doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Eagles and lead poisoning

Just read where they found a deceased female Eagle with traces of lead- ingested from a dead elk carcass outside the Yellowstone Park boundaries-- CA- the great anti-gun and anti-hunting State, has already banned lead for big-game hunting, hunters must use the way more expensive copper bullets. What's next from the great State that gave us: "Haight-Ashbury" Piss=headed Hippies and Flower Power drug wasted folk running amuck in their skivvies, etc.

Went back to Hemingway's "True At First Light" to re-read how he left a dead horse for bait in WY (Old Kite)- and later returned to shoot the eagles that came to feed on said carcass--Always wondered how old "Don Ernesto" got away with that- No: "Shoot, Shovel and Shut-up" for old Ernesto- "back in the day"!! RWTF

I'll wave the bullsh*t flag on this one. It's probably just an attempt to outlaw lead bullets for big game hunting nationally. The same B.S. line that was used to mandate non-toxic shot for waterfowl hunting.

At the dump in Kodiak --



In our yard --



There is no shortage of them.

And that is the key. The populations are NOT at risk. Lead poisoning of eagles is only controversial on gun/hunting websites. Elsewhere, it is an indisputable fact. The salient point, however, is that the populations continue to grow and thus lead bullet bans over eagles are unwarranted.

Saw a bald eagle about a month ago eating a dead chicken. Farmer cleaned out his crusty cake manure and had a couple dead chickens the catchers left behind. So he loaded them up into the manure spreader and they ended up out in a field. Apparently bald eagles like Oven stuffers.

So, you�re concluding that if lead is present in an eagle, then it came from a hunter�s lead bullet? The salient point here is that in some circles, hunters are not only blamed, but ridiculed. The indisputable fact is that hunters and gunners may be correct, not automatically wrong.

I've never heard of a study tracking lead levels in live eagles. It seems lead levels are as good an excuse as anything for dead eagles. There seem to be enough of them to allow an authorized kill rate for windmills producing electricity. Wouldn't it be horrible if a Condor flew into one of those?

Where people have traced the source of the lead, yup, it usually is. But if it won't fit with your world view, feel free and unencumbered to invent another one.

Up this way, it's a very common sight to see eagles feeding on deer carcasses along the roadside. Of course, especially at this time of year, it's likely that those are road killed deer and not hunter killed deer. But they do a lot of scavenging.

Can't say I know a lot about the golden eagle population, but the bald eagle population has made a miraculous recovery after DDT was banned and after the ban on lead shot for waterfowl. (Eagles do a lot of scavenging around water.) Used to be the only place we saw them in Iowa was along the Mississippi, and then very rarely. Before I moved to WI in 2010, it wasn't at all unusual to see them some distance from major bodies of water.

I see golden eagles fairly regularly near my cabin. Their main prey appears to be ground squirrels. In fact, I�m not sure I have ever seen one catch or eat anything other than a rodent. They don�t like fish. Some people speculate their preference for mammals is why they were not as affected by DDT as balds.