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If Flint Michigan can do it....

I don't believe anyone 'blew off' anything here. First, the few dead eagles that you mentioned are lead bullet hunting related, right. Of all the body of possible sources of lead, ten year old paint chips are the example chosen to poke fun at? I wonder if the people who live in Flint, MI or the eagles that pass through that way beg to differ. If an eagle passes through the Flint area, is there a chance that they drink water from unknown sources?

Sure there's deer hunting in Wisconsin. Asked again, let's assume you're right, are there enough off season poached lead laced unrecovered carcasses to feed eagles or does all lead poisoned eagle deaths occur during the Wisconsin gun deer season?

A quick look at google and I thought the first listed search summed it up nicely. From soarraptors.org comes a general piece about the tests that they do, but then they cite the single example of a 23 year old rescue eagle. "Yep, she had probably been feeding on a lead-shot deer gut pile or deer that had been shot by a lead slug and not found by the hunter. How could this death have been prevented? If the hunter had used a non-lead slug to harvest that deer there would have been no lead shrapnel left behind to impact a non-target species."

Is that the 'probably' kind of evidence that you are basing your position on that it is lead hunting bullets that are the problem? Another quote from the Audubon folks, "....we will advocate restrictions on hunting, including the complete closure of a hunting season, whenever we are convinced that the welfare of the species involved requires it...we do not advocate hunting. This is no contradiction, though some people seem to think it is. Our objective is wildlife and environmental conservation, not the promotion of hunting. We think lots of justifications for hunting are weak ones, and too often exaggerated for commercial reasons....".

Anecdotal evidence of a hunting buddy that happens to be an Audubon member may not reflect their national platform, resource allocation and political lobbying. I have mentioned and have personal experience with a fed managed Montana duck hunting marsh that was drained for extremely vague reasons, but the dike system and access roads are fully maintained in the closed to hunting 'bird watching area'.

I also know from first hand experience that there're still eagles around in Wisconsin during the gun deer season. I also found out some time later that supposedly some of those very same eagles are already down wintering at Lake Buchanan in central Texas. There's little doubt in my mind that there are less eagles around during gun deer season, than there are drinking water in places like Flint during the summer.

Absolutely I see an agenda, and it's always a little mention at the end. We should be willing to throw lead bullet hunters under the bus in favor of lead shot hunters. Why, because those folks can withstand the anti hunting pressure because they'll be more vocal. Huh?

Great post craigd. Especially that quote from Audobon on their actual position on sport hunting. That needs to be repeated in big bold letters!

Another quote from the Audubon folks, "....we will advocate restrictions on hunting, including the complete closure of a hunting season, whenever we are convinced that the welfare of the species involved requires it...we do not advocate hunting. This is no contradiction, though some people seem to think it is. Our objective is wildlife and environmental conservation, not the promotion of hunting. We think lots of justifications for hunting are weak ones, and too often exaggerated for commercial reasons....".

I never claimed that eagles, condors, ducks, or other species have not consumed lead bullets or shot. I'd guess that they have. The question is, was that the total cause of high lead levels or lead poisoning... or was it merely a contributing factor to some other sources that are much more bio-available, but possibly not visible in X-rays? That would include lead dust from mining waste, leaded gasoline, paint, and a multitude of other sources. The presence of a bullet fragment in an eagle's stomach or crop absolutely does not prove that lead ammunition was the cause of sickness or death.

I certainly hope we all are driven by our own agenda to preserve hunting and shooting. It is under constant attack, and we need to either stay focused on keeping those rights or we we certainly lose them. Shotgunner's placing blame on rifle hunters and vice-versa is not an intelligent strategy going forward. It is indefensible.

Well . . . the welfare of eagles, as a species, doesn't require anything. They're increasing, and they're not hunted anyhow.

As for Audubon, we (RGS Iowa) worked hand in hand with them in Iowa when the DNR was selling the public on the idea of fairly significant timber management on public hunting areas in the NE part of the state (where we used to have quite a few grouse, but the population had declined badly due to too much mature timber and not enough young, regenerating forest). They worked with us when we held private landowner workshops to try to convince
those folks to manage their timber for more habitat diversity (while making a buck or two off timber sales). Audubon did not mind a bit that we used grouse and woodcock as our "poster birds" for the DNR management projects. They knew that a bunch of neotropical songbirds, also declining in numbers, needed the same habitat we were creating for grouse and woodcock. And then there's the Audubon guy--not a hunter--who's on the banquet committee of a local Pheasants Forever chapter. What's he doing there? "PF does the best local habitat work of any conservation organization." And he's smart enough to realize that habitat for pheasants is also good habitat for other birds.

