Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Expect lead ammo ban attempts soon

Jim, I am flattered by your infatuation with me. It'd be a tough call on whether you crush on me or Tulsi harder.

You should go harvest a protein smoothie at the bike shop.

Are crows suffering similar lead poisoning issues. I see them feeding on carrion pretty often.

here in Minnesota these lolly-pop snowflakes are trying to pass this lead -free bullet law / rule , i suppose its only a matter of time and i will be a outlaw ?

Lead use for fishing bans are being attempted.

https://goldrushcam.com/sierrasunti...ry-when-tackle-ban-is-amended-to-a-study

When are they going to do a study on bird death from carbon fiber (wind turbine blades) and ban them.

Necropsies done on California condor chicks found dead under nests have revealed that nearly all have landfill debris fed to them by their parents...not lead poisoning.
The remainder are normally just natural mortality.

that will never come out ,goes agaisnt california liberals gun and ammo ban agenda

Population growth slowing is usually a function of reaching carrying capacity, or exceeding it. Especially after a population growth spurt. Raptors, particularly in mind.

Increased cumulative bird numbers with lead poisoning would also result from this, assuming a stagnant or even slightly decreasing percentage rate. (1% of 100 is one. 1% in a tripled population is 3)

Considering how few bullets actually remain in a BG carcass, much less "gut piles" (damn, you guys need practice!) = bogus BS.

Considering how long it has been non-toxic shot for waterfowl, those available lead pellets on the bottom have either sunk below the accessibility level, or already consumed, for the most part. They aren't getting it from dead birds, nor dead BG animals, nor smaller shot animals with exiting wounds, unless maybe with shot.

It is unlikely this "study" is valid, and if so, the lead is coming from water drunk or other sources, such as prey with a high build-up of lead from water or vegetation the prey has consumed.

I'd be looking at run-off from mines, disposal sites, land-fill seagulls (prey) and scavenging eagles, roads, etc. for environmental lead sources.

Assuming they are interested in science, rather than agenda. But we know how that works.

And to one poster above- you need to research how crops and gizzards work. Lead pellets could be ground up by at least some birds in the digestive process. Grouse and other gallinatuous birds for example.

HayFarmGuy
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Home Eagle Do Eagles Have Teeth? (3 Facts To Know)
Do Eagles Have Teeth? (3 Facts To Know)

by Alex Kountry

Eagles are powerful birds of prey who are carnivorous in nature i.e. their diet is predominantly meat.

However, despite being meat eaters, eagles do not have teeth like humans.

This begs the question of exactly how eagles are able to successfully eat, swallow and digest the animals they kill.

Eagles are able to eat their food by using their strong beaks to rip the meat apart and push the chunks down their gullet.

In today’s post, we will discuss whether eagles have teeth, how they chew their food, if they have a crop and gizzard and how they use their beak.

Table of Contents [show]
Do Eagles Have Teeth?

Do Eagles Have Teeth
Eagles do not have teeth. When eating their food, they make use of their sharp beak and strong neck muscles to rip the food into small pieces they can swallow.

Most birds do not have teeth, what happens is they swallow their food whole and their gizzard crushes the food to enable digestion.

The gizzard of the bird can grind almost anything including shells of small sea animals.

For the eagle, the sharp beak is a very important aspect of its life, without a sharp beak it would not be able to tear the meat enough to swallow meaning it would have to starve.

How Do They Chew Without Teeth?

Eagles do not chew because they do not possess teeth. Unlike humans who chew their food before swallowing, the eagle rips apart the meat into small pieces and then swallows it.

Eagles are carnivorous and feed on both life and dead meat. We see their hunting prowess in the wild.

Because eagles do not have teeth they possess two major structures that help them in food eating and digestion.

First is their sharp beak. The beaks serve as an avian fork for them.

Once they have caught the animal and settle down to eat, the beak does the work of ripping the meat apart into small pieces.

It is aided by strong muscles in their neck.

After swallowing, the food goes down to their gizzard where it is ground up and digested and any indigestible materials are sent out.

Related: Here is an article I wrote on Do eagles have hair

What Are The Uses Of An Eagle’s Beak?

As we have established, beaks are very important for eagles daily survival.

The beaks are structures grown from keratin. Human fingernails, the birds of beaks and their claws are also made from keratinous material.

The keratin provides strength and a glossy look to the beak. The eagle has to constantly keep the beak sharp to avoid overgrowth, just like our fingernails.

The process of sharpening and cleansing the beak is called feaking. The eagle wipes the beak alternately back and forth on a rock or tree limb.

