doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lead & Condor deaths

Robt: That was an extremely well thought out, persuasive and well written post. Now, if only Keith would study your post, maybe he could see how to make a non-inflammatory while at the same time, very effective statement. Well done, sir.

Translation of the above: First quote demonstrates clearly that Keith does not understand the difference between waterfowl and upland birds, and how they're hunted. Highly concentrated shot fall around places where waterfowl are hunted in addition to the way waterfowl feed makes it much more likely that waterfowl will ingest lead vs upland birds. Shot fall very scattered in upland habitats compared to waterfowl . . . and even where it's quite concentrated, very few birds end up ingesting lead. Evidence presented by me, from Tall Timbers quail research.

Second quote is a lame excuse for not being able to come up with even ONE contrarian scientist where the lead ban for waterfowl is concerned. There are scientists who believe climate change caused by human activity is junk science, and who say so. Anyone who prides himself on "research", like Keith does, should be able to come up with just ONE wildlife biologist who worked in the field back then and who's going to tell us that the lead ban was all a scam. Otherwise . . . we're looking at a vast conspiracy involving thousands. Many of whom are now retired and have nothing to lose. And vast conspiracies involving thousands are seldom vast conspiracies. It's like any other secret. The more people who know, the greater the chance someone will tell. The truth is out there . . . but since we haven't heard otherwise, maybe we already KNOW the truth.

Agree with Buzz. Rob, excellent post.

Re lead = toxic so we should get rid of all of it: Agree 100%, that's WAY oversimplified. But then most Americans are "low information" types on issues like lead poisoning. And when they hear about something like Flint, that does not help the cause of those of us who are supporting lead ammunition by saying "Show us the good science."

Re the continuing danger to waterfowl posed by lead: A few years back, someone sent me a link to a long presentation made to Wisconsin's Natural Resources Board on the dangers of lead. Most of it had to do with either waterfowl and lead shot they were still ingesting, or even more graphically, loons ingesting lead sinkers or jigs. (And loons, in the North Woods, have a status similar to eagles. Even if their population weren't in decline, people would worry about each and every dead loon.) They didn't say much about lead in the uplands, and if they mentioned lead in eagles, I don't recall it--but it's been some time now. But it was not long after that presentation that the NRB made its proposal to go to nontoxic shot only on DNR-managed lands, for all kinds of hunting. Fortunately, Wisconsin has a unique mechanism that allows public voices to be heard. The DNR conducts annual spring meetings in every county in the state. There are discussions about proposed changes in DNR regs as well as NRB recommendations. The one about lead shot grabbed my attention, so I attended--and I spoke up about a lack of good science where lead shot in upland birds is concerned. So did 3 or 4 other people at the meeting. More of us spoke up on that issue than any of the dozens of other issues presented at the meeting. And attendees also get to vote. The statewide vote on NRB's lead shot ban on DNR lands was 1,979 in favor vs 2,726 opposed. We shot it down, which goes to show the value of strong hunter involvement.

But to return to whether lead shot in waterfowl is a problem today: While I'm sure some are still dying, my educated guess is that there are so few relative to what we were shown 25-30 years ago that it doesn't get much attention. In addition to hunters--who mostly only congregate around marshes during hunting season--birders also flock to those places. If they saw a sick or dead goose, I expect they'd make noise about it. And if they took the bird to a rehabilitator who then found lead shot in its system, I have no doubt that would be thrown in our faces--just as eagles are being thrown in our faces as evidence of the danger posed by lead. Likewise, if it were still happening at all frequently, wouldn't the biologists themselves be talking about it? As in: "See, the lead shot ban has REDUCED the danger to waterfowl significantly . . . but lead shot from 25 years ago or more is still around, and is still killing the occasional duck or goose. Which is why we need to get rid of all lead ammunition as soon as possible." Assuming that's their agenda. And that's pretty much the stated position of the MN DNR's Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee. They stated in their report (10 years ago): "It is inevitable that lead shot will have to be restricted for all shotgun hunting at some future time."

Re the increasing numbers of "nonconsumptive users" coming into the wildlife management community: definitely true. Although DNR's still get a large proportion of their funding from us evil consumptive types: Hunters and anglers.

