New study on lead fragments from shot in game birds

[Richard Flanders]

Interesting thread and something of interest to anyone who eats a lot of birds I'd say. After a meal of wild bird I don't go to sleep at night fraught with fear of bodily harm but I definitely try to NOT ingest shot. Stomach acid has a low pH and will readily dissolve shot and put lead into the system and it doesn't take much to be harmful from what I understand.... which isn't THAT much of course. I have a copy of a study that a roommate did on duck ingestion of lead which has pictures of their livers... NOT pretty I assure you. They really grind it up in their gizzard of course... THAT's not pretty either as they really break pellets down. Anyone ever had a hair test done for lead? I've considered it just for grins. A neighbor has high Pb contents in his blood from working in a local industrial shop and is essentially disabled as a result and is doing some sort of scavenging therapy which is supposedly working to some degree. Hard to imagine that bullet survived the butchering in that elk! I've got the .45-90 bullets I've pulled from my moose on the shelf here. Their wound channel is not hard to trace for sure but most just go straight through and are not recovered, even out to 250yds.