Originally Posted By: canvasback
Originally Posted By: Cold Iron
Pfft one dead eagle from lead poisoning.

Upper Mississippi sees a lot more than that around deer season. USFWS gather them for analysis.



There has been a push for quite awhile now to ban lead bullets the Secretary of the Interior just overturned a ban on lead bullets a couple of years ago that was based on protecting Eagles. But imagine it is only a matter of time before it happens. Despite the fact that the population of Eagles has been rapidly expanding.

Have mainly baldies here, some Golden in the winter. The Golden are in the bluffs an hour or so away from the river. I live an hour from the Miss. and there are several pairs of resident baldies that fly over the house all the time.

I shoot Eagles. In the winter they will take a coot they are welcome to all they can eat as far as I care. Most of the time prefer fish if they can get it.





They would rather steal from each other than work for their own given the chance. And as someone else mentioned have seen dozens of them pick through manure in a field after it has been spread.

This field is a quarter mile from my house and this juvi was picking apart a road kill deer.



While these other 2 decided fighting each other was more important.



Given half a chance they would rather be a scavenger or thief than work for food from what I have observed.


Brother, I hate to say this but judging an animal based on it's evolutionarily developed method of food gathering is foolish anthropomorphism of the highest degree. There is no "better" or more "noble" method of gathering food. There is just what it is.

They contribute to the food chain and ecosystem regardless of how they gather food. They have their place. As do all animals. What we should be watching for is excessive population loss or gain based on man's influence on the environment. Not judging one animal's worth based on a food gathering method we would prefer not to use ourselves.


Oh no disagreement brother canvasback ;-)

My point was that given a chance Eagles will be eating deer that are shot and never recovered over most any other food source available. And there a LOT of deer that are shot and never recovered.

The USFWS picture of the dead Eagles I posted is from Wisconsin where rifles are used for deer hunting. On the other side of the River in SE Mn. it is restricted to shotgun slugs. Rifle bullets fragment easily and it doesn't take much lead to kill an Eagle, or Loon. They find a lot more dead Eagles on the Wi. side than the Mn. side of the River.

For what ever reason those 2 avian species are extremely sensitive to lead poisoning, it doesn't take much lead to kill them. It does not require a long term exposure to lead like it does most people, it is kryptonite to them.

Guess should get back to work, someplace out there someone has solved the same problem I am working on. And posted the code to do so. Time to use google and copy and paste. I didn't work this hard to get to the top of the food chain to reinvent the wheel. I have no problem scavenging the work of someone that parked a solution to my problem in the public domain. I believe most people given a chance pick the low hanging fruit.

Last edited by Cold Iron; 04/17/19 09:58 AM.