doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lead & Condor deaths

Wow Brent, if some of the good science including intentional feeding of birds with lead pellets won't convince you that the effect is minimal compared to other more bio-available sources of lead... nothing will.

Sorry, but I have studied this situation pretty extensively and I still do not see lead poisoning due to lead ammunition in either raptors or waterfowl as a slam dunk. Not even close. As even Larry has noted in point # 3 of his last post, lead shot isn't even on the radar screen when it comes to upland game birds. It is a virtual non-issue even in areas of very heavy shot-fall.

I don't make contentions about bad science. I have actually seen it. I have even eaten it. I once ate some brook trout that were killed by a researcher, and in his paper, the deaths were blamed on low pH water in a study on acid mine drainage into Pennsylvania trout streams. Don't try to tell me it doesn't happen. My Alma Mater conspired with East Anglia University in Great Britain to manipulate climate data to prove Global warming. You don't hear much about the 2009 Climate-gate scandal because the Liberal Press barely reported it.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/6748-ipcc-researchers-admit-global-warming-fraud

Data gets fudged all the time, and when there is government grant money involved, the incentive to cheat becomes even greater. The researcher who killed and grilled the trout told me that if you could manage to get the word "Cancer" into your grant requests, you more than doubled your chances of getting money.

The first lead ban that was supposed to protect Condors didn't even make a statistically significant dent in their population decline or blood lead levels, so rather than admit that there must be some other source of lead to blame, the anti-lead ammunition people including Audobon pursued a statewide ban. Pray tell, what kind of surrender, or what you call "rational, adaptive legislation" would have been a viable alternative?

In other words, how do you figure that accepting agenda driven bad science and simply laying down in surrender is a winning strategy???

This has to be some of the craziest stuff I have seen since the massive document dumps of easily refuted crap that was posted here by that anti-lead lunatic Ben (GrouseGuy)Deeble. Your post, taken in its' entirety, reminds me of some of the political double-speak you would find in George Orwell's "Animal Farm".

�All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.�
George Orwell, Animal Farm

�No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?�
George Orwell, Animal Farm

�This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.�
George Orwell, Animal Farm

Nobody, including the MN DNR in their own report has ever claimed to have a slam dunk on evidence in regards to use of lead shot, and lead poisoning in any population of wildlife.
If any population of fauna should be exposed to lead and lead fragments, it would be coyotes and wolves, I would think.
No outcry, just yet.


Go get 'em Keith.

Best,
Ted

I believe this to be true also, but it's apparently slam dunk enough for many folks. I wonder how many folks would agree to something like, the Wisconsin DNR stumbled on a cure for cancer while researching wildlife lead poisoning. It hasn't really been vetted because they'll only release generic reports,but they say it's good enough for them. We'd like to try it out on your wife and see how it goes.

I believe Brent's slam dunk is great to be aware of. His biggest passion seems to be single shots from the 1800's, not necessarily with original barrels. But, chances are those rifles will be around long after we're gone. It'll be a slam dunk that either the bores will be ruined, or the rifles regulated to unusable status, but we'll feel better about our lead free future.

Whatever a slam dunk is, this from federal Environment and Climate Change Canada website:

"Increased exposure to heavy metals can cause:

weight loss, weakness
blindness, muscle paralysis, seizures
increased likelihood of predation
increased susceptibility to disease and infection
altered patterns in foraging behaviour, loss of appetite
reduced ability to reproduce

"Researchers use a combination of field study and laboratory analysis to identify, track and investigate the effects of heavy metals in wildlife species, specifically birds, and their environments. Where heavy metals are suspected, researchers investigate food sources, food chain transfers, individual species and ecosystem functioning.

"Research on heavy metals is helping to predict adverse effects of environmental contamination and aiding the development of science-based environmental policies and regulations for the management of environmental lead and mercury contamination.

Lead

"Research on lead in wildlife has focused mainly on the issue of �lead shot,� small pellets of metallic lead used as projectiles in shotgun ammunition for hunting and target shooting. A related issue is the accidental ingestion of small lead fishing sinkers and jigs used in recreational angling.

Waterbirds can ingest spent lead pellets or lost fishing tackle, resulting in poisoning. In addition, birds shot with lead pellets and not retrieved by hunters can become a source of secondary poisoning for predatory and scavenging wildlife. Other animals may prey upon dead or wounded game animals having lead shot embedded in their tissues.

Research ongoing since the 1960s led researchers to conclude that lead shot was the most important source of elevated lead exposure in waterfowl and some other waterbirds species. It was estimated that annual lead poisoning affected 250,000 birds in Canada, and about 2.5 million across North America.

Based on this research, Environment Canada banned use of lead shot for hunting most migratory game bird species. The nation-wide ban, in place since 1999, has resulted in a dramatic decrease in elevated lead exposure in wild waterfowl. It was found that elevated lead in bones of migrating ducks decreased between 52% and 90% depending on the species and location sampled."

Geez King, that simplistic, outdated, and erroneous data on Lead Ammunition is easily refuted, and most of it has already been refuted within this thread. This is as agenda driven and as false as your very recent and dishonest assertion that Thomas Jefferson did not make known his feelings about the Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms. In fact, it appears that Jim (formerly Italiansxs) provided all of this to you in the "Is King Brown An Anti-Gunner?" thread:



This is not for the purposes of political debate. This is to illustrate your inherent and compulsive dishonesty. You had been told of Jefferson's original intent on the RKBA numerous times and still posted bald-faced lies about it. Why would anyone trust you now?

I am not at all refuting the very real dangers posed by heavy metals poisoning. But I am saying that it has been proven that ingestion of lead shot or bullet fragments is very low on the totem pole of being the cause of lethal blood lead levels. But no amount of proof is likely to reverse your repetition of anti-lead ammunition falsehoods

If Canada had indeed banned lead shot on the basis of this information you posted, then Canadian hunters got railroaded... just as they did with much of Canada's anti-gun legislation. I particularly liked the very last sentence of your post. It appears the author uses the same "craft of journalism" as you. Again, it is no surprise to see you Trolling anti-lead junk science in the same manner as you Troll anti-2nd Amendment bullshit. No need to impute motives. Your anti-gun and anti-lead agendas are quite evident to all. An absolute slam-dunk in my opinion.

That is an assumption, on your part, that is just not so. I spend my life outdoors, farming, stewarding forestlands on my property, hunting, fishing ........... heck, just walking and looking, lots of times. Many game birds have mortality rates that are extremely high. Doves, for example, are 50+%, according to game biologists. With as many doves as there are here, and the time I spend outdoors in their habitat, why don't I see them "sick and dying" all the time? I NEVER see it. And that's just one species. How about all the other species? With the proliferation of fauna here, you never see any "sick and dying", except for roadkills. "Why?", doesn't pertain to your original argument, but it is because most animals, birds included, when they realize they are weakened from whatever means, including age, seek a hiding place to recover or die. And, it's also because predators take out the sick and dying very quickly. I see scatterings of dove feathers all the time, where hawks kill and eat them, but no "sick and dying". And piles of feathers prove nothing, except that the bird was eaten.

To postulate that people are just naturally going to be made aware of sick and dying animals is ridiculous, and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.

SRH

Stan, you need to talk to your local raptor rehabilitator, if you have any in your vicinity. They get plenty of sick and dying patients. Especially eagles. Why especially eagles? Well, because they're big, very visible, and there are a lot more of them now than there used to be. And people like to watch eagles.

Waterfowl fall into somewhat the same category. They're relatively large, and lots of them tend to congregate around lakes, marshes, etc. Many of those lakes and marshes are either federal or state wildlife areas, which means that there are either USFWS or state DNR employees around, keeping a watch on things. Seeing sick and dying birds is part of their job.

Stan, I lived in northern Wisconsin for 4 1/2 years. There was no question we had wolves. I saw evidence of wolves. But in my 4 1/2 years, including a whole lot of time spent in the woods, both before the bird season as well as during the season, I never saw a wolf. Not once. Doesn't mean they weren't there, or that I might not have trapped one or more of them had I desired to do so and known how to go about it.

And when the bird flu hit in Iowa, I don't recall that the DNR had any trouble finding dead birds to examine. And the most common species impacted were crows and bluejays. Not all being cleaned up by scavengers before they could be collected.

So no, sorry, I don't accept your contention (or Keith's if he's still making it) that there could still be a lot of waterfowl getting sick and dying, and no one would notice.

Brent, thanks for an unemotional view from the other side. But hey, you must have an anti-lead agenda. I'll bet you don't even hunt. But you've got to be one of the bad guys!

