Hunting Washington Forum
Other Hunting => Waterfowl => Topic started by: Scottystyle on July 10, 2009, 12:15:39 PM
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I dont hunt ducks or geese really, been a couple times with friends, but dont do it otherwise. I got thinking of why is lead shot banned for hunting, but you can still use lead for fishing? Call me crazy but is seems that lead is lead. Is it that you can shoot further with lead than steel, so success rates are better, or is the wdfw legitimately concerned about " lead poisoning " ? :dunno: Just wondering
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Ducks and other birds with gizzards pick up gravel to digest their food, when lead shot is used it gets mixed in with the gravel and birds digest it, which kills them and then kills falcons that eat the ducks. Steel shot wont poison the ducks like lead will. Fishing weights and such things that are lead and used for fishing arent small enough for ducks to pick up and digest.
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The birds that digest the lead end up dying along with those that have been wounded. The mortality rate is much higher. It also effects the critters that feast upon the dead birds. Lead was definately a lot more fun to shoot. Used to hammer the birds a lot better at a fraction of the cost.
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Lead fishing weights are currently being targeted for banning. Just wait...
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questionable science is why they were banned.
that said, birds do swallow a lot of shot-sized rocks to grind up their food. i'm no biologist, but i figure ducks probably wouldn't dive to get their grit, and would probably more likely pick it off the shoreline. you'd think upland birds would have been impacted more, since your shot all ends up in the dirt/field?
i'm pretty sure that fishing lead really has no adverse effects on the environment. most of the stuff out there is bigger than anything birds or other critters would eat. it's not like it gives off toxic compounds as it sits.
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I would think quantity comes in to play, 2-3 spit shot lost in a day vs 10 to who knows how many shots with "X" amount of bb's per.
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Like said above it was because birds were supposedly picking up the lead shot and then killing the birds. Whether there is much truth and science behind that argument or if it was based on emotions that "oh the poor little duckies could possibly eat them so we need to ban it" i do not know.
Ducks will eat out of a field so thats where they could pick up the lead. Or if you were hunting in a potato field then it could get in the mud that they are slurping up the rotten potatos out of
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Growing up in WI, we have had to use lead since about 1978. As a kid, I found lots of BBs in the gizzards of the ducks we got. All were steel at that point. This tells me two things, yes, ducks eat shot and if they were getting it from the pheasant hunting areas nearby as well as the marshes, there would have been some lead. There was none, so the knee-jerk idea to ban all lead is goofy, but there is science behind the waterfowl ban of lead.
If more people would shoot clays with steel, then they would cripple less ducks with it. When I first moved West, I was happy I got to use cheaper lead for ducks, after crippling a bunch, I switched back to steel, which I had been shooting at ducks for 8 years, and did not cripple another duck the rest of the season.
Just my :twocents: