doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com non-toxic factory dove loads for 16 ga

recommendations? Looking for something close to my 2.5/1/8 lead reloads for my Sauer Model 8 built in 1911.

2 1/2" Non-tox Factory loads are expensivw

This in #6

http://www.rstshells.com/bismuth.aspx

Mike

Its one of those situations where the whole topic of no-tox nonsense honestly needs to be revisited.

The real solution is political.

Federal is about the only major brand I know of.

RST is not always available.

Sauer's are stoutly built. I'd check my chokes and shoot the Federal's at doves.

Hal are you wanting 2 1/2 dram equiv or 2 1/2" length??

The former. Guess Federals are my only option.

I've been reloading steel for over 30 years and wish to go lead-free for upland as well, especially on doves, as most of my spent shot falls on dry soil in wheat and canola stubble where it can be ingested like seeds or gravel. I read where the Missouri Conservation Department estimated 9-15 million doves die annually from load poisoning, a toll at least equal to the take by hunters.

I got my deer with lead-core 6mm again this year, but will try some solid copper bullets next year if I can find them. The lead bullets can hit a rib and fragment badly. I don't want to eat those fragments or feed them to my dog or leave a gutpile containing them for the predators or scavengers.

Are R.E.A.L. non-toxic bullets available for muzzleloaders yet?'
Would like some for my 28 ga/.577 Janeck (Dresden) buschelinte.

Who exactly counted and diagnosed 9 to 15 million doves

In Missouri ?............ in the USA ? .............. ???

If you can, please cite the research data.

Thanks, SRH

not official

https://abcbirds.org/article/dove-hunter...son-approaches/

Thanks. Nationally, I assume. Should I also assume that if a dead dove is examined, and it has a lead pellet inside it, the dove died of lead poisoning?

More "suggestions"...........


"Studies suggest that it may be possible that 8.8 to 15 million Mourning Doves are dying from lead poisoning annually�roughly the same number of doves legally harvested."

And, how does the fact that the mortality rate for healthy doves is over 50% play into those "studies", I wonder.

SRH

I have cleaned one hell of a lot of doves over the last 60+ years and I have NEVER found a lead pellet in a dove's crop. Of course, I have not been looking for lead pellets but I do look at what they have been eating to get some idea of where they have been. The linked article is not even junk science. There is virtually no science in the article.

I don't see much in a superficial scan of the literature that suggests where the estimate comes from. Someone that really wants to know would want to contact the author for the reference.



If you can see this, you might want to look at an old (1968) paper in JWM

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3798925.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Af02c0884df27abd871237c5de0a992f4

LEAD SHOT INGESTION BY MOURNING DOVES
AND INCIDENCE IN SOIL
JAMES C. LEWIS, Tennessee Game and Fish Commission, Nashville1
EUGENE LEGLER, JR., Tennessee Game and Fish Commission, Nashville
Abstract: Biologists in Tennessee collected 1,949 gizzards from doves harvested on fields managed for public hunting. One percent of the doves had ingested between 1 and 24 lead shot. Pre- and post-hunt soil samples were collected from a field with a history of 8 years of managed public doves hooting. In the top % inch of soil there were 10,890 shot per acre before the September 1 and 2 hunt. The post-hunt sample indicated 43,560 shot per acre in the top 3/8 inch.



More recently (2006) there is this in Biological Conservation
Volume 131, Issue 3, August 2006, Pages 421-432.

A review of lead poisoning from ammunition sources in terrestrial birds
Author links open overlay panelIan J.FisheraDeborah J.PainaVernon G.Thomasb
Show more
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2006.02.018Get rights and content
Abstract
Poisoning from lead shot in waterbirds has been well documented globally and, in some countries, legislation exists to combat lead toxicosis at wetlands and/or in waterbirds. However, poisoning of terrestrial species such as raptors and upland game birds, while of potential conservation concern, remains largely to be addressed. For several species, shot are not the only ammunition source of lead, as bullet fragments can be ingested from hunter-killed animal carcasses and gut piles left in the field. This review collates the current knowledge of lead poisoning from ammunition in non-waterbirds. Fifty-nine terrestrial bird species have so far been documented to have ingested lead or suffered lead poisoning from ammunition sources, including nine Globally Threatened or Near Threatened species. We discuss the conservation significance of continued lead use, and detail measures needed to combat lead poisoning.

The 9-15 million thing in the pop-literature article "suggests" to me that they are looking at a statistical estimate with a 95% Confidence interval, but that's just a guess. I have not tracked my way into this article from here.

I don't doubt 9-15 million die each year from lead poison but it not by eating it, that they die from. It is from the lead pellets traversing their bodies, hitting important areas as they go. I have never cleaned a dove who has had a pellet which was not fatal and that they healed from it. I am sure a few might happen but not many. Most non fatal hits have to go through non vital areas or be so superficial that they rarely are retain in the bird. So even lead poisoning from pellet hits I suspect is a rare thing.

Evey consider the lottery odds of a pellet falling into an area that a dove will be eating? Probably have a better chance hitting the Powerball and Mega millions lottery the same week.

Ky Jon,

Read the last sentence of the first abstract.

Whether you believe or not, that's up to you. I tend to believe BUT I started reloading non-toxics so I won't be sitting home knashing my teeth over the fact that I can't hunt because I don't have non-toxic ammo, I'll be out hunting. I have two coyote hunting rifles all dialed in with non-toxics just incase or I go to a state that requires it. I use them regularly but still hunt coyotes with lead also until I need to change.

For 2.5" 16ga non-toxic for and old shotgun, MEC is your friend. I have a 600 set up with a short shell kit that I load bismuth for waterfowl or you can just roll crimp new hulls and hand fill them, either buy 2.5" hulls or cut down 2.75. Most 2.75" data will fit in a roll crimped 2.5" hull. I always try to err on the light side of pressure and keep my shells as mild as possible. It is easier to wait for a bird to get 10 yards closer than to repair a fine old shotgun.

I think natural mortality of nestlings and juveniles is high for most small birds. So deaths from manmade causes like collisions with cars, towers, hunting, poisoning, etc. would be additive to the annual rate. I've heard it said that 70% of all birds alive in July are dead by December, but that surely has to be an estimate.

This crap posted by BrentD should be saved to serve as an example of the junk science that is perpetrated, propagated, and posted by anti-lead advocates.

If we assumed that there was no hunting and no lead shot deposition on this field managed for public hunting for 8 years, the author gives a pellet count of 10,890 pellets per acre in the top "%" inch of soil. I assume that "%" is a typo, and it should have been "3/8" of an inch, as in the later sample count.

Then after the Sept. 1 and 2 hunt, the total amount of shot deposited per acre increase by EXACTLY 400%... to the pellet.

Read that again... 10,890 pellets per acre over 8 years would be an average of 1,361.25 pellets per acre per year. Then in season 9, an additional 32,760 pellets per acre was added. And the total shot per acre in that field exactly quadrupled in just one short two day season. But the yearly average, assuming there was no hunting there prior to the 8 years of managed dove hunting, increased by over 24 times in just one short season.

I think the real reason for this study may be that there is psychological research being conducted to see how many people are stupid enough to believe anything, no matter how outlandish.

What exactly were the authors of this junk science trying to say??? Did someone go around with a Shop Vac and vacuum up the shot from previous years, or did the doves eat it all??? Or did the authors just assume that readers would all be stupid enough to swallow any horseshit that they made up and printed???

Then, if we look at the American Bird Conservancy article posted by skeetx, that study claims more than 75,000 lead pellets per acre of managed dove field in just one season. That so-called study went on to say that a dove ingesting just one lead pellet is essentially a dead dove. Yet nobody that spends a lot of time in dove habitat is reporting millions of doves either dead, or suffering from fatal doses of lead poisoning. This is as mysterious as the millions of sick ducks and geese that suddenly stopped getting sick right after anti-lead advocates got what they wanted.

Now, remember that lead is a very persistent element in nature. Lead bullets and fragments from Civil war battlefields are encrusted in a hard oxide layer, and have not dissolved. Lead objects from the Roman Empire are still recovered largely intact. And lead pellets from before the Federal lead shot ban from waterfowl are still on the bottoms of oceans, lakes, and wetlands.

The American Bird Conservancy site also has this page about the over one BILLION birds that die annually from crashing into windows.

https://abcbirds.org/get-involved/bird-smart-glass/

Those who are concerned about bird mortality would be better off working to eliminate window glass, than switching to ballisticly inferior non-lead ammunition

And anyone who buys the crap BrentD posted needs to have their heads examined.

....But BrentD swallows it hook, line, and sinker.

'68, and then there's a lapse in 'data' till '06? There's was an environmental symposium just a couple of days ago with cutting edge speakers. In fact, about fifty something of them got arrested at the hahvad n yale football game.

