Hey Keith:

You gotta admit, that was a pretty nice sidelock Kerry took goose hunting (an H&H, or a cheap knock off Arrieta?), and undoubtedly charged with non-toxic shot. If even John Kerry can figure it out, why can't you? I think in the above post you make an excellent case for family planning. In mammals lead toxicosis can also cause high blood pressure... take care! But I digress. This discussion ain't about me, or you, or John Kerry.

It is about birds and lead.

Larry, as you can see I'm providing a wide range of citations here, whether they support my viewpoint or not. I think it is important that people review all the information that is out there. This is why I've been pushing for a review of the information by our state game agency here (not the EPA, or DEQ, or PETA... isn't the latter some kinda Greek sandwich?).

I'm not an expert, and I'm not saying this is what happens with certainty, but an alternate explanation to the observation that the detected occurance of consumed lead shot in harvested upland birds is generally <10% is that poisoned birds die before hunters enter the field, say in Montana anytime during the months of January through August. Wouldn't such non-harvest mortality cause lower occurance in "healthy" birds harvested by hunters?

Speaking of "healthy" birds, how many of us have shot clearly underweight birds? Or birds that flush late, or won't flush at all and our dogs catch them? I would posit that any of us who might have shot hundreds of birds over our years of hunting have seen this. We often might dismiss these as "cripples" even if we don't see wounds. They certainly could also be suffering from something else, after all every bird dies of something. But at least some of these might be birds sick from lead ingestion. Maybe we should take these odd birds to an expert to examine and try to figure it out instead of disposing of them however we do.

I'll post you some more studies later...