doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Public commentary to MN DNR.

I don't think it's possible to say that switching to nontox for waterfowl had no impact on the eagle population. We know that eagles die from lead poisoning, and we know that eagles spend a lot of time around lakes and wetlands--where we used to shoot lots of ducks and geese with lead. And where a lot of them went unrecovered, giving the eagles plenty of ducks and geese with lead in their bodies on which to scavenge. All we do know is that since banning DDT and switching to nontox for waterfowl, eagles have made a miraculous recovery. If ingesting lead fragments is killing them today, why wouldn't ingesting lead shot have been killing them back before we stopped shooting lead at waterfowl?

Larry,
Eagles are an odd part of the issue. Anyone who knows a bit about what birds of prey cough up after a meal can spot the difference between eagle and say owl or hawk scat-the former has no bones or hair in it, due to the strong digestive acid in an eagles stomach.
They are more sensitive to lead than most other birds. But, having said that, any number that gets dragged up on lead poisoning for eagles pales in comparison to the number killed in collisions with cars, as the birds are happy to feed on carrion on the side of the road, and a bunch perish that way every year. Yet, they are flourishing, and nobody can disagree with that.
Besides the numbers of birds being different today, than, say, 50 years past, the behavior of birds of prey is night and day different than it was then. To a large degree, they have lost their fear of mankind, and will not flee anytime a human is within 500 yards, something that is dramatically different than when I was a kid.
Several locals, including myself, wrote the Mpls. paper, in response to the lead shot ban story-none were printed in the op/ed section, but, there was one printed from someone who thought all lead sinkers and lead shot should be banned.
This is typical behavior out of the "Red Star" which also sees fit to print letters from local crazies who compare anyone who is a climate change skeptic to Nazis.
The very good news is they are dying a slow and painful death from lack of readership.

Best,
Ted

You're half way right. Banning DDT had the most significant impact on the recovery of the bald eagle. The recovery was well on it's way before the requirement to use non-tox shot circa 1990. The rate of recovery was unaffected by the switch to non-toxic shot. I suggest reading the U.S. Fish and Wildlife own story (located on the left side of the page with the link listed below) about the recovery of the bald eagle, the switch to non-toxic shot isn't even mentioned.

Here's the hard numbers (again) on the recovery of the bald eagle:

http://www.fws.gov/midwest/eagle/population/chtofprs.html

The fact is, the bald eagle population is booming and it's recovery is a remarkable story. There doesn't need to be any new laws passed to aid in it's continued recovery, including banning all lead shot. Any animal whose population continues to rise to record levels, will come into increased contact with human activity. While there will be more stories of eagles dying from eating lead in deer carcasses, flying into windmills/buildings, being hit by vehicles while eating roadkill...etc. The population is extremely healthy, and will continue to rise, and there is no need to believe the fear tactics used by the anti lead/gun crowd.

Merry Christmas to you and yours Ted!

Let's hope the Grinch doesn't steal the lead up there. Hopefully, the good people of Minnesota have had a belly-full of all the junk science that has been spewed from almost all the Federal and State agencies over the years, on everything from global warming and lead, to eggs & bacon, even apples(!), etc., and wholeheartedly reject this example. Here's also hoping that your local liberal rag will continue to loose the little credibility they still command(along with most of the dominant liberal-establishment mass media) amongst the population (in Minnesota and elsewhere as well!).

As for me, I'm off w/my clan on yet another hunter/gatherer adventure (through Chicago and then to Buffalo, NY!). From there I'm renting a flivver and I'm headed back to my roots (in rural, North Central Pennsylvania) to chase whitetail deer with flintlock guns and ruffed grouse with dirty old American pumps. I may even chase a steelhead trout or two over the holidays with a fly rod (a rather large and modern one). A truly cold & dirty job, but somebody absolutely-must do it (& I volunteered, after all). When I return, hopefully I'll have a nice new gun shop to loaf around in, in downtown Denver (I'm hearing good reports!). Hope springs eternal here! May 2016 hold blessings and promise for us all!

No question the bald eagle population is in great shape. But they're also the national bird, and extremely visible. And the antis are going to use them as the "poster bird" to go after lead.

Anyone who knows anything about wildlife recognizes that we don't concern ourselves with the deaths of individual wild critters as long as the species remains healthy. (If we worried about individual deer, grouse, quail, rabbits, etc, then we could hardly justify hunting them.) But eagles, because they are so visible and because they are clearly harmed by ingesting lead, will be used to beat us over our collective heads. Like it or not . . . get used to it.