Yeah I read it. It�s crap. When they talk about pellets in the top inch you need to call bull shit right there. No dove is going to be digging up to an inch for a seed or grit and get a shot by mistake. If it is not surface it does not matter. This is just more junk science. If you look at the assumption they make it always falls on a worst case because it supports their viewpoint from the beginning.

Now if you wanted to get some real date fo down to the dove fields in Argentina. There you will find lead shot. But you are talking about industrial output instead of just a few days a year. And most done field a only get heavy use a couple days a year.

Read it again. I understand that you will deny everything that does not fit your agenda, but at least make your denial fit with the actual written words. You look doltish when you deny things that weren't even written.

Keith is correct on the total insolubility of elemental lead in water.
It is the free lead ions that have been shown to be powerful neurotoxins that damage tissues, organs, immune systems and reproductive systems in animals.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485653/

I never claimed that lead is not a neurotoxin in birds, or mammals for that matter. My point was to say that virtually all lead shot deposited on a field will still be there a hundred years from now. The problem is vastly overblown by anti-lead ammunition advocates like BrentD. The very worst source of bio-available lead in the environment was stopped when we went to unleaded gasoline for vehicles. And there were many other sources of millions of tons of bio-available lead such as paints, pesticides, other chemicals, dust and fumes from smelters before pollution controls, etc.

KY Jon was correct about the sheer amount of lead shot-fall on Argentinian dove fields versus here in the U.S. He is also correct to point out that any lead shot that has sunk even 1/4 or 3/8 of an inch below the surface is lead shot that will never be ingested by a dove. And any tillage in an agricultural field is going to cause a lot more dense lead shot to go deeper over time than it leaves on the surface. Lead is known to cause reproductive harm, yet doves in Argentina continue to fly healthy and reproduce by the hundreds of millions. Several guys here who have dove hunted there have also witnessed eagles that feast upon doves wounded by lead shot, without any apparent dire threat to the survival of the species.

BrentD obviously still doesn't have any suspicions about the data in the abstract he posted yesterday. He doesn't see anything unusual in the numbers, where the total amount of shot in the top 3/8 inch of soil precisely quadrupled (to the pellet!) in just one short two day hunt, and the amount deposited in the last hunt was 24 times the previous annual average.

It should be obvious that the so-called researchers were simply pulling numbers out of the air, and hoping everyone was stupid enough to swallow the obvious horse shit.

I can remember all those gut wrenching pictures of supposedly lead poisoned ducks and geese before the Federal lead shot ban was enacted. The lead shot that was used in those areas has not been cleaned up, and it did not go away. If any "free ions" from over a century of lead shot use were problematic, as Hal has suggested, then the death and dying should still be happening on a grand scale. Yet the lead poisoning epidemic in waterfowl somehow pretty much just stopped all of a sudden. And lets not forget that many of those ducks and geese are still doing an annual migration, and spending significant time in countries where lead shot has not been banned for waterfowl. Now the new poster-child has become eagles that supposedly eat deer gut piles and varmint carcasses that are filled with lead bullet fragments.

Lead ammo bans are nothing more than a back-door approach to gun control. Making the cost of shooting prohibitive will naturally lower participation in the shooting sports, and slowly change the culture to one that is more likely to accept gun control. The dots are there, if you are intelligent enough to connect them.

When soil is tilled and then rained on, the smaller, lighter particles like silts and clays often wash away or go downward, leaving larger, heavier particles like sands and pebbles at or near the surface. Strong winds will also blow away the light particles. Wouldn't lead pellets also tend to be left on the surface?
I think its a different story in wetlands where the pellets would work their way downward through the soft, usually undisturbed, bottom sediments. As an old waterfowler, I would like to believe the switch to non-toxics has lessened lead poisoning in ducks, especially those that root around in bottom sediments to feed. Ditto with swans that now are so abundant we have a season on them (we are roasting mine on Thursday).

As questionable as some of the lead poisoning studies may be, there have been so many of them now involving so many species, as well as those dealing with human ingestion of wild game, that I am ready to throw in the towel and go unleaded.
It might even help tone down the gun-grabbers and anti-hunters by taking away one of their old, highly exaggerated talking points.

No Hal, the lead pellets will work their way downward through the looser surface soil particles until they hit the harder clay layer, in soils that have such strata. We do here. Wind on the surface, rainfall impact, freezing and thawing, the movement of machines and equipment on the surface, foot traffic ....... all will cause slight agitation of the surface particles allowing the much denser lead to sink. Even the workings of earthworms through the subsurface layer will hasten the downward movement of lead. Some types of soil tillage in agricultural lands will effect the same, especially discing. The one tillage operation that would return lead to the surface would be bottom plowing, which reverses the soil profile and brings up a deeper layer of soil to the surface. However, rainfall and traffic soon causes the same previous profile to return, and the pellets have worked their any back down again.

