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 lead level in the eagle in question is BLOOD lead level, not bone. I have no idea how those compare. The only reference I have to bone lead level is in a study the WI DNR did on woodcock, trumpeter swans, bald eagles, and loons. 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". Given that the same lead level is considered toxic in waterfowl, it would be logical to conclude that woodcock are far more resistant to lead poisoning, based on comparative bone lead levels, than are waterfowl. And since waterfowl are several times larger than woodcock, it would appear that the ability to tolerate lead varies by species rather than by size. So I can't comment on the bone lead level found in pheasants, and since the woodcock bone lead level isn't given in ppm, I can't compare those either. But in any case, 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.
