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In the UK the threat of a lead shot ban hangs over us. Already forbidden when shooting waterfowl, the government are awaiting the final report from an already discredited investigatory committee.

Whenever the argument rages about lead shot, I am reminded about a post written in 2012 by Guy N Smith, who writes for several of our shooting magazines. This is what he said:

"Blood Test
I requested a blood test to determine the level of lead in my blood. According to the internet the acceptable blood lead concentrations in healthy persons without excessive exposure to environmental sources of lead is less than 10ug/dL for children and less that 25 ug/dL for adults. My doctor was somewhat surprised at my request but agreed, stating that I would have to pay for it. I was only too happy to fork out �40 in an attempt to dispel the malicious myth. It turned out to be money well spent.

I have eaten game since I was old enough to consume solid foods. During the war years when meat rationing was in force we ate whatever my father shot. Without the benefit of a freezer, this comprised game throughout the Winter months and fresh rabbit and pigeon during the rest of the year.

Further to this, I had a small cartridge loading business during the 1960's when I must have handled tons of lead shot. Nowadays I am stripping down shotgun cartridges on a regular basis for review in this column. Hence I am undoubtedly classified as having excessive exposure to lead.

The result of my test showed that the level of lead in my bloodstream was just 5ug/dL, half that of a child without excessive exposure! That says it all as far as I am concerned and I shall ignore further press releases on this ridiculous claim with the contempt it deserves."

http://midlandcartridge.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1

Tim

Craig, please try to avoid going totally off the rails on me. First . . . the abstract you posted is NOT "beef". Beef would relate to waterfowl . . . because the conspiracy YOU are promoting is that lead poisoning in waterfowl as a result of the ingestion of lead shot is a conspiracy sold to the public via junk science. And if you agree that the evidence from the abstract seems to show that pheasants can tolerate ingested lead shot better than ducks, then you should KNOW that the abstract in question isn't beef. Ducks to pheasants. Apples to oranges. Beef to pork. Well, at least the abstract is MEAT, not a bun or a tomato or a slice of cheese. Maybe we're making progress.

I have no reason to "debunk" the abstract, and have no intention of doing so. It shows pretty much what I expected it would show: Due to a much higher concentration of shot fall than you would expect on this side of the pond in typical wild pheasant hunting scenarios, there's a much greater likelihood that pheasants would ingest lead shot on shooting estates in the UK. So I'm agreeing with what the abstract tells us. But I'm also pointing out what the abstract does NOT tell us: Any evidence of pheasants getting sick or dying from the ingestion of lead shot. Given the way shooting estates are run, with gamekeepers out and about and on the job protecting their birds from predators, I should think they'd find the occasional dead pheasant, if there are any lying about that have died from lead poisoning. But the abstract does not address that issue. That's why I stressed the fact that the birds examined were HEALTHY birds even though lead was found in 3% of the gizzards checked. Sounds pretty much like the WI woodcock study: birds with high lead levels (although no lead shot in the case of woodcock) that were healthy at the time they were collected (shot).

Not sure what "ND 3-6% study" you're talking about. The only "ND study" I have has to do with lead bullet fragments in venison--and that's 53 out of 95 packets, which clearly isn't 3-6%. And that's only in the introduction to the study, which is actually a Centers for Disease Control study on the blood lead level of humans in North Dakota.

And what does the bone lead level in pheasants have to do with anything . . . unless we're finding pheasants that are sick or dead from lead poisoning? NO study I'm aware of says that lead poisoning is killing pheasants as it did waterfowl. Never saw any "beef" of that nature when I was preparing my articles. In fact, the MN DNR's Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee--which did a bunch of research on the subject--made the following statement concerning lead shot in upland game: "Conclusive proof regarding the effects of lead shot on other upland game populations is lacking . . . " In other words, nothing done on pheasants or any other upland species (doves excepted) shows the same effects as lead shot did with waterfowl. The most likely reason being that upland game species, except doves on heavily hunted areas, are far less likely to ingest lead shot than were pre-ban waterfowl. And since humans seldom eat pheasant bones, how would the bone lead level in pheasants have anything to do with human consumption? In the case of the venison packets, the lead fragments were IN THE MEAT--meant for human consumption. Apples and oranges again, Craig.