I would be willing to bet that, in most soils, free falling lead pellets will actually bury themselves slightly beneath the surface upon impact with the bare soil. Not so where there is a ground cover.

I have witnessed the extraordinary number of predators that feed on dove carcasses in C�rdoba. With the tens of thousands of doves that are eaten there every night, killed by lead pellets, there shouldn't be a scavenging predator left, that is if the lead pellets they ingest are so deadly to raptors, reptiles and mammals. Got my doubts.

SRH

Have my doubts about your theory of constantly and rapidly sinking pellets. It is obvious that heavier objects are left behind when soil erodes from wind or water. Time for a test in sandy, silty, and clayey agricultural soils under various cultivation techniques.
And I'd guess that both lead and steel shot would pass through the digestive system of coyotes with no loss of mass, rendering the consumption of dove carcasses mostly harmless. I have never heard of a wild fox or coyote that was shown to have died from lead poisoning.

I didn't see where Stan said that the downward migration or sinking of those heavy dense lead pellets was "rapid".

I wasn't going to comment when I saw your post last night. It seemed obvious that you have your mind made up, specific gravity of lead, and the non-stop efforts of anti-gun and anti-lead ammunition advocates be damned.

But let's look at an even denser metal, gold. There is a reason why the vast majority of gold is found well below the earth's surface. Like lead, whether it is molten or in solid form, over time, it sinks. Free lead is seldom found in nature, so gold is a good example. The small amount of gold that is found on or near the surface is typically from meteorites, or blasted to the surface during volcanic activity. Being so dense, it immediately begins to sink into the earth, or is washed into creeks and rivers where it again falls into cracks or depressions in the rocks or bedrock.

This is the same reason that artifact hunters search for ancient Indian arrowheads and spear points in plowed fields. Over hundreds or thousands of years, most tend to sink into the soil, since flint is more dense than soil. Plowing brings them back up to the surface, and the rains wash them off and make them visible for a while... until they move back under the surface once again. Frost heaving may also bring up rocks or flint artifacts, etc., but these will also sink again over time.

I'm pretty sure that you will not be convinced by any number of examples. That's OK, so long as most people understand. Fishermen learned long ago to use light wood or hollow plastic for bobbers because they float... and they use lead for sinkers and jig heads because they sink. I know that density thing is a pretty tough concept to grasp... do you perhaps have a brother named BrentD?

Anyone ever done the chicken and shot test? You need one chicken, any breed will do, and one lead shot pellet. Drop the pellet right in front of the chicken, they will often seize it in mid air, or, pounce on it when it hits the ground.
Then, they will spit it out. Every, single, time.
Nobody has ever been able to explain to me how a domestic chicken can recognize that a lead shot is not food, or, grit, but, wild birds are supposedly eating lead shot.

Best,
Ted

Bio-availability of lead is a winnable argument if presented with some knowledge of the subject. As a geologist (and an EPA contractor for many years) working on historic mine-sites and in mineral-rich regions, I've seen that fight up-close and personal. Mining companies have had their own contractors doing the science and winning the cases as they were brought by the various Federal and State Agencies. I've read the studies of pigs being fed the various forms lead-contaminated foods (lead oxides, carbonates, sulfides, metallic, etc.) and watched that fight transpire in the court system. The mining companies won that one outright and further lead-regulations were curtailed. But...the drumbeat continues, never mind the science. When smelting was largely discontinued in this country and lead was removed from both gasoline and paints, any real threat to public health was effectively eliminated. It is clearly a back-door attack on our 2nd Amendment and hunting rights. Nothing more, nothing less.

Damn I had a long reply typed and somehow lost it to some editing function.
Just wanted to tell Keith that is exactly how sluice boxes work..heavier stuff stays behind when water flows across the load. Same thing should hold when wind or water erode soils, no? Has nothing to do with heaviest elements sinking towards the Earth's center when it was a molten ball. I think most gold comes from upheavals of Earth's crust through plate tectonics.

Wanted to mention I found one of the oldest types of human artifacts in North America, a Folsom spear point, lying on the surface on some sandy, never cultivated prairie in extreme SE WY. Shiny one topside, calcified on bottom. So it was still only half sunk after many thousand years.