Apart from using the beak in catching prey and eating, another important task eagles use their beaks for is nest building.

Eagles are monogamous in nature and once they are paired up with a mate, they begin the process of building a nest.

They use their beaks to carry suitable sticks to the nest site, till it is built to their satisfaction.

They also use their beaks to clean themselves in an action called preeningfaction. They also use their beaks for preening activities.

Preening is the process where birds maintain their feathers by using their beaks to arrange their feathers, clean their plumage and keep ticks in check.

Eagles beaks are very important to them and they can’t survive without them.

Do Eagles Have A Crop Like Chickens?

Eagles have a crop like most birds and this is an important organ that aids them in digestion.

The crop is a thin walled part of the alimentary tract which is used by birds to store food before they are digested.

When there is abundance of food, eagles can gorge themselves on up to 2 pounds of food and store it in their crops.

The food is able to remain in the crop for sometime so the eagle is able to go several days without having to eat.

Also check out this article I wrote on can an eagle be your spirit animal

Do Eagles Have Gizzard? What Is It Used For?

The gizzard is another important structure in the digestive system of the eagle.

We humans do not have a gizzard because our food is cooked and chewed and as such easily broken down.

Since the eagles do not have teeth they had to develop an highly efficient digestive system to enable them to successfully break down their food.

The eagle’s gizzard is designed to do the food chewing on their behalf since they don’t have teeth.

The digestive process starts with the eagle swallowing the food down esophagus to the crop and this is aided by saliva or water.

The crop in turn passes the food in smaller pieces to the proventricular which uses stomach juices to break down the food then off it is to the gizzard.

The gizzard then grounds the food even more, separating the indigestible materials and forming them into pellets which are regurgitated through the eagle’s mouth.

The digested food is sent to the intestine from which they are absorbed into the blood.

"Do Eagles Need Grit?

The purpose of grit in a bird is to enable their digestive system to further break down their food.

Grit or small stones serve as a form of teeth to chew their food in the gizzard.

This grit is not digestible and can remain within the gizzard for years before they are worn down and passed out as stool.

Since eagles and most birds of prey have a strong gizzard and stomach acids that help them in digestion of food, they usually do not need grit to aid their digestive processes.

However, they still need grit as they are usually seen swallowing pebbles or small stones.

They use the stones to clean the lining of the crop as their diet is high in fat and this leads to a buildup of greasy fat in the crop.

The stones do the work of scouring out the fat and they are usually covered in grease when they get passed out. "

This would seem to indicate meat-eating eagles, etc. are at less risk of gizzard-lead contamination than those that need grit in their gizzards to grind up seeds, and other hard foods. Lead-laden meat, on the other hand, could be chemically digested and could cause problems.

Seems like most dead hawks and owls I see are killed by traffic along the highways.

You know who needs you to use less lead so they can have more?

China.

No kidding. I wish the magpies around here would get lead poisoning. They make as much mess as pigeons, but they are protected. They do pick up the gophers I shoot, but unless they fly a long way to die or find a cave to die in, they are very healthy.

Doing my part to ensure that crows everywhere suffer terminal lead poisoning.....

just wait that's coming too

It's already been done in NY for several years now. You can still use em if you've got em but you can't buy them anymore. Tin sinkers is all you'll find in the stores.

they do when I hunt them

Libs in think tanks... (F.UK! We shuld have used the condors again)

If it is actually lead.....it's coming from our fish.
Darrel Wick

I’ve always been suspicious of lead shot killing waterfowl. It’s never seemed possible to me that hunters could shoot enough shot into miles of water to fill the bottom with enough lead to poison birds. Even if that much lead were fired into the marshes with there mostly soft mucky bottom it seems like the lead shot would quickly sink down far enough to not be easily picked up by waterfowl.

In the past 50 years the resurgence of the Bald Eagle has been impressive. Up until the mid-80s I had never seen one in NY. I saw two flying over my house just this morning and we have a nest just down river from us. All this resurgence happening when hunting was more popular than it is now. Birds die from lots of things including renewable energy sources like wind turbines and your pet cat. What matters isn't so much that they die (it's natural), or, by what means, but: Are their #s increasing, decreasing or staying the same? That's it. More animals including birds or prey and lots of protected species are killed by cars. We gonna ban them too? It's just an excuse to harass us. That said, I shoot a lot of tree rats off our bird feeders with a pellet rifle. I don't eat them but put them in the trash rather than throw them in the woods due to the lead in them that our birds of prey could ingest.