Todd, the consensus of all of the papers and journals is the digestive juices break the lead down to enter the blood, no mention of gizzards at all.

I'm waiting for peer-reviewed papers that say otherwise. It's no service to members to say empirically there is no evidence that lead does not kill raptors.

That's a clear definition of factoid---what's said so often it becomes "fact."

Frank, I've been using .22 short mushrooms on skunks and raccoons; no exit. I'd be pleased to read from an authoritative source I have no worries about lead.

I have a paper at home written by an Ak fish and game biologist friend of mine that addresses this issue in detail. Ducks eat lead shot and grind it up in their gizzards and it eventually trashes their livers and kills them. It's my impression that shot ingested into a stomach is not broken down much by stomach acid before being passed out. It is however most definitely an issue when ground up in a gizzard. I'm sure I can get a link to that article from Dan and post it here at some point. I can't remember if the lead levels were elevated in the duck tissues. Have to wait until I find that article in my files.

Richard:
Let's start with "ducks eat lead." Okay. How do they find lead to eat? In the duck marsh? After some hunter fires a cartridge of 4s? After the 4s disperse over 150 yards of muck after whistling through the air? After dropping through who-knows-how-many feet of water? To the bottom of the marsh? Where NO duck seeks material for it's gizzard? (hint: lead does NOT "grind up" in a duck gizzard)

And... even if ALL that happened, does the SAME duck eat enough shot pellets to have any effect by the time they exit as duck crap?

I don't care if you're a biologist in AK or Bermuda, you have to be smoking some nasty hemp to believe any of that -- then put it into a "paper."

Trust me - ducks ingest lead pellets. Dan's article has all the statistics on how many pellets they found in gizzards and such, complete with pictures if I remember correctly. He went around the marsh during hunting season and got hunters to let him cut out the gizzards and livers and did extensive testing. The paper is full of pictures of diseased livers and such. I'd guess that pellets settle in the mud and they get them when they pull shoots out and somehow keep them in their gizzard because there isn't much grit to be had in a muddy marsh area. I was a complete skeptic on the issue until I read his paper on it. Dan's a straight shooter and not a greenie. He hunts himself and does good waterfowl work.

Why the personal attacks ?

Okay. Let's pretend what you say is true. And ducks can somehow repeatedly eat oodles of heavy lead pellets along with "shoots" they normally ingest. And they live in duck marshes frequented by hunters who shoot to the degree of a trap field.

Then we have to ask ourselves these questions:

1) Of all the ducks in all the world, what percentage of them live in active shooting marshes? And does that percentage warrant a ban on lead shot over a Kansas pothole?

2) Just because a duck has a diseased liver does that mean the disease was caused by lead.

3) Would ANY of the alleged evidence hold up in court?

Forgive me. It wasn't meant to be personal. Only descriptive. I just get a bit piqued over this issue. Which I will hereby withdraw from.

The use of lead shot is irrelevant to the recovery of the bald eagle population. One simply has to look at the numbers put out by the U.S. fish and wildlife regarding the bald eagle population. Unfortunately, I can not link to the data page since the USFW webpage is down due to the government shutdown, but it is easy enough to check out once it is back up.

Bald eagles are thriving, and the population has been steadily increasing since the ban of DDT in 1972. In fact, if I really wanted to throw a wrench in your argument, I would point out that the RATE of increase in the bald eagle population has actually gone DOWN since the ban of lead shot for migratory waterfowl was put into place in 1991. I don't want you to believe me though, check out the numbers for yourself. Having someone tell you you are wrong does not change opinions, coming to that conclusion on your own, by doing your own research is the only way that change takes place.

The only relevant data in this entire issue is the annual population count of bald eagles. You will find the use (or ban) of lead shot is statistically irrelevant to the change in those numbers.

The bald eagle is continued to be used as a reason to ban lead shot because the activists know that is a sympathetic symbol that can sway public opinion, regardless of what the facts actually say. The use of individual, isolated cases of a raptor ingesting lead shot is used to build an argument to ban all lead shot, even though those cases are statistically irrelevant. They are used instead to make an emotional argument.


Here is the link to the U.S. fish and wildlife data, once the government is back up:

http://www.fws.gov/midwest/eagle/pop.../chtofprs.html

Here is an interesting read on what started the lead ban in CA....the California condor

http://www.huntfortruth.org/wildlife...fornia-condor/

The duck debate is an old one. This is a bit different if what was printed in the L.A. Times is accurate (big IF). It printed:

The ban on lead bullets was proposed by Assemblyman Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) because the substance is toxic and can poison those who eat animals shot with the ammunition.

“We are thrilled that Governor Brown has made AB 711 the law of the land,” Rendon said in a statement. “There is simply no reason to continue using lead ammunition in hunting when it poses a significant risk to human health and the environment.” That bill goes into effect in July 2019.

I can see the argument on ducks but not this one on humans. I don't know the number of people that have been poisoned by eating a 30-30 lead bullet, or even some #6 shot, but I'll bet the house its negligible or zero.

I think this law is a simply a win for the anti-gun and anti-hunting groups and has nothing to do with the health of anything.:banghead: