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

I guess this is abit OT
But I was just watching a wildlife show, they were blaming the rarity of Condors, & their deaths on hunters shooting the large dead animals they scavenge on with lead bullets?
.Only 72 birds in the area, so they say, n they were trapping them n testing for lead
This was around the Grand Canyon area.
I find this a bit hard to...er swallow.
Unless people are leaving the animal & not taking the meat, how could this happen?
Most bullets would pass right through anyhow, no?
Just seemed a bit far fetched to me.
Any opinions
Srry, but I just wanted to ask..I dont post many OT posts
Do smell a rat?
cheers
Franc

Franc, there was a lot of related discussion in this recent thread that Ted posted here a few weeks ago:

http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=428690&page=1

And here's a link to an article from http://www.huntfortruth.org/ about the proposed statewide ban on lead ammunition in California because of alleged lead poisoning in the California Condors.

http://www.ammoland.com/2013/05/rebuttal-to-audubon-societys-support-for-statewide-lead

Do you smell a rat? I would say yes, a big stinky one. Is your thread really all that OT compared to threads on Pipe Smoking or Hunting Boots? Well, only if you think bans on the ammunition most suitable for our vintage doubles has nothing to do with double guns.

Franc, the issue is animals that are wounded, not recovered, go off and die, and then the scavengers show up. And bullets do fragment.

Re the California ban, I believe it passed--although perhaps not in force yet.

The entire idea is just the dumb being lead by the dumber....

The demise of the California condor is probably a done deal because of climate change and environmental changes in the regions. Some are human caused, some are not.

Look at CA on any big satellite photo. You can see US, and US aren't condor range. Perhaps a bigger factor is that we are in a post-post glacial era.

There were many different species of condor/vulture in CA during the post-glacial era--you can see them at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in LA. Some were even bigger than the California condor. They didn't survive the demise of the Pleistocene mega-fauna.

The California condor got a brief reprieve when the Californios replaced the mega-fauna with extremely wasteful cattle raising in the 18th and 19th century. When drought and Anglo efficiency killed that, the condor declined to near extinction. I've seen a grand total of one wild one in my outdoor life in CA, and that was in the Temblor Range in 1963, at a distance of nearly a mile.

I'm not against "getting the lead out" in general. But I'm also sure that the haste in doing it in CA is motivated as much by anti-hunter and anti-gun malice as it is by environmental concern.

We need vultures, and preserving them is worthwhile. We don't need California condors any more. Frankly, I think the money spent on trying to preserve this living fossil would be better spent on developing (especially rimfire) nonlead bullets that the average shooter can afford. And that will actually hit what he aims at!

Finding trace levels of lead in humans is very common, and there are allowable limits. Maybe, the condors get their lead the same way humans do, air, ground and water being among the possibilities. If it's okay to make assumptions, maybe kids are scavenging unrecovered game?

If you delve down into the propaganda spewed by HSUS (the anti-hunters) you'll find that one of the things they deem "cruel" about hunting is the use of lead shot. Because. They present no science (never do, it's all emotion) and want to eliminate all lead projos.
I read a lot of their crap a year or two ago b/c they came to Maine and tried to ban use of bait, traps (cable snares - jawed bear traps have been illegal for decades) and hounds for hunting bears. Those were inhumane and cruel, they said.

The condor is a sad case, to be sure. Likely was a goner before man showed up. Just a matter of time. But they're using reintroduction efforts as the fulcrum to ban hunting, starting with lead projos. They really don't give a shit about the condors - just ending hunting.

The HSUS website may not NOW say they want to ban hunting but that's a result of their failed 2014 bear campaign here in Maine. Their chief propagandist and lobbyist was sandbagged on live radio about it. Their line was the typical "we don't want to ban all hunting, just these "cruel" methods" and she was spouting it. And then the host confronted her with a screencap of the HSUS website where it quite clearly said they want to ban all hunting. Got that classic "dead air" when she couldn't lie her way out of it* and couldn't admit it, either. The website was scrubbed of the "we want to ban all hunting" language a day or two later.

If you or your organization get into it with them and want that screencap, the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine has it. Talk to Becky.

--
* She was an attorney admitted in Mass. but gave up her law license. Noises were being made about reporting her for ethical violations based on some of the whoppers and campaign tactics she was putting forth.

It's the law, governor signed it a couple of years ago. Ban is being phased in and is already in place in a lot of prime hunting areas. The phase-in was an enforcement option in the bill as signed, and the Sacto Bozos are taking advantage of that language to screw us early and often. Confusion is somewhat rampant because of piecemeal implementation. There are a lot of ag fields along Hwy 111 in the Imperial Valley, near the Salton Sea. Prime habitat for doves and pheasants. Some of the fields are OK for lead, some are non-tox only, depending upon who owns them. No postings, you are just supposed to know. One wrong step on a dirt road and you are a criminal. I hate this state government.

Well . . . condors probably aren't eating lead-based paint chips or drinking water that comes out of lead pipes. At least not very often. And bullet fragments have been found in meat such as venison. In fact, it was those fragments which caused North Dakota to do a study of lead levels in humans some years ago. The results were that those who reported eating wild game had higher lead levels than those who did not. However . . . the average lead level for everyone from whom blood was drawn (I seem to recall around 700 or so) was lower than the average lead level nationwide. And I'd expect to find a MUCH higher percentage of people who eat wild game in North Dakota than I would nationwide.

This is being discussed about condors and eagles. Where are all the dead buzzards? Around here damaged meat is thrown out to the scavengers most of the time besides the occasional lost game animal.