Re whistleblowers: Even in my former area (intelligence community, CIA and Military Intelligence) there have been whistleblowers--sometimes risking prison because it can be a question of revealing classified information. (Those who remember Vietnam will recall Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. More recently, Edward Snowden. Regarded as a hero by some because he spoke up for American privacy rights. Regarded as scum by people like me, because he didn't stop there. He also revealed FOREIGN intelligence operations, which have nothing to do with privacy rights or the Constitution.) But I'm skeptical that there's a conspiracy of silence in the wildlife community, given that many of the biologists working then are now retired, and given that there are so many people who would've had to be aware of what was going on. Rob gave examples of people who spoke up post-retirement. Why none in this particular area?

Maybe because it's not really a scam???

Final point: The danger to our continued use of lead is not what it was 25 years ago. We're no longer dealing with migratory birds, which fall under federal regulations. And Congress has taken away the EPA's authority to regulate lead in ammunition. So the threat is STATE BY STATE. If you're a state like CA with not many hunters, and unfortunately cursed by the presence of condors, you're in big trouble. Other places--with more hunters--the situation is very different. Politicians listen when we make enough noise. Demand "good science" at least equivalent to what we were shown on waterfowl. And make noise when you don't get it.

I carefully read through your last two posts. Impressively lengthy, but absolutely no new comments from all these previous pages. There are vague mentions of studies, but still nothing to evaluate critically.

Your passion is in the uplands and you claim to demand good science, yet you say, tough luck for the folks out in California because there's not enough of them? Then, you claimed the success of keeping lead shot in the Wisconsin uplands hinged on comments by you and three or four others in a vote involving some forty-seven hundred people.

You say to demand good science, but your very lengthy comments run about eighty percent on the dangers of lead, and lunacy of folks you don't agree with....re waterfowl. Is lead and waterfowl 'settled' science, or a tool to inject repetition about the dangers of lead.

You keep playing games with that lack of retired whistle blowers, but you conveniently leave out Rob's anecdotal evidence, personal experience, about the FWS and state DNR's consulting with anti hunting 'conservation' groups.

That, ad nauseam, should be looked at with a critical eye by someone demanding good science and admonishing fellow hunters, while continuing to vaguely reference that 'science'.

You keep on with the conspiracy theories and political overtones, when it's been explained about the job security and demographic changes in the work force. Thousands can attend a campaign stop, or a million man march, and they all leave nodding in agreement.

A conspiracy, or more than enough 'votes' to changes the future of sport shooting, based on the village they grew up in and the emotions that they're told to channel.

Didn't intend to mention any studies, Craig . . . although I did make a reference to the Tall Timbers study, to which I referred earlier. And gave a direct quote from the MN DNR's Nontoxic Shot Advisory Committee report.

Re CA and the condors, Craig: The confluence of two factors makes that a losing battle: 1. Not enough hunters to make sufficient noise. (Their "squeaky wheel" is about like that on a coaster wagon.) And 2. They have condors. Lost cause.

The success of defeating the NRB proposal in Wisconsin was based on the vote of those who attended spring meetings in each of the state's 70-odd counties. The fact that several of us, at a meeting in one small rural county, spoke on that one specific topic, out of somewhere around 100 topics up for discussion that evening--most of which generated no comments from the audience--would seem to indicate that a lot of hunters are interested in the lead shot issue. (I didn't know any of the other speakers.) And it shows that a relatively small number of people can have an influence when they take the time to actively engage, requiring a bit more effort than posting on a BB.

Can't find hardly anything in my last 2 posts re the dangers of lead. You reading the same posts I am, Craig? If lead isn't a danger to waterfowl, same challenge to you as to Keith: Find me the contrarian scientist--even just ONE--who says it's all a scam. And retired folks have no concern with job security, and we're talking about something that happened 25 years ago. ROB JUST SPOKE UP reference issues with which he's had personal experience. Why can't you find anyone who worked with waterfowl back then who will do the same thing? Why are all the whistleblowers silent in that one particular case . . . especially since there are, potentially, so many of them. Likely a majority of whom are retired, given that it's been 25 years since the ban.