About all we can say, when the antis come after lead shot, is: "Let's see some good science. Show us eagles that have died as a result of ingesting lead shot. Not lead bullet fragments, but lead shot. After all, an eagle is far more likely to feed on a deer that's wounded and goes off to die than it is on a pheasant or a grouse that the hunter does not recover. Then show us--in a blind study--that steel shot is as effective on upland game as is lead shot. Unless that is demonstrated, might we not be sacrificing a lot of pheasants, grouse etc shot with steel that fly off crippled when they might have been killed cleanly with lead? And are not the lives of lost pheasants and grouse as valuable as those of the very occasional lost eagle?"

I don't believe the thoughtful, measured approach works. As mentioned a bit ago, the wind turbine industry gets Bald Eagle, and other protected bird 'take' permits that get hardly a whimper of protest.

The 'like it or not...get used to it' folks are all on the same or similar pages. My 'feeling' is that something needs to trigger hunter's emotions to become engaged in the issues. Science keeps 'em at home on their easy chair. The ideologs 'know' wildlife, not the objective 'scientist'.

Craig,
If we are honest, the ideologs don't know, or care about wildlife, to a large degree-this is an agenda driven "good first step" type of thing, driven by politics, or, more correctly, one side of the political spectrum.
Lacking any concrete evidence is no excuse to not wield power over those you consider inferior to yourself, and your mantra. If the costs go up, that drives the poorer folk out of the game, and makes the ultimate goal easier to grasp. Only the folk with skin in the game will care what happens to hunting and shooting.
My heart bleeds for those kids with a single mother, who have managed to get an old shotgun of some sort, and a pair of boots, and talk her into getting up early on a weekend, to drop them off at a WMA, to attempt a little hunting, on their own. How many regulations are too many for that kid? How much money for expendables, like ammunition, is too much? How much leftist drivel has that kid had to listen to, and, ignore, at his school, in order to catch the sunrise on that day afield?
Does anyone have any idea what those kids are up against?


Best,
Ted

Ted, when I was teaching Hunter Education down here in Iowa, quite a few of those single moms showed up, with kid in tow, at our classes. Darned good to see too! They can't turn those kids loose on their own on a WMA unless the kid has a license, and they can't get the license without passing Hunter Ed.

Any time we can poke holes in the positions taken by those pushing nontox, it's worth doing. Shows that they haven't done their homework. They got the waterfowl ban because they showed ducks that had died from lead poisoning. So it's only "fair and balanced" to expect them to produce the same kind of evidence they produced back then.

What makes me think, 'they' are already 'winning'.

Anyway, I've wondered if eagles, like waterfowl, were found with lead in their tummies, or if they died of lead poisoning. The comments make some sense, Larry, but it's tough to figure out which side is benefiting more.

The problem with this is that much of the evidence from "back then" was not properly vetted. It is one thing to show heart wrenching pictures of dying ducks, or eagles for that matter, and quite another to prove that lead poisoning is the cause. And a couple pieces of shot or bullet fragments in a gizzard or digestive system also does not prove that hunters ammunition is the source of the bulk of lead in a birds system. There are many other environmental sources of lead and lead poisoning that are far more efficient at getting elemental lead into vertebrate systems.

Scientific evidence is frequently manufactured. Fudging of data by agenda driven people is much more common than you think. Animal rights groups such as PETA, HSUS, the Audobons, etc., are not beyond littering or cutting farmers fences so that blame will be placed on hunters. We all know, or should know, about the manufactured false data that was used by East Anglia University and Penn State University to support the Global Warming hypothesis. Remember all the hoopla about so-called "Cold Fusion" back in the 1990's that did not stand the test of peer review and replication in the lab?

Every duck or eagle that is alive today will die from something. None are immortal. Pictures of dead or dying birds alone are not proof of lead poisoning, and neither are a couple pieces of lead shot. Especially when that evidence is provided by anti-hunting organizations. Harry Whittington, the man accidentally shot by Dick Cheney, has up to 200 pieces of lead shot remaining in his body without being sickened from lead poisoning. 200 pieces of lead shot has a lot more surface area than a single lodged bullet or a few bullet fragments. Lead poisoning can and does occur from lodged bullets, but it is rare. Lead exposed to digestive acids will dissolve and be absorbed into the bloodstream much more readily, but it will typically just pass through and be excreted before it dissolves enough to cause poisoning. Just some things to think about before you willing give up lead ammunition to agenda driven anti-hunters.