Leaded gasoline is pretty much gone. So is lead paint. An eagle in WI isn't terribly likely to be drinking water over in Flint. That's on the other side of a very large lake. I don't want to blame eagle deaths on bullet fragments if they die from lead acquired some other way. But deer hunting is big in Wisconsin--which also happens to have a lot of eagles. And some studies have shown that lead levels in scavengers' blood increases from the start to the end of hunting season. None of which is 100% solid . . . except is there something else happening during the same time and in the same area that might be a cause?

Any time proof is not 100%, I agree we shouldn't just say "that must be it". For example, the WI DNR tested lead levels in woodcock and found them very high. They suggested one source might be lead shot. But, given that woodcock eat with their beaks in the ground, they admitted that it might very well be lead from either the ground itself or the worms they were eating just as easily as from lead shot. And they also stated that they hadn't found any lead pellets in the digestive systems of any of the woodcock they tested.

I guess if we wanted 100% proof, we could always keep a bunch of eagles in captivity and feed them meat with bullet fragments, testing their blood lead level at the start and making sure they're not getting lead from any other source. Then watch to see if they get sick, how much lead they need to ingest to get sick, etc. But I doubt that's going to happen. Maybe the deer hunters and other guys who kill critters with rifles ought to get together and fund such a study. The only problem being, they might not like it if the results were to turn out bad for them.

Thanks for the follow up comments Larry. I don't think 'we' want or even need a 100% proof, it would be a hollow victory. You mentioned a bit ago that in the few years since you wrote the piece, your mind hasn't changed. I can appreciate that.

You also mentioned, that we can't blow things off because the public will look at things in a different way. Something makes the public look at things in an anti hunting way, and it's not facts and figures, let alone 'pro' hunters validating their much less than 100% proof.

Larry, you might want to re-read that one sentence in the statement from Audobon Society that craigd posted earlier:

"Our objective is wildlife and environmental conservation, not the promotion of hunting."

That appears to be the only reason that a few people from Audobon were supportive of your timber management efforts and habitat management efforts by Pheasants Forever. They were supportive of that which would benefit birds overall, but according to the statement craigd found, they would turn on you in a minute if they thought, rightly or wrongly, that some bird species was threatened by sport hunting.

We have discussed the lead paint and leaded gasoline thing in other threads before. I hate to keep repeating myself, but here goes again. Leaded gasoline and lead paint may be mostly gone, but the lead from those products that was deposited in the environment will persist in our soils and waterways for hundreds of years or more... just like the lead shot that was used along lakes, rivers, oceans, and swamps before the Federal ban. All of that shot is still there in sandy, rocky, gravel, or silted bottoms. There is probably literally millions of tons of it fired over the last 200 years, and nobody cleaned it up. A lead bullet on a civil war battlefield still looks like a lead bullet because they don't dissolve or break down readily as other toxic things like DDT did. But strangely, we are not seeing those heart wrenching pictures of dying ducks and staggering geese anymore. Why? Obviously lead shot was not the problem with poisoning waterfowl that it was made out to be. The anti-lead people got what they wanted and are moving on to the uplands and deer woods.

There are many other sources of lead in the environment besides leaded gasoline, lead paint, or lead ammunition. Much of it is much more bio-available than lead bullets or shot. I'm glad you brought up the river water in Flint as a facetious example. That river water did not get contaminated with lead from bullets. The river in Flint is not the only waterway to get contaminated with lead from industrial or mining wastes. Eagles eat a lot of fish too, not just wounded and lost deer.

It's not at all surprising that lead shot was not found in woodcock that had high blood lead levels. It is much more likely the source was earthworms that digested lead tainted soils. WI DNR admitted that, but kept the erroneous conclusions about lead shot on the table even though they found no lead shot in the birds. How do you explain that? More importantly, how can you accept that?

As craig notes, there are plenty of people in the general public who look at things in an anti-hunting way, even when the facts and figures do not add up. I do not wish to be a part of giving them any ammunition to use against us.

Keith, the National Shooting Sports Foundation--wouldn't you say they're probably pro-hunting?--regards Audubon as neutral on hunting. Along with the Sierra Club and some other organizations. You want anti, take a look at the positions of HSUS, Friends of Animals, etc. Here is Audubon's official statement on hunting:

"Has never been opposed to the hunting of game species if that hunting is done ethically and in accordance with laws and regulations designed to prevent depletion of the wildlife resource."

They're not all about promoting hunting, but I can live with that position. And if we, as hunters, can make common cause with them . . . so much the better.