You and Keith keep making excuses for being unable to find proof that lead shot killing waterfowl is bad science. Give me even ONE study for "critical evaluation". Seems there ought to be something, written by some contrarian wildlife biologist, somewhere along the line. Establishing that it's bad science requires proof. So far, all I've heard from you and Keith are the typical snippets on which conspiracy theories are based. A bit from here, a piece from there, and when you connect all the dots . . . right. And how many different theories are out there on the JFK assassination? Largely compiled in the same manner. But in that case, at least you can make money selling yet another conspiracy theory book.

You continue to miss my point Larry, but that's perfectly okay with me. You are more passionate about how bad lead is for waterfowl, than for pro ethical hunting. Okay, maybe you're not passionate about it, but repeat in hopes that it sticks.

I never said there is a conspiracy to conceal lead safety and waterfowl health, you said it. What you specifically say, underline specific is, if a dead duck is found and lead is found in its gizzard then that's conclusive that the duck died from lead shot sourced lead poisoning.

I painfully wanted to avoid your Tall Timbers study, but would you like to take a look at it, possibly a little more critically than you prefer? Your conclusion, 241 quail cut open, 3 had lead in their gizzards, none appeared to have lead poisoning. Correct?

Huh, no xrays, no blood tests, soils tests, water and food source tests?

Let's switch to your tactic, extrapolation. What percentage of quail die off annually anyway, that would've died from lead poisoning if they had a longer life span. More importantly, with the anticipated low carry over rate, how many dead, dying, or healthy appearing lead tainted quail were being eaten by raptors.

Remember, I'm not too worried about lost waterfowl opportunities at this point, but you say I am. So, I asked how come a dead bird is only tested for the presence of a substance, not the cause of death. Are the samples preserved, so that they can be retested if desired? Yes or no?

You asked about Raptor rehabilitators, so I looked. You asked about all the lead problems down in Georgia, so I looked. I asked you why your 'sources', soarraptors.org, had vague articles about lead, but then switched to tugging at heartstrings with the single death of a rescue bird. You came back later and said well, they're suspect. The you tell me to go look up what the fed wildlife service says and are they in on a conspiracy, and they reference a study and use pictures from soar....without disclosure.

You tell me eagles are dying from from lead poising of unretrieved lead bullet hunted deer. So I look for the study, and it's about only 25 gut piles evaluated on an Illinois management area. But, the FWS study says that concludes that eagles are dying from lead rifle bullet fragments in Wisconsin and Iowa. You also chose to ignore that in the entire FWS study, only one eagle appeared to show signs of lead poisoning.

But, you were aware of this already. Look back at your Tall Timbers 'study' where none of the quail 'appeared' to have lead poisoning. Then recall my stated motivation for commenting, your admission that eagles can be a poster bird for insignificant, scientifically, reasons, but your demonizing of members of the bird hunting community. Keep in mind you said tough luck for the deer hunters, they can take care of themselves. Tough luck for California, they just don't have the numbers.

But....all we can do is insist on good science.

Nicely done, Mike. Few people understand the reasons for survival of this Pleistocene relic to the current day. The Spanish/Mexican range cattle filled a lot of condor bellies during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The lead ban has passed the legislature and is being phased in. I live in one of the most desirable communities in California, I am a native Californian, but by the total phase in date, I will be living on Southern Arizona�

Many of these 'wild' condors are feed pieces and parts of domestic cattle. IIRC, this food has never been tested for lead. It might be inconvenient to find that this is a source of lead.

Not a biologist, not an expert, just a reader. I have read most of these 11 pages and the fact is the California Condor was in trouble 60 years ago.

Bald Eagles are carrion feeders, and how many have died from eating dead salmon filled with mercury from the Great Lakes, probably far more than lead.

Dabbling ducks and some divers are more susceptible to lead poisoning by the nature of which they feed, and if the plants are not anchored firmly in the silt will inject roots and all to include maybe a pellet or two occasionally. How many does it take to kill a duck that ingests them and how long? Lead wounded or steel wounded, most are going to die anyway.

