleohuman questions with a student.

Brent and Rookhawk both, I know this is a situation where your viewpoint is generally unpopular (after all its a GUN forum), but also where your insight can be of some substantial value to those who really wish to understand the lead shot argument more clearly. Please continue this diologue as time permits and while I may not be willing or even capable of reading and understanding the literature, I am quite willing and would appreciate the chance to listen to the "executive summary" of what the research does say...Geo

Here's an x-Ray of a deer showing the lead fragmentation that gets left in the field either whole (with varmints) or in the guts (with game cleaned in the field with remnants left to rot).

Brent, this seems like the thinking of an evolutionist that is focused on those moments in time when adverse conditions encourage or support evolutionary changes to a species. I don't think that a predator/prey relationship encourages new adaptation, rather the consistent predator/prey relationship encourages the status quo equilibrium between them.

But dare I say, I'm taking us off topic here. The topic was really: "why are we getting more pressure to ban lead" to which my hypothesis is in part "because fringe / marginal hunters are destroying ecosystems with wanton waste using lead. That in turn is causing negative press on all lead use that is undermining the sports we cherish."

Rookhawk, that x-ray showing all the lead fragments in the deer creates a powerful impression, but it begs the question: what kind of rifle bullet was used? Of course I could shoot a deer with one of the highly frangible 'varmit bullets' and an x-ray would probably look just like your example, but I wouldn't. I do not accept it as fact that a proper lead bullet intended by the maker for deer sized game would leave a fragmentation field like your photo depicts. Conversely, it also is not clear to me that the fragmentation field resulting from shooting a deer sized animal will be the same in a squirrel.

That is the problem with the lead ban debate. If you're drinking the Sierra Club cool-aid things look one way and if you are walking in lock-step with the NRA the "evidence" has a completely different complexion.

Not to argue semantics, but respectfully, I still don't accept your position that the predator-prey relationship between species equates to a symbiotic one...Geo

Don't you suppose that REASONABLE people, almost by definition, do not drink anyone's koolaid or walk in lockstep? Why be so binomial about it?

And does anyone know what sorts of bullets are being use on deer these days? I'd love to have x-rays of the two deer I shot with factory Winchester silvertips (one .308 one .30-30). Both blew up ridiculously. And of course, Win STs are NOT varmint bullets, and both calibers are slow dogs in today's world of "adequate" hunting rifles.

And just how many times was that deer shot? And what are the sizes of slug reflected in the image.

The first deer I saw killed was one which wandered into the area hunted by a neighboring deer camp. It took 31 hits from no one knows how many different calibers of centerfire rifle, and a couple of rifled slugs, before it collapsed.

The radiograph is interesting, assuming it's a real one and not a forgery. But it might be useful if, for starters, we knew how many times the animal was shot, and the scale of the radiograph.