We can only hope.

I'm coming around to the lead ban. With two bald eagle nests on my property, watching two new ones every year and knowing these magnificent birds are scavengers, I'm going to have to find a non-lead solution to killing vermin.

Every year in several nearby places where I hunt from a blind, bald eagles keep a close eye on my activity while sometimes soaring fairly low or perching on snaggy dead trees. Anything that swims off before my dog gets there, or falls at distance from my decoys, is taken by eagles. That's whyI shoot non-toxic.

But what about the raccoon populations I'm trying to lower with the .22 as they try to invade my vineyard protected somewhat by an electric fence? I have been heaving them over a cliff near the shore, hoping the eagles don't find them. Or feral cats that don't last long because they take rabbits from snares? I'm going to become an angel! No lead.

the trouble with that hope Gary is that like so many states - New York and Illinois are examples as well as California - the politics are driven by large urban areas. every rural legislator can vote against a bill and it will still pass.

we in upstate NY have not had representation in the US Senate since the 1950's.

I do not see things changing

BTW - the health danger of lead in game - as a hazard to hunters - referred to by Moonbeam Brown, has been out there for years. One was published by an anti hunter whose "research" was not accepted by the scientific community.

That "study" was conducted by a Dr. William Cornatzer, a dermatologist from Bismarck, North Dakota used a high-definition CT scan and claimed to find lead in 60 % of the venison sampled (donated to food banks). unless he only sampled meat with bullet holes, that alone should give pause to a thinking person. The food bank program was temporarily halted, the "study" reviewed, and donations freely accepted again.

There was another published in the UK by a group represented by universities such as Cambridge and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Remember, in the UK game meat is sold to the public.

But it gives the left something to quote, the media something to publish and the sheep something to follow.

Anyone with a fax machine and a letterhead can issue a "report" with any conclusion they choose.
In the real world, lead in hunting cartridges is a statistical zero.
We should be more concerned with why man made climate change killed off the dinosaurs.

Like many laws these people pass, they have not thought out the consequences. Kind of like Obamacare.

Lead shot poses absolutely NO danger to wildlife as an ingestible. Period. And recent research has proven it. But now, the liberal idiots have established this "danger" as holy writ, and thus unassailable. It is simply more proof that The Big Lie, told often enough, becomes truth.

Kensal, provide sources recent research and save me worrying, please. I killed a couple skunks with the .22 last week and went to work on the property. When I came back to dispose of them a bald eagle lifted powerfully with a skunk in its claws. I'm one of the idiots who believe lead in the diet isn't good. I'm leery that all the anti-lead papers were written by liberals!


PS---Following Sherman Bell's injunction of finding out for myself, I googled "ingested lead and raptors." Every source, state and federal, cited mortality from ingested lead in raptors in Arizona, Virginia, California, Minnesota, Montana, France, Spain, including "death from one lead shot" in bald eagles. I'll leave to you the identity of which sources are liberal or conservative but I'm a new convert until shown evidence otherwise.

Regards, King

King,
Most varmints I have killed with a rifle have an entry and an "EXIT" hole. I don't really think I would worry too much about the lead contamination.

This new bill was nothing more than a ploy of the Humane Society to stop hunting in CA. It's like the mountain lion initiative that they were able to push to stop the hunting of mountain lion in CA. Now they complain about mountain lion attacks on joggers and trail bickers. From physics we should have learned that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

It requires a gizzard for an animal to break down lead, in it's ingestion process. Otherwise, it just passes thru.
Eagles don't have a gizzard.

We can only hope that the mountain lions are only eating liberals.