doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lead shot increasingly under fire

I've got to be honest here - what I see is a study that concluded that turkey vultures are a lot LESS susceptible to lead ingestion than was expected. What I don't see is a corresponding study to show that other raptors are any more susceptible than the vultures. Sure, there is the assertion, but no proof. And I'm having a hard time accepting the dramatic differences in physiology that are being proposed. No proof there either, and while it isn't my specialty, none that I was ever taught. It would be unusual to find that much physiological difference in species that similar, to say the least. I know that we would treat them medically the same, because the physiology is the same where drugs, etc. are concerned.

To summarize, we've got a species that basically makes its living off of eating dead animals - the very ones we are concerned about that got that way due to a poor shot by the hunter and are horribly contaminated by hundreds of bullet fragments. Yet for some inexplicable reason, this species of raptor that is most-exposed is relatively insulated from the toxic effects of lead contamination in the carcass, while the other species in the group (who are actually less opportunistic and will actually hunt for prey rather than depend on finding carrion) are somehow much more susceptible, despite the fact that they don't partake of carrion nearly as often as the vultures.

No one would accept the premise that lead ingestion had decimated the vulture population, because all one has to do is lift an eye to the sky in any non-urban area and more than likely one or more can be found soaring on thermals. Come to think of it, the other indiginous raptor species in this region are thriving as well...