Fur-Fish-Game...a great magazine

[Wingman]

Here's a reader comment from the October issue.

TIME TO GET THE LEAD OUT

Lead is more toxic than banned substances, like DDT and PCBs. Yet shooters discharge 105 million pounds of lead each year, and between 28 and 50 million pounds of it falls into grasslands.

A minute amount of lead causes an increase in the miscarriage rate for mammals. I have had wild rabits tested and found them to have 240 times more lead than domestic rabbits. Other data indicates a rate of 20 times more miscarriages.

If the soil is very acidic and high in bacteria, it takes around 6 years for the pellet to dissolve; if the soil is near neutral and low in bacteria, it will take at least 13 years to dissolve.

Shooting steel pellets could eliminate this toxic contamination. Steel shot should replace lead shot, and the hunting areas should be limed and phosphated to correct the present toxic contamination.

Fred Rettinger
Springfield, MO

I would like to see his data; something to think about.
Wingman
ISAIAH 40:31
http://www.fowlmood.com

[dkman]

To compare the lead from shooting to something as devastating as DDT toxicity right out of the box shows just how unrealistic this whole idea is.

DDT is still laying in sediment deposits in the bottom of our rivers.
It's impact on our ecosystems was staggering. It almost wiped out several bird species and some of them are just now beginning to show signs of full recovery.
"Proportional lethality" is something all wildlife professionals toy with all the time but they sure dont call it that because I made that up.
If you want to get rid of something, then have a good hard long look at what farm chemicals do to the environment. Don't look at what they say they do IF you use them properly, look at what farmers actually do with them.
I have seen places a quarter football field that are sterile of all life forms for a decade because of the residuals of farmers misusing chemicals, that have run off that flows directly into our watersheds.
Our fish in the delta are so toxic from farm chemicals that the Fed Govt has warned us not to even eat the fish in Tippo Creek and several other watersheds because they carry far to high of concentrations of chemicals for safe consumption. Our wildlife that depend on those fish and other aquatic animals have no choice but to eat and to die from these chemicals.

Lead has a top shelf decomposition life of only 6 years? What are you complaining about? DDT has been in our river beds for over 30 years now and it is just as deadly as it was 30 years ago. Farm chemicals are the tip of the iceburg in human introductions to the environment. Spraying lead pellets onto grasslands and forest floors and worring about it is almost a joke in magnitude by comparison. With waterfowl, that regularly forage for grit and pick up lead pellets, that is a different story. For the rest of it, you are howling at the moon. We have far more threatening problems out there that need to be addressed, proper handling and usage of farm chemicals should be at the top of the list in the Miss Delta. They are ruining our rivers and streams and they just plain and simple dont give a howl.

If you want to get serious about this issue, then stand up and start asking what happened to all our rabbits and quail in the delta? What happened to the abundance of them and the squirrels as well? Where did they all go?

I can promise you, it wasn't lead pellets that did it.

[Wingman]

Yes, dkman, there are ALOT of more important issues. This is but one. Just because an issue may not be as great as another, doesn't mean it's not worth looking into. Besides, this fella is from Missouri; he probably doesn't even have the contact with farming that we have.

Wingman

[dkman]

You get rid of the problems associated with farm chemicls and there would be enough animals to EAT 50 million pounds of lead a year and still have more survive than we have today. I think they farm in most of the country dont they?
I would like to see you make a bullet from steel that will shoot out of a rifle. Let's see you load a smoke pole with a steel wart. You follow this line of logic, you will end up causing the price of ammunition to quadruple, and the animals that benifit from it will be taken out by the chemicals.
(or something else) It isn't a big enough issue to pour the gas to. Is the Windman handle about the birds or do you spray for the farmers?

[Wildfowler]

I didn't even know a lead pellet would disolve. Especially over such a short period of time. Does this mean that it is rendered harmless in just a few years?

I hope they never ban it, it doesn't sound that bad to me.

[Wingman]

Dkman, are you angry at the WHOLE world? Of course you can't make steel rifle bullets, dude. I just said it was something to think about. And, yes, I have sprayed many acres with chemicals. If, BIG IF, you follow the label, and as long as EPA has done their research, the world ain't gonna melt. Yes, there is runoff. Yes, there is misuse of chemicals. Yes, there is drift on non-target crops and areas. For instance, Prowl, a pre-emerge herbicide, when not covered after being sprayed, will lose almost 70% of it's active ingredient in 14 days due to sunlight. Those are the kinds of chemicals we are going to these days...not DDT. Yes, DDT is still present in the soil...I've read the warnings on catfish and others. Can't eat buffalo out of Roebuck lake at all. Remember when Wolf Lake was dead? Part of the reason was because idiots were dumping their EMPTY BARRELS in the lake. What slobs. But you seem to be concerned with the money issue. Save some beer money up and you can buy a box of those steel rifle bullets! Or maybe, we should quit using automobiles due to carbon monoxide and ride horses.

