Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Non-toxic debate - please read this and comment.

Yes I know its been hit here pretty hard but I am bringing this recent article to your attention for two reasons. To generate debate and to illicit links to any new research data. Folks like Mule Deer and others in the "industry" might be aware of new developments on either side of the issue.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/277937621.html

I don't know about birds, but this has been debunked about lead in game meat and shown that all recent studies have been skewed to make the result come out like the people who are conducting studies want. Even the CDC debunked the studies a few years ago.

Mule Deer posted this some years ago and it still holds true as far as I know.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00217-002-0581-3

There have been many blood test of hunters that have consumed wild game taken with lead that has shown their lead level content in their bodies is no higher than normal.

They have been trying for years to link lead with some adverse effect to our lives and environment. There is so little data to support that, to accept all copper bullets to cup and core lead, is just another way to garner more support for a contrived environmental condition that doesn't even exist.

I will remain steadfast in the camp that won't accept global warming and other myths crammed down our throats to further the agenda to undermine every aspect of my life that doesn't adhere to their need to regulate us...

Very well stated and I am in the same camp.

When this myth goes down, there'll be another one. Maybe next time they'll claim that recoil causes Alzheimer's or something.

My thought is that once they were successful in non-toxic waterfowl shot, the next step wasn't surprising.

^^^^


This. EXACTLY!


Did not know sharp was such a skilled wordsmith. excellent post!

That's what they do, they're always trying to be our big brother. They're a bunch of drama queens. I like what you said about recoil! That's a good one!

David

If these eagles are eating so many gutpiles, perhaps an argument can be made that hunters are providing a vital food source for the eagles...(grin)

Unless there is a pile of bad shots out there, how many bullets actually end up in the guts. They must be trying really hard to make these studies say what they want them to say.

EXACTLY.

Since this has been going on where I hunt and live for a number of years I know that it was based on junk science from the beginning. Also even though something like 98% of hunters in the area are complying with the lead bullet ban, THE LEAD LEVEL IN THE CONDORS IS CONTINUING TO RISE. Indicating that the lead is elsewhere in the environment and never came from bullets in the first place.
Just another way the antis are trying to make our sport politically incorrect.

Yep, and everyone that sends an all copper bullet down their barrel is helping the antis. It gives them ammunition to say lead isn't needed anymore there are good substitutes.

I'll call bullchit on that, I choose to shoot copper because I don't like bloodshot meat, I don't want bullet fragment all over my carcass. To say I am "helping" them is a stretch. My choice has nothing to do with them. Should be boycott Barnes, Nosler and Hornady too?

The raptro/scavenger poisoning debate is interesting, there was a clear link established on the elk refuge in WY, but here in CA results are entirely the opposite. To me it seems as if it can be a species by species and environment by environment issue. CA condors are dumb [bleep] that eat anything and everything and still get poisoning as hunters reduce the lead output in the environment.

The eagles got it from scavenging dead elk carcasses and as I recall the situation has been rectified.

Long story short, too much nuanced data that allows overly vocal minorities to twist the headlines in their favor preying on peoples predispositions.

It's too bad the monos work so well, because it IS helping the anti's cause. In time they'll find a reason to ban copper bullets too and the stepping stones will continue to lead forward for them.

The lead fragments are supposedly found in the lungs too, which the raptors eat, according to some studies and X-rays. I don't know how much truth it to that, but that's what some of the studies claim.

I started loading back in the fifties. The Barnes/Hornady/Nosler monometal bullets are the most reliable, most consistent bullets I have had to load with since I started.

Lead is toxic. Lead is always toxic in any form. Lead accumulates in your body and is not easy to get rid of.

