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Originally Posted by Finfeatherfur
I remember when the Feds banned lead shot in waterfowl hunting and the fiasco that followed. I also remeber their commericials with the sick ducks and geese holding their heads low and appearing sick. My question is this: Does any study or data exist where the feds or Cali scientist can show where lead bullets/shot kill or injure animals/birds who were not the targeted game? I can go out to any duck lease after the season opens and get video and pics of injured/sick waterfowl from wounds of steel shot. This is a targeted group and wounded birds will happen. The hawks have to eat too!
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Catahoula Lake is a good/bad? example of lead poisoning that still occurs from the tons of lead shot that remain in the system. That stuff never goes away and there are numerous waterfowl that suffer from lead poisoning each year on Catahoula Lake and I am sure many other places, but this is the example I know. It is being studied currently. Maybe Lreynolds the state waterfowl biologist can chime in on this a little bit more, I see he is a member here and can provide actual numbers for it. There are alsways going to be animals wounded from hunters, but what is not 'good' is animals being wounded or killed 'indirectly' from lead shot. Imagine how much a box of shells weighs and think most of that is shot. Lets say 2 lbs of lead in a box of shot (no idea what the actual weight is but its probably higher than that), multiply that by the number of blinds on Catahoula Lake and the number of hunters in each blind and number of days in a season and then multiply that by say 50 years of even more and you end up with many many thousands of tons of lead sitting on the lake bed, all available for birds to pick up
As far as California condors and other birds of prey, yes there are studies out there particularly with golden eagles and lead ingestion.
plenty of literature out there on both and its just how you want to interpret it
editing out the rest, said I wasn't getting in this! haha
:inb4MGsaysdraconiansanctions