doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Solution to nontox for vintage sxs

LGF,
Thank you for your views, obviously spoken from what appears to me an informed source.
BUT, may I take issue with you on a couple of points.
All of the scientific papers and presentations mention 'millions of dead birds from lead ingestion' but as of yet have never shown photographic proof or hard evidence.
The majority of waterfowl species are not dabbling birds and many do not feed in the margins, lead being a heavy metal does not fall through the water and lie on the surface of the silt awaiting the ducks to harvest it.
Please show me the hard facts and science and I will fall in line.
Water bailiffs tell me they have never found a dead waterfowl on their waters that as died from lead ingestion.
As for the NRA doing anything, forget it, the sole purpose of getting elected to any national board is self esteem, if you have any revolutionary ideas when you first get into office they are soon knocked out of you by the clique.
Our major sporting organisation in the UK the BASC said they would support a ban on lead shot when an economical, viable , efficient alternative with similar characteristics to the performance of lead was readily available.That as never happened but they now do nothing to fight the imposition of a total ban on lead.
If lead shot is such a bad thing why do we not see hundreds of dead ducks on the commercial gameshoots here in Britain where the owners breed and raise thousands of partridge and pheasants and hundreds of mallard in the same fields and coverts. Shoot thousands of lead shot per week over their land in the pursuit of the bag, yet we don't see Duck limping around emaciated and oosing green facaes all over the place?
Just my thoughts, I'd rather kill a bird dead with lead, than cripple with steel.

I've never seen a dead duck without a hole in it!
...and principal routes go right over my land.
Al Gore science ban lead in the 90s - when duck hunters and ducks were at a low.
Timing is everything.
Steel shot became the thing, and the few ol'boys who did, packed it in and went home.
You've prolly got some of their old decoys on your coffee table.

LGF,
Unfortunately, science usually has to sing for it's supper-funding is easier to get for hot button issues. I don't know if you are old enough to remember, but, the global warming wizards of today look remarkably similar to the disproved global cooling dolts of the early to mid 1970s. We don't hate scientists-just bad science. Since man-made CO2 has never been more than 2% of the atmospheric total, a few of us have questioned the concensus, and been ridiculed for that. Since study groups are now proposing fees based upon the carbon footprint of individuals, (how does a fee on me reduce global temperature?) we become suspicious of another attempt at growing government.
My lone, unscientific observation about birds and lead shot-domestic chickens are smart enough to spit it out if they pick one up. I've seen that.
I'll not jump to the conclusion that domestic chickens are savants of any sort over that observation just yet, however. More study, is likely needed.
Best,
Ted

A quick search of the scientific literature using the terms 'lead, shot, waterfowl' turns up over 4700 papers on the subject; as I leave for Kenya in the morning, I don't have time to digest and report on the results here. One example at random, "Ingestion of Lead and Nontoxic Shotgun Pellets by Ducks in the Mississippi Flyway by William L. Anderson, Stephen P. Havera, Bradley W. Zercher, The Journal of Wildlife Management, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Jul., 2000, pp. 848-857), hardly a left wing bunny hugger journal, looked at shot in the gizzards of 16,500 ducks, and estimated that in the 1997 season, use of nontoxic shot prevented 1.4 million ducks from dying of lead poisoning, out of an estimated 1997 population of 90 million ducks in North America.

As to Ted's comment about science singing for its supper, the hunting, firearms, and ammunition industries in this country are vastly more wealthy and influential than a few bunny (or duck) huggers. They fought the lead shot issue for decades before the science simply overwhelmed their objections and forced the FWS to take unpopular action.

As I recall, the problem is small where bottoms are muddy and shot sinks below the surface of the mud. It is very bad where hard or sandy bottoms keep the shot on top of the sediments where birds find it. Thus, in some areas one did not see dying 'green asses', but in areas of hard bottoms, the problem was severe.

LGF, the issue has been decided for some time where waterfowl are concerned. Try finding the same "evidence" and scientific study where upland birds are concerned. Even the Minnesota Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee admits such evidence does not exist. Then there are all those eagles that died from eating birds crippled with lead but not recovered . . . except we now have many times more eagles than we did when the lawsuit was filed, which means the current limitations on lead must be working fine--at least for eagles, and probably for waterfowl. And there simply isn't any evidence of a problem where upland birds are concerned. And that's where the lead ban proponents want to take us next.