And once again, Craig, you're trying to put words in my mouth that are coming out of yours. Slimy tactic, that. Are you maybe a politician or something? "This is all due to ingested lead shot expended in the uplands." I'm not sure what "this" refers to in your quote, but I am well aware--and have stated multiple times--that there are plenty of sources of lead in the environment other than lead shot. From now on, if you want to quote me, then QUOTE ME--as I just did you--with these little squiggly marks " " around the statement so we know it came from me and not from you.

You and Keith have a real problem understanding the task you've set for yourself. I'm not interested in proving anything about ducks. I don't know whether you want to call the lead shot ban "settled science", but it is settled LAW. You can't shoot lead at waterfowl. End of story. It's not up to the wildlife managers to defend that decision, which has been with us for 25 years. It's up to you and Keith and anyone else who wants to prove it was a bad decision to explain why it was a bad decision. And to present your theories of what was killing all the ducks if it wasn't lead poisoning, to which lead shot was a major contributing factor (according to those who proposed and supported the ban). The climate change deniers don't just say "that's junk science". They come up with opposing theories. Those who deny evolution don't just say it's bunk. They also come up with opposing theories, like intelligent design. Up to you to either construct a cogent opposing theory yourself--not suggestions why there are factors other than the ban to explain why duck numbers turned around--but to what was causing all those dead ducks we're no longer finding.

As for your conspiratorial side . . . a couple problems with your suggestions about duck numbers and why they increased: 1. DDT was banned almost 20 years before the lead shot ban went into effect. 2. CRP went into effect in 1985. By 1987, we'd already seen the pheasant population in Iowa double as a result. Why didn't similar increases in waterfowl numbers show up that quickly. 3. CRP enrollment is now down from its peak by about 12 million acres. We've lost a third of the total CRP we once had. Shouldn't duck numbers be declining as a result? 4. Because we now have more land in row crop production (replacing all those lost CRP acres), that means more ag chemicals applied. And because of the loss of CRP, more of those ag chemicals are washing into our wetlands and waterways. The Des Moines Waterworks has filed suit against some upstream Iowa counties because their water is no longer fit to drink without significant filtration. Nothing in either 3 or 4 is good news for ducks . . . but are we seeing lots of dead ducks as a result? CRP was mainly good for ducks because it provides better protection for nesting birds in the Prairie Pothole region. Reduces predator losses. But it's pretty easy to tell a predator kill from something like lead or chemical poisoning.

Lots of stuff you've thrown up against the wall to see what would stick. Now if you'll quit misrepresenting what I believe and what I've stated, and get around to producing your scientific theory on why lead poisoning was not a major factor in waterfowl mortality pre-ban, maybe we can return to a more intelligent discussion. And please, Craig . . . From now on, anything you claim I said needs to be a quote. I will do the same if I refer to anything you said.

TRW, that's an interesting comment on lead in humans. Here in the States, the only direct impact lead had on me was when our Environmental Protection Agency shut down a 50 foot indoor firing range we had in an Army Reserve center, where I was the senior officer. Inadequate ventilation, they said. Too much lead in the air.

Well, we had all the soldiers who worked there full time, not just one weekend a month, tested for lead in their blood. None of them had a blood lead level that was out of the normal range for adults. And in all cases, it was well below the Center for Disease Control's level of concern. Similarly, a study conducted on several hundred volunteers in North Dakota--where hunting and the consumption of wild game are quite common--showed that their average blood lead level was below the nationwide average. And in no case did it approach the CDC's level of concern.

It will be interesting to see what information coming out of Flint, Michigan--where there is currently a serious issue with lead-polluted drinking water--shows us. Problems with lead poisoning in humans--even those of us who are "home loaders" and work with lead shot--don't seem to be all that common. And given that rural North Dakotans showed a lower blood lead level than the national average, I'd guess that perhaps people living in urban areas, in dwellings where there may still be lead paint and lead pipes, are more likely to be impacted by lead accumulation in our bodies than those of us who consume wild game.