As to an upland bird ingesting pellets, kind of far fetched as they peck for their food and I am certain they can tell the difference between a pellet and seeds and some young sprouts.

Cows tear grass to eat and use their tongue to do so, and therefore cannot get low grass, on the other hand, sheep eat roots and all, how many of them get lead poisoning?

I have spent the last couple hours reading instead of writing a response. Larry has been adamant in asking me to prove a negative, i.e., come up with one scientist who will say that the 1991 Federal lead shot ban was a scam. I have not found that whistle-blower as of yet... but if it will make Larry happy, I will keep looking. So far, as craigd has once again astutely noted, Larry has given us nothing of substance except to repeat his same tired refrain claiming that the 1991 ban was based upon sound, proven science, and is therefore a done deal that should not and shall not be questioned, lest we upset the establishment, and turn them even further against us. All we can do, is huddle in our little groups and demand good science.

I did find this very interesting 2014 article that said the "National Shooting Sports Foundation has obtained emails that it says indicate that a federal official withheld critical data on lead blood levels in the California condor until after gun control advocates in the California state legislature used the iconic bird�s plight to help push through a law last year to ban lead ammunition."

http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/nssf-back...ammo-ban-passed

Some of the articles I've been reading are astoundingly ignorant. Like the information from the Univ. of Minn. Raptor Rehabilitation Center, it all sounds good until you take the time to pick out the glaring errors and inconsistencies that are routinely passed off as good science.

One so-called study from Biologicaldiversity.org makes the ludicrous claim that lead pellets often shatter into dust, particles, and residues while copper "leaves no dust and rarely fragments." You don't have to have a degree in metallurgy to instantly know that lead is more malleable and less prone to fragmenting than copper.

An emotional interview with a Condor Biologist from the Peregrine Fund in the Arizona Sun speaks about the dramatic comeback of the endangered California Condor from a low of 20 to more than 400 between California and Arizona in 2015. He only states that a major cause of Condor death is lead poisoning, but he gives no details about the source of that lead, or any results from ornithological pathologists to prove his single contention that the source of the poisoning is lead bullet fragments from gut piles. He claimed that Fish and Game biologists showed that a single bullet can leave up to 450 fragments.

Think about this. The population increased from 20 to 400 even though hunters and shooters were still using lead ammo. It was acknowledged that the first ban on lead ammunition in Condor range in California had zero effect on mortality. A Federal official withheld data on that until the statewide ban was passed. And now they are pressing for a lead ammo ban in Utah because some condors occasionally fly into Utah. The only real argument they have against lead ammunition is essentially the same as Larry's simplistic "Lead is Toxic. Toxic=Bad."

This so-called condor biologist went on to say that "Though they�re the biggest raptor in North America, they can be brought down by only 3 grains of lead." Just what is he saying here? 3 grains is less than one single # 4 lead shot pellet. What form of lead is this supposedly lethal 3 grains... solid, dust, suspended in a chemical, or a single #4 pellet in the head at a velocity of 1000 fps?

While on this subject of lethal doses of lead, I found some unbelievably wild extremes of lethal doses I mentioned earlier, from 5.6ppm cited by Larry to another study claiming that two bald eagles died with levels of between 26 and 38 ppm. My reading this afternoon has expanded those numbers dramatically from 48 ppm to this article from the Bangor Daily News:

http://bangordailynews.com/2014/11/13/outdoors/bald-eagle-found-in-howland-dies-of-lead-poisoning/

In it, there is an x-ray of an eagle's stomach that purports to show 4 fragments of bird shot found in a sick eagle. The 4 alleged pieces of shot are all clustered together... the pattern that hit the animal the eagle was feeding on must have been beyond tight. The alleged lead pellets are quite large in relation to other parts of this eagle's anatomy. And we are never shown actual shotgun pellets recovered in a subsequent autopsy. These objects could just as easily be steel or some other metal. Later in the article, it was stated that the blood lead levels of this eagle which died the day after it was brought into Avian Haven Bird Hospital, was off the scale of their sceening instruments" REALLY? They actually expect you to believe that nonsense after first telling you that this sick bird was found perched in a tree and that "It takes only a tiny, tiny amount to be a lethal dose.�

Think about that. This bird was claimed to have a blood lead level that was off the charts, too high to even read it, and way beyond lethal... yet it was strong enough to fly and perch on a tree limb where it was found. And think about this. People like Larry, Brent, and King are naive enough to swallow this crap and repeat it.

