Appreciate your investigating the lead shot for dove hunting issue at the Rocky Mt. Elk Foundation.  Your perspective on the lead shot issue is well taken up to a point.  First of all, consider the sources of your references--a presenter for the lead shot and condors issue (not doves or pheasants), a very small sample size of one presenter's observations,  a small but significant misunderstanding of the bill--to ban lead shot, not switch to strictly steel shot as there are other alternative types of shot i.e. copper and bismuth, and the inference that if there's no research done on an issue then there isn't a problem.

  There are numerous studies that have shown the harmful effects of ingesting lead in animals and people.  True, some species (as well as some individuals within a species) are more sensitive to lead poisoning than some others i.e. it takes more lead in their system to cause the damage.  Just why scientific studies on the effects of lead ammunition for all game animals hasn't been done is one more example of our entire society's sticking their heads in the sand when it comes to our environment. 

  And yes, I am anti-hunter.  Not anti-hunting, just the people with weapons traipsing around unsupervised who kill and maim as many animals as they can hit, take the head home for a trophy to brag about what a great hunter they are, leave the animal or at least the gut pile for scavengers to devour the fragments of lead that are left behind,  leave their trash laying around the wilderness,  assume that unless there is someone there at the time stopping them from hunting in an area that it must be ok to hunt, complain when they they actually have to hunt for an animal to tag because another hunter/predator has culled the weaker animals from the area,  all the while patting themselves on the back for being such conservation-minded citizens.  Conservation-minded for game animals while the rest of the ecosystem can die seems to be the attitude.  And the above "attitudes" are why I'm anti-hunter.

 As mentioned at the beginning, I do appreciate your efforts in learning more about the issue of lead ammunition.  Keep digging for the necessary information and consider that  what is known about the harmful effects of lead ammuntion in some species, make it far safer to consider it harmful in all hunting until proven otherwise.


Susan West

  


 
On Feb 7, 2012, at 4:49 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:

I recently returned from the annual meeting of the Rocky Mt. Elk Foundation, a wildlife interest group that has protected 6 million acres of elk habitat; mostly out west but also in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and the Great Smoky Mountains.   One of the booths on the show floor was from the Peregrine Fund.  Their issue is lead bullet poisoning of birds.  They had displays that showed how lead bullets throw off smaller lead particles as they travel, in this case through a gel.  They also had at least a dozen peer-reviewed, research papers on the ill effects of lead on birds.  The man I talked to was working with the issue on western condors.  I asked him if there was any evidence that lead shot as used for pheasant and dove hunting was harmful to wildlife.  He said there is none.  He also updated me on a couple of things.  Hunters, especially with older shotguns do get barrel damage from the harder steel shot.  When lead was first required for waterfowl the bird wounding rate significantly increased, but as hunters learned how to shoot the steel shot the wounding rate went down. 

I think there is some validity to the claim that this call for steel shot for doves is getting its momentum from antihunters.  Many groups can’t get all that they want, so there are using incremental strategies such as this.  If lead shot for doves was so bad, where were their voices for the past century of pheasant hunting with lead shot?  The timing of the demand for steel shot for doves makes it look more like revenge once the battle was lost over dove hunting. 

On occasion I write opinions counter to the prevailing wisdom on this email source.  I hope that this can be regarded as “the farmer and the cowman should be friends.”  I think that the Sierra Club needs to consider the issues they promote more broadly in the light of public opinion.  When some in the Sierra Club wanted to list mountain lions as endangered in the state, I wrote that would be so unpopular that it just would be a self-administered black eye.  The steel shot for doves issue serves mostly to antagonize hunters and reinforce their thinking of that whacked out Sierra Club.  Sierra Club gets another black eye when there is no evidence of a benefit.  I was in a hunting camp in Newfoundland last September.  I said that I keep a toe in a number of puddles including the Sierra Club.  One guy said that hunters ought to beat up anyone in the Sierra Club (he didn’t try).  Although some readers of this email didn’t like the Des Moines Register article, it was essentially telling the truth.  Let us decide issues based on evidence instead of emotions.

Lanny Schwartz




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to: [log in to unmask] Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to: [log in to unmask] Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp