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

Cougar scat, tracks and attacks on farm animals and horses. Very easy to get evidence of cougars in southern Ontario over the last 10 years. Very difficult to get the MNR to admit they are here? Why? Agenda driven policies of not scaring people plus not admitting an apex predator can live here so clearly more environmental work must be done.

What's my point? Tell me again how unbiased the MNR's and DMR's are? They, like most of government, get politicized and are agenda driven.

I'm beginning to wonder how many lead-deniers live 24/7 in wide-open spaces. From where I'm writing this, I've seen bald eagles swoop from perches in trees, clutch ducks from small and large groups on the water, "swim" to shore with their wings, and eat them. From blinds in the harbour or bay, I've observed that dead or crippled ducks end up in an eagle if not retrieved quickly by dog or boat---every time. Non-tox is better than lead for ducks and geese. It's normal to have different opinions on this but churlish, and to make no sense at all, to say that those who believe as I do are anti-hunter and anti-gun.

Environmental issues are always agenda-driven, rightly and wrongly. As Larry noted, votes count and legislators in democratic societies mostly do what the people want and allow a test of their performance at election time--- where there are more anti-killing votes than there are us.

I was a principal protagonist in Canada's biggest environmental story of the 70's. Publics were made to believe that protecting forests by spraying against the spruce budworm was killing children, later proved to be surpassingly bad science. I announced that finding at an international forestry conference.

By then budworm created the biggest clearcut on the continent, observable by astronauts in space. The forest community was devastated. The misled greens had the numbers. Elizabeth May was principal protagonist on the other side. We are friends. (She now federal leader Green Party, I still in the woods.)

King, you probably live in one of the most beautiful areas in all of North America.

Allow me to be so churlish as to repeat, again repeat, why wasn't the waterfowl component of an eagle's diet ever found to be the source of lead poisoning back before non toxic shot was mandated. You yourself said just a bit earlier in this thread that eagles eat fish. Pretty cut and dry eh? But, of course I would be rude to mention that. Is it rude to mention all the other toxins spread by the raping and pillaging of pristine wilderness by corporate greed. Did you ever use DDT back in the day.

King, I think Larry is right on many points, but continues to base his comments on foregone conclusions and speculation designed to trigger emotion. And, you said, so what if he's an influential outdoor writer. Even for Canadians, I believe 'sources' should be vetted, or you have no reason to be force feeding it as good science. The basics would be is there openness about the researchers, their methods and reasons. And, who's paying for the 'research'.

Larry, the fact that coyotes and wolves do not have crops means that particulate lead passes through them much faster and without being digested or assimilated - totally different situation in birds. So, eating some lead is not a concern for a mammal once in awhile, when in particulate form (as opposed to in lead paint for instance).

The focus needs to be on POPULATION LEVEL effects, not individual effects. We know, with out doubt, that a few lead pellets in the crop of an eagle or a condor will kill it. We also know that this happens to wild birds without question, and that the pellets come from ammunition, without question (isotope analyses among other things).

We know the same used to happen to ducks, without question.

But in one case that has significant population consequences, in the other, it does not. That is where we the hunters and shooters need to focus. Stick to the fighting battles where population level effects are minimal, concede where they are signficant. And with those concessions needs to be language that could allow the return of lead when the population problems are no longer an issue (ie, the species is fully recovered), AND they can sustain the lead risk. For some species, like condors, this may be very doable. For ducks, it will never be, because the population effects would immediately return. One could hope, reasonably, that condors will be more like eagles than like waterfowl.

Let's not sit around and fight about whether the sun goes around the earth of vice versa. These types of arguments are only good for breaking up the hunting community's otherwise unified voice and jeopardizing our credibility. Lots of gun folks, like lots of environmentalists (but far from all), or lots of feminists (but far from all), or members of any other group would rather fight for the sake of fighting than figure out how to solve problems. I'm only interested in solutions.

Brent

Keith reminds me of the three monkeys... Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Speak No Evil.

Except maybe for the last one....

I'm only commenting because I think I've been the hardest on you.

When it comes to broken unity, I agree without a doubt and without question. Possibly, you can see two points. First, to get along it has to be your way. Second, if you are solution driven, where are the solutions? Give up on an issue with 'wording' that it's reversible? Once you contend that something's a toxin, how could it ever not be? I wonder if upland birds have crops?

Larry, you are amazing. Somehow, simply because Brent agrees with you, and even surpasses you in support of bad science, that makes his argument unemotional. Never-mind that virtually all of what he has said has already been proven to be wrong... not by me or not simply because I said so.

In the same vein, it is apparent that you intend to cling to the death to your preconceived notions, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. It was entertaining to see you shrug off Stan's actual first hand observations of the wetlands environments where he spends so much time, in favor of agenda driven anecdotal claims by the anti-lead people. Stan isn't the only guy here Larry, who spends large amounts of times going where few DNR employees or Fish and Game people ever go. But no one is seeing this massive lead poisoning carnage. I have been checked by Game Wardens twice in my entire life, both times along the road. Why, even the Great King Brown himself very recently told us that he has hunted extensively over the last 65 or 70 years without ever once seeing or being checked by a Fish or Game Warden.

Poor craigd is beating his head against the wall too. He's been shredding many of your erroneous contentions with facts, and you simply pivot to another lame excuse. He was the first to note that when you posted Audobon's position on hunting, you left out the parts that proved you were wrong. When you kept repeating the incorrect information about dead deer comprising the bulk of the diet of eagles, he corrected you with the information that bald eagles eat 70-90% fish. You acted like raptor rehabilitators are swamped with cases of lead poisoned eagles, and craigd quickly shot that one down too. The most experienced raptor rehabilitator in the Southeast U.S. only treats 50 "raptors" a year. So if we take out the raptors that are other species such as hawks and owls, and we subtract the raptors that are sick or dying due to other factors besides lead poisoning, we can see that you are hysterically overstating the case of lead-poisoned bald eagles. In your endless effort to prove that you are right at all costs, you are either intentionally or inadvertently supporting the position of the anti-lead forces. Either way, you are not helping us.