Larry, you're going off the rails with your slimy tactics, okay, got that out of the way.

I honestly fail to understand why you play word games with your own words, but I think it's a slimy tactic. I repeat, you've regularly been putting words in my mouth and pretending to approach from a position of authority based on wordiness.

You asked, I want to see a study about pheasant ingesting lead shot in the uplands. You said, I think the shooting estates of Great Britain are a good example. You said, the shooting estates of Great Britain are akin to our hunting.

Why do you now repeat that the only beef you asked for has been about waterfowl? It just isn't true. You asked about pheasant in the uplands ingesting lead shot. I asked you not to commingle the topics, but you don't have to comply, nor understand the request, Again, you have used the slimy tactic of commingling unrelated topics.

Tim (tw) had a great post. Not because you buddied up to him and agreed that some obscure study said we did blood tests. The value of his post show where this heads. Who cares about blood tests. Haven't you repeatedly said, all that matters is the appearance of whether something looks sick or not and if it might have died from the speculation.

Ask the parents in Flint if they'll take an all clear because most of the kids don't look sick. Ask how those high bone levels of lead got there, not well heck I don't think the gamekeepers have found any dead pheasants off season. You are the one that says British estates are akin to upland hunting in the US unless you are softening that position or back peddling. Are you a politician.

Let me switch off your narrow request for a study, beef, on pheasant ingestion of lead shot for a moment again. I think it's pretty common knowledge that allowing wetlands to return or restoring them takes much more time than upland cover takes to come back. So, I'll apply some of your logic and recommend to you that the lag between significant CRP implementation and other duck habitat restoration and numbers rebound is about as expected compared to upland birds.

Also, if you'd take a moment to check, DDT was used commonly into the early steel shot era under the brand name of Kelthane, some of the farmers here may remember it, I used some myself. The current runoff is thought to be safer and friendlier to humans and the environment. There are late 80's studies about increases in DDT detection well after the ban that you tout. When was that full steel shot ban, around '91?

I think it's a slimy tactic to keep repeating the same thind over and over.

I always quote your words Larry. I use single squigglies by my choice and mine alone to send up a flag to any reader that clarification and full context, from you, is available. I make the conscious choice to play word games, when I get personally attacked, not countered with 'beef'. I'll gladly return and acknowledge correction for anything I've stated incorrectly.

There you go, Craig. The big lie. That is you, is it not? Or do you have an evil twin brother craigd? That is clearly stated incorrectly--by one helluva long ways. You cannot come up with a quote where I stated what you claim above. As a result, that's one slime too many from you. I'm out of here as far as you're concerned. Enough lies and BS. You come up with a study that directly challenges the lead shot ban in waterfowl, PM me with a link. Otherwise . . . go eat a sandwich filled with lead 8's, have your blood and bone levels tested, and come back and report.

Larry, look a bit further up this page, and you wrote that it was incumbent on me to 'construct a cogent theory'. In eighteen pages, I can't read where you have given any consideration to lead sources other than shot. The only exception may be vaguely with the woodcock, and an occasional gratuitous mention in general.

How simple could it be, yes I stand by my comment. Instead of quoting that comment, why don't you back out of bs mode and quote me where you have shown quail, pheasant or particularly ducks have been shown to pick up lead from non shot sources. Of course, I'm referring to the last eighteen pages, and not some new bs.

I firmly believe you've brought up some valid and true points. You said way back, all we can do is present good science, and you emotionally call me the liar and bs'er. All along this thread, I've honored you with looking at studies and examples that you thought were important, when all it comes down to is tolerating page after page of reading your conspiracy and worse stories, just to see if an occasional pertinent point is made. Your rules huh Larry, you can ratchet things up, but I can't respond in kind?

I truly have been sorry I've stuck around on this one, but you kept calling me back when you responded to keith, and best I could, I tried to stay on lead and the birds in question.

