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.
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.
