doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - Feds are coming for your lead shot....

Looks like Stans dove fields are lead poisoning Bald and Golden Eagles.

The Feds have some bOgus reports claiming "Eagles are suffering from lead poisoning in half of the Eagles they sampled in 38 states".

According to the study "this lead comes from the bullets of hunters".

Yep. Crows, Ravens, and Magpies just must be immune to the lead. Amazing. Not to mention all the dead coyotes just laying around in the grass that croaked from munching on all those lead saturated carcasses. Again, amazing.
Not seeing any of that here out west. Matter of fact….we’re seeing bald eagles out here in numbers we haven’t seen in decades. Places that never used to have them have them now.
The Feds are full of caca.

It's worse than that Stan.

Anybody standing off to the side can hear the difference.

Steel and lead loads sound distinctly different.

Roster has been known to dabble in alternative facts.

OMW gets it.

BrentD:

Savage Model 99 or Remington Model 8/81 in these calibers, I guess. These few come to mind: .250 Savage, .300 Savage, .30 Remington, .303 Savage, .32 Remington, .35 Remington, .358 Winchester. I know I missed a couple, these just come to mind.

I'm not aware of any commercially available lead-free ammunition in those calibers. And I doubt that the major manufacturers would load it. It's hard enough finding ANY ammunition in some of those calibers. I know that there are boutique companies out there that may load some, but they are pricey.

I have seen lead-free .30-30 and .308 Winchester. I may have seen .250 Savage? And I know that they work. But you are not going to find them as easily.

Not everyone reloads, and not everyone has an interest in doing so.

I know that it is easy to just say hang it over the mantle and buy a new rifle. Not everyone can do that or want to.

As I said earlier, I'm not opposed to lead-free ammunition. I am opposed to a blanket ban without these considerations or giving sportsman time to make a transition. I also don't buy into the whole "Save our Eagles" campaign that the anti's are using to push a ban. It is another tactic to curtail, discourage, and in the end ban hunting.

And I simply feel that if they win that battle, it will be on to the next type of ban. Just like they are constantly trying to ban Bear hunting with Hounds. Or Trapping, or whatever else they don't like or are offended by.

The original study has 29 contributors
The lead author has also published in the Journal of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry

The CV of the second author
James T. (Jim) Anderson, Ph.D. is the Davis-Michael Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources, a professor of wildlife ecology and management, and the director of the Environmental Research Center at West Virginia University (WVU). He earned a B.S. in wildlife from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, an M.S. in range and wildlife management through the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, and a Ph.D. in wildlife science from Texas Tech University. He has been at WVU since 1999 and has been a Certified Wildlife Biologist since 2003.

In academics, anything published is immediately peer reviewed, and the peers establish their reputation by proving you are wrong.
Studies later shown to be in error, after additional work, can be forgiven.
Poor investigative techniques, or even worse, faking it, destroys the author's academic career.
The careers of 29 smart folks were on the line, and if someone was making stuff up, someone would have fessed up.

We may certainly, and should, evaluate the numbers derived from the investigation, knowing that the interpretation thereof is always influenced by preconceived opinions/agendas.
And we certainly need to express our opinions as to decisions made by regulatory bodies based on the numbers.
Number we don't like however aren't necessarily "junk science".

It's a good thing that the bald eagle population is at an all time high, and is increasing every year. If you didn't know that, you might actually think this was a problem. The higher a species population, the higher the likelihood of human interaction of any kind.

i.e. more eagles=higher probability for one to find a gut pile, fly into a turbine/powerlines/building/plane, have an Acme safe fall on one, etc.

Yes I know.

It’s only when ignorant racist dumbasses that don’t know open their pie holes that I put both of my boots on.

My son in law discovered and published the mechanism that leads to stroke in COVID patients.
The mechanism for why a COVID patient is 1000 times more likely to have a stroke at the end of the disease cycle when their immune systems goes nuts.

He did it for salary. And because he can.

There are probably people here that are alive because of it. He had an idea, intellect, and he ground out the science to prove the mechanism.

For Foxie, He’s a Jap.

29 Contributors?! The question of padding the curriculum vitae becomes problematic once you get past three or four authors on a study. Some academic journals have been clamping down, but everybody who was at the department Christmas party got listed on this one, no doubt boosting their hopes for tenure and/or future grants. I seriously doubt numbers 28 or 29 could tell you much about the study other than they loaded the stats program or fetched donuts for the crew. Having done my share of academic peer review, I can tell you that the number of authors does not correlate with increased validity and reliability of the study's findings.

Thank you for your insight Francis. I assume you are personally acquainted with a PhD Wildlife Biologist? Could you please share their name, or at least place of employment or academic affiliation? Did you spend time with them afield? Are they hunters or participate in the shooting sports? Seem like decent sorts? Did you discuss their research interest?
Do you know anything about the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M?
I can't recall meeting a PhD Wildlife Biologist, but met several Wildlife Biologists that were employees of Kansas Game & Fish. All happened to be Kansas born and raised, active hunters, committed to the preservation of wildlife and hunting and fishing opportunities. Good guys. Maybe it was a Kansas thing?

I am well aware of the term "substantial contributions" to a paper. Care to operationalize that term, however? Good luck. As Bruce notes, support staff, grad students, etc. have expectations that their names are included, regardless of whatever "substantial" means for that particular department and that particular university. Tenure and grant money depend on being published, which introduces its own form of scientific bias. If by "junk" you mean ultimately incorrect, well that depends. As you are aware, science is not linear. It is full of dead-ends and false starts. There are plenty of famous scientists who have been dead wrong on occasion and their reputation suffered little for it. If by "junk" you include falsifying data, then yes, we are in total agreement. (See Andrew Wakefield, his autism "research," and the multiple authors on the fraudulent article in The Lancet ). One of my experimental design classes in grad school included critiquing the methodology and statistical analysis of various studies. We would dismantle the studies and feel pretty superior until our professor would ultimately say in his Russian accent, "Yes, but it got published." One study is one study, no matter how many authors. Replication is vital. But few academic journals publish pure replication studies, and no one is getting tenure or multi-million dollar grants based on a CV full of replication studies. Such is science.

Of anyone Doc Drew, I'd think you would know we are in an era that publications such as Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association are putting out "peer reviewed" articles, concluding that healthcare should be allocated and denied based on race.

Of the twenty-nine whose careers are at risk, did any of them conclude as BrentD did, that lead poisoning of bald eagles is insignificant? Haven't we learned just last week that the CDC has only released a small percentage of their covid research, because it doesn't support political messaging? The answer is no to the twenty-nine, and there does not seem to be any backlash against them. Isn't that the truth of science in today's world?