Keith, Craig refers to "a quick few minute search". You can find whatever you want on the Internet, pro and con. You stop on the one you like . . . "Hey, this guy agrees with me, so I must be right."
A fraction of the birds they treat . . . OK. I find an article on an eagle that died of lead poisoning in my old home county back in 2010. 5.6 ppm blood lead level. Toxicity occurs at 0.2 ppm. Approximately 30 reported to have died in 2009 from exposure to lead. Another rehabilitator in Iowa reports that of the 130 that died at rehabilitation sites in the past 5 years, nearly 60 percent tested positive for lead poisoning. Yes indeed, that's only a fraction . . . but it's hardly a small fraction.
As for being "agenda-driven" . . . are you suggesting that the various state DNR's are anti-hunting? How about the USFWS? Them too? So it's some vast conspiracy on the part of those agencies that regulate hunting . . . and they're actually anti-hunting? Man, are we ever in BIG trouble!
Think on this for a moment, Keith: Many state DNR's are funded mainly, if not entirely by hunter dollars. License fees. The antis don't pay squat because they don't hunt. If hunting stops, the DNR's are out of business. So does it make sense for them to be anti-hunting? Not to me it doesn't. And even assuming there were this vast anti-hunting conspiracy within the agencies that regulate hunting, both state and federal, don't you think there would be the occasional whistleblower? Somewhere? Someone? I spent several years working for the CIA, and a bunch more in Military Intelligence. And what always got me about the conspiracy theorists--and that's what you and Craig are, because you believe that all these wildlife biologists were complicit in lying about what was killing waterfowl, and they're now complicit in lying about what's killing eagles and condors--is that when you get too many people involved in a conspiracy, it ain't gonna stay a conspiracy for very long. Somebody, somewhere is going to blow the whistle. Go to the media. Write a book exposing the evil conspiracy, all the lies about lead etc. Where are those whistleblowers among wildlife biologists? Their jobs depend on hunting, because antis don't pay, and nonhunters don't pay. So you'll have to explain to me how it makes sense that all those people would keep their mouths shut tight when they know that the information they're putting out to HUNTERS is bogus. Lead shot really didn't kill waterfowl, and lead poisoning--at least some of which comes from bullet fragments from scavenged animals--isn't killing deer. (SOAR--Saving Our Avian Resources--says "We know it's the lead fragments that are making them sick." They have an obvious bias, so I'm not buying the fragments as the cause in all cases. But in some cases? Maybe most cases? We know there are lead fragments in venison, and we know that eagles scavenge deer, and we know that lead fragments show up in their systems. I don't think we can give lead bullets a "pass" . . . at least not to the same extent we can defend lead shot in the case of upland game. To the extent that's a problem for hunters . . . well, we have to face up to it.)
As for "editing" Audubon's statement on hunting . . . do I need to quote you and Craig, Keith? YOU TWO edited it to start with, several pages back. All I did was include the VERY FIRST PART of their statement on hunting, which YOU left out. If you'd been "fair and balanced" from the get-go, I wouldn't have had to add the statement you guys conveniently omitted.
Last edited by L. Brown; 01/25/16 08:47 PM.