Lloyd what happened to the pigs fed lead carbonate and lead sulfide? Were the concentrations fed expected to be toxic?

I think a sluice box scenario is applicable. The force of the moving water has to be less than the baffles ability to hold the heavier material in place. If there were no baffles, all the material would move downstream, some maybe a bit quicker than others. I think any terrain that is durable enough to remain substantially unchanged by wind forces is not acting like typical pieces of lead shot.

I think a reasonable question for an anti lead hunter/shooter is, what are your motivations, what are your goals. If they're reasonable and attainable, how could there be opposition. One might be forth coming and factual about intended and unintended consequences, not just looking for the satisfaction of a 'win'.

It is thought that the vast majority of gold on earth is near the core, precisely because of it's density.A small amount makes it's way closer to the surface due to volcanic activity, and plate tectonics would likely play a role as well. But put a nugget or coin on the surface in most soils, and it is going to sink over time, like lead shot and bullets.

I'm not sure if Hal watched his Folsom point just lay on the surface without moving for Lord knows how many millennia. But doesn't it seem strange that particular patch of Wyoming prairie remained static for all those many centuries, and that there was neither any erosion or addition of soil to the strata from 10-12,000 years of prairie plant growth since some early human left it there?

Unlike Hal, I wasn't there watching and knowing without a doubt that Folsom point remained motionless on the surface. But Hal must have been watching it, otherwise, how would he be so certain?

Lloyd's observations of the legal maneuvers by scientists for the mining companies are interesting. One thing that occurs to me is that the EPA and government have pretty deep pockets to litigate these matters. The scientists and lawyers for the mining companies must have made a pretty convincing argument in order to stave off the popular idea that lead in all forms is going to be the destroyer of life on this planet.

Good question, as I could only remember that it served the legal purposes of the mining companies. I attempted to look it up and found this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/525854

Evidently, the pigs were very tolerant of the lead....

It is not hard to find rocks that rise in fields due to frost action.

Be that as it may, lead in the first 3/8" of the surface is pretty abundant in some fields. But probably only where high volume shooting of fixed positions are the rule.

I know little of Wyoming prairie, but I hunt artifacts here in the deep South and sometimes dig for them when I locate a habitation site. I can assure you that flint atlatl and spear points do indeed migrate down to the hardpan in our sandy soils. Sure I find plenty in agricultural fields on the surface but those artifacts are brought up by tillage, bottom plowing especially...Geo

The lesson I learned then was that almost any science you see quoted for political purposes will not stand-up well under proper peer-reviewed scrutiny. Scientists are no different than any other folks trying to survive and get ahead. They stick their fingers up into the wind to see which way it's blowing and then produce efforts that will garnish financial support from somewhere. Look up "Operation Paperclip" sometime about the Nazi scientists we brought here after WWII. Modern researchers face similar challenges in universities that are clearly left-leaning and many of them have families to feed as well...

Craig if there were no baffles, would not gravitational sorting still occur as soon as the sluice water begins to slow down after leaving the box? When I see gully erosion in the glacial till underlying most of the cropland here, the rocks and pebbles are at the top, then the sands, and then the silts, clays, and crop residue at the bottom.
Isn't that why the water in the streams and rivers below turn muddy and why the Mississippi Delta has grown so large since agriculture began in its watershed?

Lloyd you are sure right about scientists constant need for funding. Anything to do research and gain experience in their field of interest. Many agricultural colleges get way more grants from corporations than they do from the tax-supported agencies.
And I don't doubt that funds quickly dry up if the results of the studies do not support what the grantors intended to prove or disprove by funding these studies. There are many ways to help guarantee a positive outcome simply by the project design.

Whatever. I just feel better eating steel than I do lead when I wolf down those tasty grilled dove breasts wrapped in bacon.

Whatever. I just feel better eating steel than I do lead when I wolf down those tasty grilled dove breasts wrapped in bacon. /quote]

Seems to me that all our ancestors must have died out as a result of eating the lead-poisoned meat they hunted.
Ergo, we probably were never born..............

Plus they did not have smart phones - no chance of survival!

So which is it... are the silts and clays and other fines at the bottoms of erosion cuts???... or do they get washed away and end up in places like river deltas???? Or do you get to have it both ways in the Twilight Zone?

Regardless, the forces behind deep erosions are not what takes most of our small dense lead spheres deeper into the soil over time. Fast moving water does not float large rocks and stones to the top. They are simply too heavy to be moved as easily, and get left behind.

