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?
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?