Even after you got busted here with selective editing of the Audobon's true stance on hunting and their support of anti-led legislation, you won't even acknowledge that you were 100% wrong.
You asked for proof that you claimed you could not find. It took me all of a minute of Google Searching to find abundant proof that Audobon supports lead ammunition bans. One I gave you was from their own website.

So what did you do? Did you apologize for your selective editing? Did you man-up and admit that you were 100% wrong for ridiculing the positions on that taken by craigd and I? No, you simply danced away from your intentional half-truths and went on to mock actual evidence as some lost cause that we shouldn't even consider because the battle is lost.

With guys like you shooting us in the foot, you may be right about that.

I was quite amused when you admonished me about pointing out the very obvious anti-gun and anti-lead ammunition positions of King Brown. I'm never surprised anymore to see him in complete denial of smoking gun evidence and his serial dishonesty on the matter. I cannot stop him from making a fool of himself, but I don't have to stand by when he puts up absolute falsehoods in order to undermine our Constitutional 2nd Amendment Rights.

But right after you took me to task for wandering off track with charges of "Animal Farm" style propaganda and separating out anti-gunners from the rest of us, you went right into the very same thing. You went on to compare the demographics and general anti-hunting attitudes of the population of California with that of North and South Dakota in yet another wild assed attempt to make excuses for Audobon yet again. You are in complete denial of the positions on their own website. You make the lame excuse that the lead bans in California would have happened with or without their considerable influence. Yet you act as if I alone am a bigger danger than this national organization because of my observations of flawed science.

So a few Audobon guys helped you out with some pheasant or grouse habitat development? B.F.D. They would stab you in the back and turn on you in a second if they found so much as a single piece of #6 shot in a pile of grouse poop, even if it passed through without any evidence of sickening the bird. We don't have to guess about their position. They put it in writing on their website. But you are still in denial.

Your statement about upland birds was stunning... "They are not waterfowl and they are not scavengers". So what? Are you trying to tell us they don't eat or drink? Are you trying to say they don't pick up small stones for their crops or little round objects that resemble seeds? Or that they do not eat grubs, worms, or insects that have consumed and concentrated lead dust or soluble lead residue from paints, pesticides, mining wastes, or soils? How many days or weeks will you go on grasping at straws and denying facts in order to support your preconceived anti-lead notions? For someone who claims to be on our side, you sure are going out of your way to support the anti-lead position. Don't get pissed at me for labeling you. Anyone can see it. The anti-lead King Brown sees it and agrees with you. I can see it. craigd, Stan, and Ted can see it too. You might as well have it tattooed on your forehead.

I don't really care if you are "hard on me" or not. It is not about me or my way (you can try to make that if you want though - that is standard internet operating procedure when up against a brick wall). It's about the facts and what is done with them. I have a little experience in science and wildlife ecology, and I know how science is done, how it works and, in this case, with some of the people who have done it. This is not rocket science.

If you don't know whether upland birds have crops (and gizzards, where the actual damage is done) then what are you doing in this discussion? Really. Not to be hard on you back just for the sake of retaliation but if you don't know something about bird biology, population dynamics or some such, why are you here?

For instance, I don't know jack about interplanetary physics so I don't bother to interject opinions into discussions about whether or not there is a 9th planet that is 10x the size of earth sharing our sun. I'll leave that to folks that really have the facts and marvel in the creative ways they have gone about finding evidence for this.

Everything can be a toxin. How much and in what way and to what degree are the consequences important is what matters. Of course, Lead is toxic. Do you really want to debate that? This is a hunting/shooting/collecting forum, not a presidential debate where the debating the existence of things that are factually known to not even exist is considered valid.

Sorry Brent, but you have just revealed that you don't care about facts. You didn't even read what I said, and just want to continue with your knee-jerk repetition of bad science that has been proven incorrect. I just mentioned the habit of upland birds picking up small stones for their crops. I know all about crops and gizzards, and I know what they do. My degree is in Biology, by the way. I don't know your credentials, but it is obvious to me that I have way more knowledge of this subject, and have devoted way more time to dissecting both side of the issue than you. Now you know why I am here.

Can you please show us where I have ever once said that lead is not a toxin? But you are wrong when you say that everything is a toxin. Copper is a toxin too. So is bismuth and tungsten. Do you even know anything about the different forms of lead and the dramatic differences in bio-availability. I keep using that word, but I guess that I am assuming that people like you even understand bio-availability. Do you understand that lead dust or lead in solution is much much more readily absorbed by the body of a bird, insect or mammal than a piece of #6 shot that passes through the digestive system? When you make your emotional arguments about lead ammunition, it becomes apparent that you do not.

You're right. This is not rocket science. But it is apparent that you still do not get it.

You are also right about this being a hunting/shooting/collecting forum. That makes it all the more amazing to see the number of guys who make erroneous statement that undermine those very activities, and cling to them even when they are proven wrong. Some are just stubborn. I still think you and Larry are stubborn, and that isn't a bad thing. But some are downright dishonest and mentally ill enough to deny smoking gun evidence of their dishonesty. Right King?

By the way, that was a nice custom Winchester single shot .22LR you posted pictures of yesterday. Did you shoot those squirrels with no-tox bullets? Since everything is a toxin, what did you use? Can you scare them to death with blanks?