As for lead in the soil . . . indeed, easy to see how a woodcock--given how they feed and what they feed on--might get lead from the soil. And of course lead is a naturally occurring element. We don't need to do anything to "put it into the environment". But it's a little hard to see how upland birds other than woodcock would be nearly as likely to end up with lead in a similar manner. Nor, for that matter, to ingest lead pellets--unless that happens when they're picking up grit. And there are examples of doves with lead pellets in their digestive system. But doves are more like waterfowl (a lot of concentrated shot fall on areas where they're heavily hunted) than they are like pheasants or grouse or quail, where shot fall is going to be very scattered. And while lead shot and bullets don't break down readily or dissolve, the soil where they drop does not remain static. If it did, rather than having to dig up lead on shooting ranges--especially trap and skeet ranges--you could just go out there with a hoe and scrape all those pellets together in a big pile. Depending on the composition of the soil, as a result of freezing, thawing etc, it gradually works itself underground. Same with the bottoms of lakes and streams, which are constantly getting new layers of silt. We've significantly reduced the amount of lead we're dropping into water, and that's now been going on for about 25 years. If lead were still a significant problem in marshes, lakes, etc . . . then why aren't we still seeing all those dying ducks and geese? Why did the problem largely resolve itself as a result of the lead shot ban? Pretty easy to turn that example on its head and leave it to you to come up with some other source of lead that was killing ducks and geese previously but is now gone. And just happens to have disappeared at the same time we stopped shooting lead at waterfowl.

I'll agree that Flint isn't the only example of a contaminated waterway . . . but I think you'll agree that it is an EXTREME example. Although the various DNR's issue precautionary notices on some bodies of water, there aren't many where lead contamination is so high that eagles are likely to die from lead poisoning as a result of eating the fish. And if a dead eagle shows a high level of lead in its blood as well as other signs of having been poisoned, lead poisoning is a pretty likely cause.

The real problem with lead is that it's toxic. Toxic = bad. The simplistic solution therefore: Get rid of that bad, toxic stuff. That's what we're up against. But we can insist on "good science" to support any claims that it's really lead--and lead from bullets or shot--that's killing species X, Y, or Z.

And who can do the impossible...

I have a quick comment to add to your Audubon 'official' statement. It is the exact preceding sentence before the quote I provided, and I suspect you're aware of it. If you continue rereading their position, they are aware of their contradictory message and link hunting with corporate profiteering. Did they come up with that conclusion by scientific analysis and improving grouse habitat?

Wisconsin's DHS says that lead containing pesticides, last used in the 50's are still a significant source of lead in soil. They have recommendations for home gardeners on former orchard grounds to minimize lead exposure. There's a known source of dissolved lead that rodents and insects near the beginning of the food chain don't have to wait for speculation on whether lead shot is able to dissolve.

Anyway, if we should insist on "good science", how come we have to accept that 'lead poisoning is a pretty likely cause'. I had thought to bow out of the discussion, but I'd repeat again, why bother opposing enemies with good science, when friends of hunting tell us likelihoods are good enough?

Nearly every body of water in Wisconsin has consumption warnings due to various poisons that accumulate in fish, and countless rodents root around in soil of the Wisconsin countryside. Maybe, we only look for 'proof' where we want to find it.

One last question Larry. If you really feel that we should be demanding good science and absolute proof that it is lead from bullet fragments or lead shot that is poisoning some birds, then why in hell are you digging deep for every excuse you can imagine or theorize to prove to us that lead ammunition absolutely is a problem?

How can I politely say this? I was trying to use rationale and reason and not simply be blunt. When I was talking about hunters and shooters who shoot us, and themselves, in the foot by repeating agenda driven anti-lead ammunition data, theories, and junk science, I was hoping you'd finally see that is exactly what you are doing. You aren't helping our side at all. Better that you should do nothing at all. You aren't related to King Brown, are you? King actually claims that he is on our side and is helping us when he denigrates and undermines the 2nd Amendment, criticizes the very successful strategies of the NRA, and supports extreme anti-gunners like Obama. You can't make this shit up! Thanks.

I think the complete unedited official statement on Sport Hunting from Audobon speaks for itself. I wonder why you only showed us the the good parts? King does that kind of stuff too. He calls it "the craft of journalism." I call it disingenuous when I'm feeling particularly benevolent. I call it much worse when I am in my normal B.S. Flag throwing mode.

Oh, one last thing. Heavy objects do not necessarily sink into the soil as the earth freezes and thaws. And heavy objects in the water like gold bars and coins from sunken ships are often churned out of the silt by waves and storms where they are found centuries later by treasure hunters. Artifact hunters frequently find Indian spear and arrow heads that work their way back to the surface. I have found some myself in fields that hadn't been plowed for years. I frequently hit good sized rocks that pop up out of the ground after the winter when I am mowing with my brush hog. I almost totally ruined one brush hog when I hit a beach ball sized chunk of granite that was 3/4 exposed, but not at all visible the summer before. The blades got forced upward into the deck and sliced an arc 2/3 of the way around before the shear pin on the drive shaft broke. That was a heavy old New Holland Brush Cutter, not one of those thin cheap imports. It actually stalled the 45 HP tractor before I could disengage the PTO. It took lots of welding to fix that one. Other rocks that surfaced eventually beat it to death and it has been scrapped and replaced with a Woods. If you hunt, you've probably seen piles of rocks at field edges and fence rows that farmers take off of their fields over the years.