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.

May God bless America and those who defend her.