Way back a bunch of pages, you mentioned that lead levels of 5 point something can be found in eagles, and .2 ppm is considered toxic. I'm confident that you're aware of 'studies' that show normal acting and appearing pheasant can have bone lead levels in the mid four hundreds ppm. Are you going to insist that the only source of that lead came from expended lead shot?
Craig, we need to avoid apples and oranges comparisons....
....The abstract says: "Bone lead concentrations considered to be toxic in waterfowl were observed in all age classes of woodcock." The woodcock for this study (other than a few chicks) were harvested using steel shot before the regular season opened. So obviously, they were relatively healthy when they were "collected"....
....I've never been terribly concerned about lead shot ingestion by pheasants. However they were exposed to lead, based on the Tall Timbers research on quail taken off an area of much heavier shot fall than one typically sees in upland hunting, I'd doubt that any appreciable part of that exposure came from ingesting lead shot.
Larry, your woodcock abstract should point out that you choose to state 'obviously they were relatively healthy'. What you fail to admit, is that there is enough environmental non shot sourced lead to be measurable in woodcock. I agree that woodcock can not be compared to ducks, but in close proximity to duck habitat, you say steel shot zone, there is enough environmental lead available to be toxic to a duck.
Back to apples and oranges, can you blame someone for questioning your contention that all available lead necessarily comes from shot. I pointed out numbers, because while you may split hairs about apples and oranges, the very presence of measurable won't go well for your case.
All I was asking is that if a study comes up concluding x or y, are you just going to agree that it was caused by lead shot. And, please don't hope for a moment that there aren't 'studies' that implicate ingested lead shot in pheasant lead levels, as I've been hinting about repeatedly.
Craig, you're confused . . . and your "hints" don't rise to the level of evidence.
First of all, please show me ANYWHERE I've made the contention that "all available lead necessarily comes from shot". There's lead in the air, lead in water, lead from bunches of sources other than shot. But if you FIND SHOT in a critter's digestive system, then there's no way you can give ingested lead a "pass" as A source of lead poisoning. Notice I said A source, not THE source. Could be other sources as well.
And that woodcock study didn't have to tell me that doodles are likely to be exposed to lead from sources other than lead shot. In the first place, they examined 108 birds and didn't find lead shot in ANY of them. In the second place, woodcock eat by sticking their long beaks in the soil and probing for worms. So they ingest soil, and they ingest worms--either or both of which are likely sources of lead. And given the fact that shot fall in woodcock habitat tends to be quite dispersed (as it is for all upland birds except doves) rather than concentrated as it often is for waterfowl, the likelihood of lead shot being the sole source (let alone the main source) of lead in the soil in which woodcock feed is highly improbable.
As for your hints about ingested lead in pheasants, please "show me the beef". Links to studies. Does not make sense to me that lead poses a significant danger to pheasants . . . and here's why: Pheasants are the major species featured in driven shoots in the UK and elsewhere. Those birds, unlike our preserve birds, have been "out and about" on the shoot grounds for several weeks (if not months) before they're shot. The same drives are shot several times over the course of the season. In a single drive, a line of 8 guns might well fire 200 shots (or more). So, in the case of driven shoots, you have a much higher concentration of shot fall than you do in upland hunting as we practice it in this country. Preserves would be the only place in this country you'd get comparable shot fall, but they're not a good comparison for the simple reason that most of their pheasants don't survive outside their pens for more than a few days; therefore not having sufficient time to ingest much lead shot. Those British birds, on the other hand, are much more akin to our wild birds--except exposed to areas of much heavier shot fall. And because they have gamekeepers on patrol, looking for predators etc, it seems to me they'd be finding lots of pheasants dead from lead poisoning if ingestion of lead shot were an issue for pheasants.
I eagerly await your hinted-at study on pheasants and lead shot.
Last edited by L. Brown; 02/05/16 08:39 AM.