As far as eagles go, I hunt in the middle of an eagle flyway and nesting area. Just before deer season they have learned to start congregating in certain areas anticipatory to food being made available. Once deer season begins they not only actively hunt gut piles in just about exactly the same way the hunt when fishing, they also hunt eagles on the ground and it is not uncommon to see 6-8 on a gut pile. Like crows, they will come to gun shots and wait for the gut pile. There are many more eagles hunting gut piles 20-40 miles on either side of the St. Croix than there are on the river itself during the month of November. They take as much venison.n as they can get then. Doesn't matter to them if it's gut piles, deer wounded and lost or road kill. If they have a decent supply they stay on the upper river and instead of fishing they commute back and forth to the venison. Winters like last year with a lot of winter kill, they stay all winter.

A cup and core bullet loses 30-40 per cent of it's weight passing through a deer's chest. Almost all of that is lead.

When I gut a deer I roll it onto it's back and as soon as I slice the diaphragm down to the spine the blood (and lead left from a bullet) in the chest washes down into the abdomen coating everything there.

Go ask your doctor how much lead he advises you to consume.

What people lose sight of is now that we have a lot of eagles again, they will inevitably be killed by consuming lead in gut piles, getting hit by cars scavenging road kill and other behaviors we didn't used to see. They used to pick up a lot of lead from wounded ducks/geese on the Mississippi. You can watch them working cripples for hours on end with as many as 20-30 eagles working a duck or goose that can no longer get airborne. All of that is just the way eagles are.

Miles. You really need to read the results of test about lead levels in hunters that use lead bullets. I know, never let good scientific fact interfere with myths. How does eating road kills that got hit by cars contribute to lead poising in eagles. Now that is a stretch.

Yea go ask your Dr. They are the same ones who want to know if you have any firearms in your house because they can kill you.

The eagle decline was most attributed to DDT and 2-4-D insecticides and herbicides.
I stared hunting with a shotgun, killing rabbits, squirrels, pheasants with lead shot in 1955 and ate of lot of those. Started to hunt deer/elk etc. big game a few years later and have consumed a heck of a lot of that meat. Working in underground nuclear testing ,we stacked hundreds and hundreds tons of lead brick and lead shot for shielding. Having my blood test work up done, I show no more incidence of lead that the average non-hunter. Asbestos and radiation exposure is going to kill me a lot sooner than lead.

For those that think that the antis won't use the all copper bullet scenario to help ban lead bullets have their head in the sand, no matter how they perform.

Studies done to gather data to support a forgone conclusion is as worthless as the person who contributes to the sample. Science is still subject to how collecting the data is applied to the sample. If you want to find lead in carcasses, you can do that without question. Apply the toxicity of lead and it's overall effect on the consumer and all of a sudden eagles and people are dying from lead poisoning. It seems a bit inconclusive when hunters have been consuming lead riddled carcasses for a couple hundred years and only now it is noted that it is killing people.

Lead will kill you if it enters your body at over 600 FPS, that is a fact. As far as the rest of it goes, it is mostly junk science...

True, but one of the angles the anti-lead folks use is that the "newer" high velocity rounds (.30-06 type "higher" velocity rounds, let alone the super magnums) are the reason lead was not a problem in the past. They claim using lead core bullets in modern velocity rounds shed a lot more of their lead than the older, slower, all lead cast slugs of yesteryear. Sad thing is, they generally are correct in that particular theory.

Again, I think the whole thing is a crock of $hit, but that is what the antis are banking on from what I have gathered.

The copper thing is easy. It has been shown that a tiny change in copper ppm in water can screw up a salmon's navigating system- and by extension perhaps all fish. Hence the opposition to Pebble Mine out in headwaters for Bristol Bay.

The solution is for you guys to quit shooting your fish with all copper bullets.....

This is still a flawed theory. Before jacketed bullets, lead projectiles were solid lead with easy fragmenting due to the natural soft characteristics of pure lead. Plenty of Civil War veterans died from old age and not due to lead poisoning from bullets and fragments they carried within themselves for the duration of their lives...

BTW, recoil doesn't cause Alzheimer's. It causes extendasmiliafacedocorneria.

Don't believe me? Shoot a big bore.