Quote:
Originally Posted by RWebb
the problem is that lead causes a bunch of sub-lethal effects; not just death
worse, humans eat animals that ingest lead, and some of thsoe sub-lethal effects show up in the humans...
I don't know exactly how bad a problem this is - my guess is that no one knows for sure.
We'll see what happens.
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Actually, I do believe most ill affects are non-lethal. Good point.
Still, the most affected wildlife seems to be waterfowl and other marsh dwellers. Not from the stuff that hits them (non fatally, so they escape the hunter), but the stuff they ingest along with the soft marsh grass and whatnot from the bottom of the pond. Like I said earlier, even if a hunter kills a bird, most of the shot flies off into the distance, to settle in the marsh. Even hunters grudgingly acknowledge this is a problem. It will be for generations to come, even with a now couple of decade old ban on lead shot for waterfowl.
Where the argument crosses into incredibility is when it turns to big game ammunition. There simply is not anywhere near the volume expended as compared to bird shot, by orders of magnitude. And the bullets left behind are not inadvertently ingested by anything. Hell, a small animal could undoubtedly spend its life actually
looking for bullets to eat and probably never find even a single one. It's just a whole different situation than we are confronted with in the duck marshes.