King, with all due respect, you're in a different country. They've done things to gun ownership up your way that aren't likely to happen in the States. Can you imagine Canada with most provinces requiring that anyone who is mentally competent, not a felon, and can pass a course showing they can safely and effectively handle a handgun SHALL be issued a license to carry said handgun . . . concealed? That's the law in the vast majority of states down here, and it's a trend that's grown of late. So we're not in the same boat as you are, either when it comes to restrictions on guns or potential restrictions on hunting. While it might be good advice for Canadians just to "suck it up" and assume lead will be banned everywhere, for everything, that's not nearly as certain south of the border.

Just like there is a push for a carbon offset fee to have the users pay for the use of the carbon polluting fuels, that are putting CO2 into the environment there should be one for lead use. I would like to get a lead shot offset for my doubles. Along with the regular license fee for hunting a second separate fee of say $50.00 a year that allows me to use lead shot in any double made more than 50 years ago. Only doubles can be used with the special program. Modern guns may be able to shoot steel but my poor old doubles can not.

Then the effects of any lead that I use should be offset by the wise government use of my $50.00 to repair the damage that my ten or twenty pounds of lead shot, spread across wide areas of the state, may cause. Seems like the government should be willing to take my money to let me do it. And how many doubles would end up being used? 5% or 10% of the total guns even with lead shot.

LGF,

Let's see if I've got this right, an "estimated" 1.4 million Mississippi flyway waterfowl were saved from lead poisoning by the use of non-tox in 1997. Out of an "estimated" 90 million fowl, that amounts to 1.55% of the annual national population, am I correct? (And Please! bear in mind that the vagaries of mother nature (i.e. weather, disease, predation) frequently account for even bigger swings in a species annual mortality rate).

Conversely, can we assume that some of the same scientists have studied crippling and unrecovered waterfowl as a result of the less-efficient steel shot mandate of some twenty years now? Somehow, I don't think that's happened, but wouldn't it be interesting to compare those numbers? Maybe we are actually trading one form of mortality for another in all of this, as you do concede in your earlier post to witnessing a number of steel-caused "sailing cripples" on a recent duck hunt of yours. Whatever the number of cripples you might have seen that day, do you honestly believe that plumbism on that very same marsh of yours accounts for as many or even more wasted ducks - when that same shooting-related loss is spread over an entire season of three to four months?

Let's be honest here, losing any number of fowl needlessly should send up a 'red flag' not only for a conservationist but for most anybody with a conscience. But to simply substitute one form of mortality for another and call it a well-informed decision based on 'good science' somehow doesn't quite ring true with many sportsmen OR wildlife professionals in the field.

So, 'Why' did we waterfowlers, the 50-something percent that did not hang up our guns, passively roll over on that nation-wide ban and shoot steel- even when it could not be demonstrated that a majority of wetlands were keeping lead shot in a stratum available to feeding fowl? Perhaps it's because we were a bit more gullible back then, I don't know, but when the same hysteria is suggesting that it needs to now be applied to all upland and forested environs - not to mention controlled shooting ranges - and again, without the volume of science to back it up - then it's logical that there is some skepticism among us.

Let's be clear in that we are not even contesting the entrenched steel shot requirements for waterfowl here, as that is water long under the bridge. But we are perturbed that it is largely 'emotion' that is once again driving the push for a ban on all lead, in any form, without a conclusive body of evidence to support it -at least as yet, correct? If you, in fact, have access to evidence making a solid case for a broader nation-wide lead ban, and one that will seriously compromise such funding as Pittman-Robertson dollars, then we'd all like to hear about it just as soon as you get back from Kenya. Fair enough?

BTW, how far must one travel these days from the Berkeley campus to find good fowling?

Robert Harris

P.S. Yes, I am aware of the research on plumbic mourning doves that result from gritting on lead shot in the most heavily-used shooting areas, such as feed plots, etc. but am not sure if this yet warrants the draconian measures presently being suggested on a national level.

While I believe LGF has genuine concern for the condor population as well as other wildlife, I am having trouble understanding how a banning a lead bullet from a large rifle used to take predominantly deer or pigs (there is little other game that requires a centerfire rifle or will stop a centerfire bullet in the area defined by the ban), will save a condor from lead poisoning.

Because scavengers pick up bullet fragments from dead animals that hunters lose and from gut piles.

Rushing to catch a plane, but there are still lots of ducks in the Central Valley. The new Yolo Refuge outside of Davis is now producing lots of ducks and is barely an hour from Berkeley. Grizzly Island is less than that.