WinGman

[dkman]

I'm not mad at the entire world just the 86% of it that is mucked up!
Roundup is harmless, yet when you guys spray it repeatedly over fingers of trees along ditches in the fields in end up taking out about 18% of the existing habitat that we have left in the delta, and yall do it all time, it's getting worse, and yall just about killed every wind break the delta has--with ROUNDUP..... No law against THAT is it? I'm not worried about the cost of bullets winGman, I got enough money to get drunk AND poke holes in stuff. Im worried about YOU GUYS making sure there is nothing to poke a hole IN. For m-o-n-e-y. When you stop doing that, I will stop drinking. Hey at least my beer cans dont take out entire wind blocks! (Thats why all this sweeping the duck blind/palace/hilton/ramada is kind of out to lunch you know?) You bring a broom to my duckblind, we are going to make you wear it, and it wont fit too good.

[Wingman]

Never sprayed over a tree with my groundrig. Don't generalize. Maybe your "you guys" should be directed at pilots.

Wingman
disengaging from this rant

[DuckyDan]

easy there guys...... let's not get all ill.......

[dkman]

Well my apology I thought you said that you were using dusters to move chemicals so perhaps that was directed incorrectly. Point is lots of other issues at hand here. You are dead up in one of them and you know what Im talking about. Stewardship of our natural environments is not part of the mix for a farm economical statement that is profitable. Today most farmers want to peel mother nature back as far as they cant get her. There is something to be said about the relatively small number of men who control almost all of our resources having this attitude by no financial choice. WRP was supposed to do something about this but we all know what that has turned into. Lead shot an issue? Not hardly. Sorry for the miscatagorization, I did ask you, (not about ground sweepers) and you said yes but not very specifically.

[sportsman450]

I suspect Mr.Rettinger works for a steel shot manufacturer .
Only that kind of greedy sadist would advocate wounding even more game than we already have to . It's bad enough seeing cripled ducks fly away to die later . Let doves , squirrels , rabbits , and other game die quickly . Lead is the only way to go .

[dkman]

I'd hate be a song bird in the Delta. 2000 acre farm, spray it kill all the bugs, tough feeding babies like that. Wipe out over half the food chain annually. I have seen the weevil program spraying malathion 100 feet up into the wood lines. Oh great.
Roundup kills everything that the farmer doesnt want.
Know why those rabbits had all that lead in them? Nothing green to eat left had to eat rocks. What can take roundup? Vines. Where is this going? Monsanto should be required to reforest to make up for what they kill with their products. Genetically engineered crops are high dollar and wipe out natural flora because of application practices. Who is left? Who can take it? Non seed bearing vines, with no bugs in them, for miles and miles and miles. Oh goody. Sounds like paradise. You can stack 5200 tons of lead in my front yard and it would take up about half of it 2 feet high. Spread out over the nation in tiny pellets that are gone in 8 years? Do they kill vines? Let's worry about something else shall we? I wish they would put some beer can collection points at all the gravel road intersections so my truck didnt smell like spilt beer all the time. (burp) We could sell them all and start the "Counter Monsanto Destruction" fund, buy a big expensive corporate office, and spend 87.9% of the funds on salaries and the rest on yard maintenance & "look how good we look" pamplets.
Where do you live Wingman I want to come look at how "environmentally friendly" your operation is?

[sportsman450]

87.9% on salaries and the rest on maintenence and pamplets . That sounds a lot like D.U. . If you had said executive salaries I would be sure it was them .

[dkman]

That just shows how much you know about D.U. & math.
With D.U. it's 94.6% that looks like 12.2% on paper and they saved every duck in the solar system on that much but need 3 times more to save all the ducks on Alfa Centuri because the budgets of WRP/COE/NRCS aren't enough to buy condos on every continent of the planet in triplicate and save .01259% of the ducks from certain demise in the process to justify it all. I haven't met a D.U. man yet who didn't think he was an executive of some sort, and entitled to all the perks involved in screwing the ducks. Get your free pass to act an ass right here Woo Hoo Quack Quack Quack!!!!!

[Wingman]

ANYWAY....if'n you fellers don't get the FFG mag, you ought to subscribe. It has articles on upland and waterfowl hunting, big-game, small game and varmint hunting, and trapping. There's an article this month on that naaaasty Snakehead fish up north. Talk about environmentally unfriendly, and that dude is "all natural". ffgservice@ameritech.net
And Dkman, you are welcome to come to my place anytime.