Larry has done a lot more than ratcheting things up craigd. He has actually accused you of the "slimy tactic" of putting words in his mouth. I find that laughable, and especially interesting since Larry has been desperately grasping for BEEF ever since he got caught putting words in my mouth. He really thinks that he has some right to make demands for BEEF when he has been totally unresponsive to similar requests. And he would rather find disingenuous ways to discredit us than to acknowledge some of the gaping holes and glaring errors in what he considers sound and settled science that none of us should dare to question.

First it was his insane and repeated accusation about my observation that 90% of what he had said WITHIN THIS THREAD was anti-lead ammunition. This was after his "Lead is Toxic. Toxic = Bad" pronouncement. OK, I confess, it was an estimate. It might have been 89.675% or 91.328%. But what matters is that Larry attempted to say that my observation of his rhetoric within this thread amounted to some insane claim that I was saying he is 100% anti-lead shot. One wonders how this stickler for accuracy could even make that statement after I had already acknowledged his continued support for lead shot for upland hunting, and noted his previous general support for lead ammo in the 2010 Lead Shot thread.

Then he went on to put words in my mouth again about the susceptibility of waterfowl and upland birds to lead shot. He then attempted to change my statement and its' meaning by adding the word "relative" to susceptibility, and stuck to his perverting of my words even after I explained it to him and corrected him.

Slimy tactic indeed! And even worse to try to further sidestep the issue and evade the debate by accusing you of the same thing... again for making the observation that Larry has been predominately against lead ammunition in this thread... EXCEPT FOR UPLAND GAME HUNTING. And other than a couple recent admissions about some other sources of lead in our environment, Larry has either avoided or minimized that and has been extremely supportive of the pseudo-science that led up to the 1991 Federal Lead shot ban for waterfowl.

This is the guy who wants and demands BEEF, when he isn't ready to even digest pablum. That became even more apparent when he made his erroneous suppositions about lead concentration in bones. There are many sources of information about lead uptake into skeletal systems, so one has to wonder just how hard he looked if he could only manage to find one study from WI-DNR. There is no shortage of information on lead ammo toxicity, or lead poisoning in various birds and mammals. And it doesn't take a genius to see that quite a bit of it is agenda driven crap. But you can't be very hungry for BEEF when you are standing in the butcher shop and are unwilling to even look at it.

Larry obviously still hasn't read the North Dakota study that reported finding lead fragments in 53 out of 95 packages of ground venison. It's only about 30 pages of now largely discredited info, but Larry would rather keep clinging to damaged goods to keep the onus on lead bullets and deer hunters than to learn that the North Dakota study was as seriously flawed as much of the junk science that led to the 1991 bans.

Nor has Larry had anything to say about the extremely conflicting fluctuations in waterfowl populations prior to the 1991 lead shot ban, or the effects that weather and a huge reduction in waterfowl hunters has had on populations. It must be very convenient to be so simple minded as to say things like "Lead is Toxic. Toxic = Bad", and to just sweep everything else under the rug.

Pablum for you Larry. Beef is for grown-ups.

No beef from you either, Keith. Not even one contrarian scientist who questions the lead ban? How come we have them on climate change, evolution, etc, but not on the lead ban? Sorry Keith, but you don't have the credentials to discredit anything. Throw a bunch of crap up against the wall . . . except none of it sticks. And even if it did, it wouldn't mean anything. Come back when you find SCIENTISTS discrediting the lead ban, just like we can find contrarian scientists challenging man-made climate change and evolution. The fact that you think it's easy to shoot holes in the decision to ban lead shot for waterfowl only proves that you're unqualified with the "gun" you're using. Surely, somewhere, the truth is out there . . . but you just keep blathering on and coming up empty.

Truth is, a few comments ago, you wrote, 'I'm not interested in proving anything about ducks'. The counter theory from good logic seems to be, you're blowing unnecessary and illogical smoke, bs so to speak. How about them uplands eh Larry, and heck, at least the Bronco's are opening up with a game of it, we'll see how it plays out.