doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com pesticide

I am a licensed pesticide applicator, requiring mandatory upgrading seminars for five-year renewals. I use bismuth and TM for waterfowl, know lead is bad stuff for any purpose, doubt it has effect on upland in the wide-open spaces around here; public lands and plantations perhaps another story. I'm suspicious of studies that say an effect is the cause of one thing; it rarely happens in anything. For all the science in the world, we never get the final answer in a biological system. So I'm me on the side of Stan and Geo.

If this doesn't say it all. Thank's Craig, for perfectly encapsulating the hypocrisy of this debate.

It's not really about the science. It's about whether you are on the "good" side or the "bad" side. One more angle to make the use of guns and hunting more difficult.

Green or carbon free energy is not free from negative points. Solar panels degrade much quicker than what manufacturers claim. A friend put in a solar panel farm to supply a college. His system was supposed to have a 25/30 year life expectancy. After year seven years so many panels had failed completely or produced so little he was forced to shut the entire system down. Removing them and then disposing of them cost money he had not expected to pay out for 18 more years. He put the land back into farm production.

Every type of system has their negative points. Wind turbines kill a lot of flying birds. The worst I�ve seen are the solar mirror farms and the birds being burned out of the air. You can�t see it on YouTube. Scary/funny stuff.

Truth is no one knows the impact of pesticides...especially some field jOckey

JR and Stan - I learned a lot about Furadan (carbofuran) because I do lion conservation in Africa and it has been used to poison predators on a very large scale across the continent. If Furadan granules are used correctly as Stan describes, it is of little danger to birds, but when it is broadcast on the surface it kills them in large numbers. The number I cited from a Canadian study gave a wide range of estimates because no one is counting dead dickey birds in agricultural fields; 100 million was at the high end of estimates. However, even if mortality was only 50% of that, it was still dreadful. Canada finally followed the EU and the US in banning it for most uses.

The American manufacturer of Furadan claimed for years that it was perfectly safe in birds and mammal, calling all the evidence junk science (which means any research that threatens profits, as in cigarettes and cancer or fossil fuels and climate change). They continued to stonewall until 60 Minutes, with an audience of about 30 million, did a piece on lion poisoning in Kenya, after which they withdrew it from the Kenya market the following day. However, it is still universally available in Africa as generic carbofuran from China and India. It is also used to poison ducks and fish which are then sold for human consumption!

Off topic, but because of widespread predator poisoning with Furadan, vultures which were ubiquitous in Africa until 15 years ago are now nearly gone (sorry, Craig, but the Peregrine Fund is at the forefront of trying to turn this around - junk science, of course). So are the lions the poisoning is aimed at. Vultures were essentially eliminated from Asia, too, due to an entirely different cause: the NSAID diclofenac causes kidney failure in vultures and was very widely used in cattle. One result of the Asian vulture extinction has been a huge increase in feral dogs and a corresponding increase in human rabies. When the cause of the die-off was finally worked out, India and Nepal moved quickly to ban diclofenac use for cattle, but the African countries have done nothing about Furadan, even though other nematicides are available.

Amazing example of the law of unintended consequences, not junk science, and there are alternatives
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1351921/

LGF, I appreciate the time and effort you give in responding and sharing your experiences. I can� t help but ask, if there is a proper way to use beneficial products, why are we demonizing the product and in other examples the hunter/shooter for misuse? Shouldn�t the focus be on the criminal, not the law abiding?

On a personal note, I believe the peregrine fund has an agenda that is anti gun and hunting. It presents skewed science to meet agendas not to promote sporting firearms interests or other shared use of natural resources. That may or may not be referred to as junk science, but it�s skewed none the less. What�s the future hold, do they sponsor youth shooting and hunting programs?

Again, and I�ve asked Larry too, why do friends of the sporting use of firearms penalize the law abiding? If there�s activism to be promoted, shouldn�t it be against the criminal instead of the easy target, law abiding folks?

Of course it does, LGF. If an automobile is used in a way it is not designed, or legalized, to be, it will kill many people. We are not discussing what goes on in Africa, China and India on this thread, or we weren't, until you took it in that direction. We also weren't discussing the impact on lions and vultures due to off label use. We were, and I hope are, discussing the impact on quail, and specifically bobwhite quail. Understand that spreading Furadan on the surface of the soils is off label, and was never labeled by the EPA, or sanctioned by the maker FMC, for use in the USA or Canada, AFAIK.. The use of it in Kenya by ranchers to kill lions that were preying upon their livestock was not the intended use of the carbamate insecticide.

If the product is to be blamed when it is used in a manner unintended by the maker, then we are in big trouble. Consider gun control. That is the gun haters' biggest argument, that the gun itself is somehow evil. I won't bore you with numerous other examples of tools that are misused in the hands of criminals. Point is ............a product is not to blame when it is used in a criminal manner, unintended by the maker. If you can show me where Furadan was licensed and labeled for surface application in quail habitation areas I will stand corrected. But, if not, maybe sticking a little closer to the topic would be helpful.

SRH

True that ...........and no one knows the impact of killing five turkeys a day on the local population, especially some so called turkey call maker. But, they're both within the law .....................aren't they?

SRH

No matter how hypocritical any of us want to become, we are all in cahoots & complicit with pesticide use.
If there were no agricultural chemicals our population would probably be half what it is today. You would not be as blessed with the many grand children you now have.
Everyone's prosperity would be greatly reduced & food would cost what you would be surprised at.

It is contemporary low cost slave labor.
We seem to have made our choice with our hip pocket.
Had money not been the object of our desires.
There will be consequences.

As mentioned, the use & application is much refined these days over what I remember from my youth.
Also there is much IPM (integrated pest management) practiced now.

I still do not like the stuff, but that is just another of 40,000 compromises I live with.
I have faith that all will work out in the end.