Apparently it's all about what makes you feel good that drives your beliefs and conflicting observations. Does that bacon wrapped around the dove breasts make you feel like your arteries are plugging up with cholesterol plaques? I'd bet the science says more people are at risk from saturated fat induced coronary heart disease than they are from possibly swallowing a stray lead shot pellet, and having it pass out of their digestive tract. And I think most dentists would see greater job security from patients biting into steel versus lead.

Chew gently!

More telling is why none of these biased scientists can explain what Stan mentioned earlier.....how South American countries have no shortage of birds. My goodness...the amount of lead in their marshes, lakes, agriculture fields has to be astronomical...it�s a wonder why every living thing down there isn�t dying a slow, agonizing death of being massively poisoned by heavy metals. Yet year after year...there�s more birds. They still use pesticides and herbicides down there that have been banned here in North America for decades. Unbelievable! It�s amazing.

So, did the �scientist� buy a couple of bags of lead shot out of the department budget, and sprinkle it a few paces from where they pulled in his prius? Mr. scientist leans back and points his grad assistant to the perfect spot to take some soil samples, they can extrapolate for the rest of the field later.

I have no idea if it�s still taken down, but soar raptors used to show a �bragg�in� X-ray of a supposed public land gut pile from a hunter harvested deer. It showed well north of a hundred individual pieces of lead in it. Maybe, even too far fetched for the �scientists�?

dammit! working on a long response and poof! all gone. What the hell am I doing wrong? This happens on other forums also.
Help!!

The only solution I've found for that is to save your work as you're writing. That leads to what can be a significant number of corrections indicated in your post as you go, but... at least you don't lose everything.

Every once in a while type CtrlA followed by CtrlC. The first highlights everything in the dialog box you are typing in. The second copies everything that is highlighted. If you do that before hitting Submit, you will have your final and complete version copied to your clipboard.

If everything is lost, then reopen a reply box. Click on it so the cursor is blinking in the dialog box and then type CtrlX and it will paste in the last thing you copied to your clipboard. Hit submit and you should be good to go.

Hope that helps but I am sure we all know your aggravation.

OR Type it in Word and then copy and paste here

Great explanation Brent. I think control V pastes not control X.

Yes, Control V pastes. Control X cuts (and copies to clipboard).

Sorry about that.

With a Mac you can also hold down "Command" and press "C", then to paste hold down "Command" and press "V".

To copy and paste a link you click on the web address box at the top of the page and it highlights it in blue. Then you copy and paste as usual.

To copy some text you click at the beginning of it and drag down as far as you want to copy, then release the mouse. It will highlight all you "drug" over. Takes a little practice sometimes to get the highlighting to end where you want it to.

One other thing I learned ........ if you're typing a reply, and you suddenly lose the page, click on the "back" arrow ( looks like this < ) at the upper left of the screen. It will often take you right back to the reply page you were typing. It's saved me from retyping stuff many times.

SRH

As Mike pointed out, Word with automatic back up makes a great draft platform for cutting and pasting. Another is Gmail. Compose in a Gmail message and cut and paste when completed. Gmail backs up text every few seconds or so and saves it in Draft mode. Gil

Just types CtlA, it highlighted. Then Ctlx and everything disappeared. Nothing showed in Preview Post. Guess I'll just use my email program and cut past from a new message.

"So which is it... are the silts and clays and other fines at the bottoms of erosion cuts???... or do they get washed away and end up in places like river deltas???? Or do you get to have it both ways in the Twilight Zone?"


Keith its simple. When gullies erode into closed basins, as they do here into our prairie potholes, the fines get deposited there and the sands, pebbles, and rocks remain on higher ground. If they erode into creeks or drainageways the fines go further downstream as into rivers. Many of our old hard-bottomed duck sloughs now have several feet of black mud on the bottom.

CtlA highlights everything in the dialog box. CtlX cuts it out but also copies it to your "clipboard". Instead of CtlX try CtlC (which just copies it to the clipboard but without removing it from the dialog box). In either event, if you had typed CtlV, it would have pasted it all back into the dialog box. Cutting and pasting from your email application does the same thing. And CtlA,X,V, and C will all work there as well though there are other ways (right clicking for a pop up menu or a drop down cut/paste menu).

Practice a bit and you will get hang of it

A recent update/summary:

Pain%20et%20al%202019%20Ambio_Effects%20of%20lead%20from%20ammunition%20on%20birds%20and%20other%20wildlife.pdf

hope it opens