The frequent reference to lead in gut piles in many of these articles and many of Larry's posts has me shaking my head. I have hog-dressed over 50 deer in my life. Most were mine, and I don't pull the trigger unless my sights are on a vital area. I have never once put a bullet in the guts. I have gutted deer for a number of hunters who never did the job before, and only two were paunch shot. One was from a .44 magnum bullet that expanded very little and traversed from the front, through the lung and liver, and ended up in the stomach. The other was shot in the stomach with a .338 Win. Mag., and the bullet did not exit the stomach. Raptors are mostly meat eaters, so I doubt if they eat much, if any of the plant based stomach or intestinal contents of a deer. Yet these journal articles would have you believe that the vast majority of gut-piles are contaminated with lead... without offering a shred of proof. I know it happens. I just said so. But the numbers are undoubtedly much smaller than they attempt to portray.

Another study from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service studied the deaths of two loons. Because one had fishing line and fragments of lead sinkers and the other had only fragments of fishing line in the stomachs, they were "suspected" of dying from lead poisoning. Now there's some science you can hang your hat on.

Another article from 1981 in the New York Times that supported the banning of lead shot was documenting a large winter kill of thousands of geese in central Wisconsin that became concentrated in a small area which still had a little open water in winter.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/15/sports/outdoors-debate-stirs-over-lead-shot.html

It went on to claim that 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 waterfowl were dying from lead poisoning each year. It told of dredging of lake bottoms by biologists that picked up as many as 118,000 pellets an acre. That would be less than 3 pellets per square ft. in the most concentrated place they dredged, and included the top 4-6 inches of silt. One would assume that these pellets had been there all along and certainly more available to these geese before the lake became mostly frozen over. But one would have to use their brain to even think about that fact. The article didn't tell us the average number of shot per acre found in this dredging, only the worst extreme, or what it was in the small area of open water available to the geese. Nor did they tell you the depth of that open water area. Geese are mostly dabblers while feeding on water, not divers... thus they dunk their heads under water while their tails remain above the surface. They strain suspended aquatic vegetation and invertebrates. They are NOT known to root around in 4-6 inches of silt looking for lead shot that was likely there for many decades... especially if that lake bottom is deeper than they can reach without diving under the surface.

We are not told the percentage of dead gees from this mass winter kill that actually had lethal levels of lead. I still cannot even find agreement in what that lethal dose number is in the literature. Even if they actually autopsied and tested every one for lead, we are not shown peer-reviewed proof that lead poisoning was the cause of mortality. Many could just as easily have died from hypothermia due to cold and poor condition from a lack of nutrition.

This occurred to me last night when I was watching a show on CNN about the Jonestown Guyana mass suicide. They kept showing pictures of over 900 dead people who had drank cyanide laced Kool-Aid. If someone from a State Fish and Game agency told Larry, Brent, or King that those people died from eating lead shot, they would swallow it hook, line, and non-lead sinker.

This long post is just a brief synopsis and a small fraction of the large amount of easily refuted and highly questionable garbage that is being passed off as science and unbiased information. I could go on forever, but some people are hell-bent on ignoring the elephant in the room.

I have never doubted that there are some waterfowl or raptors that die from lead poisoning. I believe that problem was, and continues to be highly over-stated, and especially when lead ammunition is blamed to the exclusion of much more bio-available sources. The more I examine this, the more convinced I am.

Too bad that Buzz is so hell-bent on demonizing me that he cannot be fair and balanced enough to point out Larry's inflammatory statements or King Brown's outright lies. Buzz did the exact same thing yesterday when I responded to Brian Dudley's ad hominem attack in a now deleted thread. Buzz has done this several times in the past. What a hypocritical jerk. Yes Jay, I thought that out very carefully before I said it.