Keith, lead shot isn't on the radar screen for upland birds for a whole bunch of reasons which I listed earlier. But upland birds are not waterfowl and they're not scavengers. We've lost the fight on waterfowl, and claiming that the lead ban on waterfowl was "junk science" HURTS our cause rather than helps it. You have to make specific arguments that pertain to specific situations and species. The deer hunters need to make their own case . . . but I'm not worried about them for the simple reason that they have significant strength in numbers. That's why the WI Natural Resources Board made the rather strange decision to go after lead shot on DNR land rather than lead bullets, even though it was bullet fragments rather than shot that was showing up in venison, and in eagles: We upland hunters, in that case, are the low hanging fruit. We are far fewer in numbers than the deer hunters. So we have to make the case in regards to OUR situation. Are upland birds picking up lead shot and dying from it in numbers large enough to impact the overall population? Are scavengers (and especially eagles) dying from secondary ingestion of lead shot they get from scavenging unrecovered pheasants, grouse, quail, etc? That's the evidence "good science" has to show us in order to make the case where lead SHOT is concerned.

They've already made their case with waterfowl. That battle is over and done with. Let's fight the battles that remain, and that we can win. And I think we can win where upland birds are concerned.

Keith, you're wandering off the track with diversions into "Animal Farm", charges of being anti-gun, acting like someone else, etc. Let's stick to specific cases. As for your Audubon examples . . . California? Really? You know why we didn't have a prayer in California? Look at demographics. According to figures I've got, the Dakotas--N and S combined--have about 400,000 paid hunting license holders. CA has about 300,000. The big difference there: The Dakotas, combined, have a population of about 1.5 million; California, 38 million. Which means not even 1% of Californians hunt. Which explains why they're not going to win many battles where restrictions on guns and hunting are concerned--other than relying on the 2nd amendment to preserve their most basic rights. In all of these fights, numbers matter. CA doesn't have enough hunters to make enough noise to stop anything. As for Audubon, they flat out tell you that they will work to eliminate hunting if the species in question is impacted. In this case, it's condors rather than a hunted species . . . but they accept the evidence that condors are in trouble because of lead. And condors are an endangered species. End of discussion. But note that you don't see Audubon lobbying for no pheasant hunting in the Dakotas, or no quail hunting in TX. And then there's my personal experience of working WITH Audubon to expand grouse and woodcock hunting opportunities in Iowa, on both private and public land. What happened in CA would have happened with or without Audubon. Meanwhile, here in Iowa, when we finally got a dove season, our own Natural Resources Commission said it should be nontox shot only. Iowa hunters fought it, and the legislature (split control, Dems and Republicans) overruled that. You'd never see that in CA because there aren't enough hunters to make enough noise.

As for the deer hunters . . . as mentioned above, they're in pretty good shape because of their numbers. But if bullet fragments like those found in venison are also found in eagles, and if those eagles are suffering from lead poisoning, then they have a fight on their hands. They may need to go beyond proving that there are other potential sources of lead, and instead prove that those other potential sources are the real problem and that the danger from bullet fragments is not the problem, or perhaps only a very minor problem. But given their numbers, I'm sure that any attempt to require nontoxic ammo--which would also impact varmint hunters, squirrel hunters, etc--would require rock solid proof that bullet fragments are the real problem. And even then, they can probably put enough pressure on politicians to fight off a lead ban, even if it looks like science is on the side of those who support it.

Ted, re your contention about coyotes and wolves . . . makes sense that lead poisoning from scavenging dead animals should impact them. However, a coyote is a whole lot bigger than a duck or a goose, or even an eagle. And a wolf is a whole lot bigger than a coyote. So I'd expect they'd need to ingest more lead for them to get sick. And especially in the case of wolves, numbers are so low--and given the fact I never saw one, living in wolf country for 4 1/2 years--that while it might be happening to the occasional animal, it might also escape notice.

Larry, a quick few minute search brought up the 'Georgia Wildlife Rescue Association'. They have a feature story on a Dr. Jay Whitesell, who is 'the most experienced and respected raptor rehabilitator in the southeastern United States'. He 'works on' fifty raptors a year, not even one a week.

The good doctor's work is commendable, your sensationalism is questionable, but it's a good tactic for motivating anti hunters. Ever notice how in recent years, if you see a picture of a number of dead eagles arranged to make a point, that regardless of the topic, the picture tends to originate from recovered raptors killed by wind turbines. Not a speck of lead or any other toxin, just acceptable agenda that makes some habitat completely unusable for some raptors. Many times those are the very same 'researchers', who downplay those casualties due to policy.

I would hope you're able to research Brent's comment a bit more. Though he mentioned eagles and waterfowl, he did not exclude any wildlife from lead poisoning. Are you looking for a fan club or facts? Still more speculation, coyotes and wolf are bigger, so it's okay, they can eat more lead laced food. If the problem comes from consumption, are these predators eating 70-90% fish?