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!
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.
