blake
Life Member
The Cost of Banning Lead for Iowa's Dove Hunt
By Tim Lesmeister
The state of Iowa has come to its senses and opened a dove season, which will start on September 1 and run through November 9. Well, they almost came to their senses. As part of the dove season, hunters will be restricted to lead-free ammunition. Will the onslaught on hunters and shooters ever end? The anti-hunters are always looking for ways to restrict our sport. It's a never-ending battle, it seems, and while they have stepped back a little on trying to ban certain types of firearms, now these zealots are going after our ammunition.
Why would banning lead ammunition restrict hunters? Because the alternatives to lead are much more expensive and this would hinder those with a limited budget. You go through plenty of shells when hunting doves and it will get pretty expensive if you cannot use lead.
So how bad is lead to the environment? The radical environmentalist would have you think that lead is more toxic than nuclear waste. Hunters just want real data to decide, and not much of that exists.
Following is some information gleaned from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) web site. While the crazed tree huggers would shout this is a biased site, it was the only place that stated a reasonable argument. Other sites that were against lead ammunition (that showed up on my web search) based their arguments on marginal data or were sentimental, creating an argument based on feelings and faith in their environmental message.
According to the NSSF web site:
Wildlife management policy is based on managing population impacts, not on preventing isolated instances of harm to specific individual animals in a species. Absent sound scientific evidence demonstrating a population impact caused by the use of traditional ammunition, there is no justification for restricting or banning its use.
With very limited exceptions, such as waterfowl and possibly the California condor (upon which the evidence of a causal connection to spent ammunition fragments is far from conclusive), there is simply no sound scientific evidence that the use of traditional ammunition is causing harm to wildlife populations. In the case of raptors, there is a total lack of any scientific evidence of a population impact. In fact, just the opposite is true. Hunters have long used traditional ammunition, yet raptor populations have significantly increased all across North America - a trend that shows no sign of letting up. If the use of traditional ammunition was the threat to raptor populations some make it out to be, these populations would not be soaring as they are.
And is lead ammunition a threat to humans? To put this issue in perspective, consider this statement from the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH), a state agency that has tested the blood lead level of Iowa residents for more than 15 years: "IDPH maintains that if lead in venison were a serious health risk, it would likely have surfaced within extensive blood lead testing since 1992 with 500,000 youth under 6 and 25,000 adults having been screened."
Iowa has never had a case of a hunter having elevated lead levels caused by consuming harvested game.
There is simply no scientific evidence that the use of traditional ammunition is having an adverse impact on wildlife populations that would require restricting or banning its use beyond current limitations, such as the scientifically-based restriction on waterfowl hunting. And, there is absolutely no evidence that consuming game harvested using traditional ammunition poses a human health risk. In fact, there has never been a single instance of an elevated lead level in a human in the history of the United States due to consuming harvested game.
The excise tax dollars (11 percent) manufacturers pay on the sale of the ammunition some demonize is the very source of wildlife conservation funding, the financial backbone of the North American Model of wildlife conservation. The bald eagle's recovery, a truly great conservation success story, was made possible and funded by hunters using traditional ammunition. Needlessly restricting or banning traditional ammunition absent sound science will hurt wildlife conservation efforts as fewer hunters take to the field.
The above editorial does not necessarily reflect the opinion of iowawhitail.com or the administrators and moderators of this website.
This post is intended for informational purposes only, you decide.
By Tim Lesmeister
The state of Iowa has come to its senses and opened a dove season, which will start on September 1 and run through November 9. Well, they almost came to their senses. As part of the dove season, hunters will be restricted to lead-free ammunition. Will the onslaught on hunters and shooters ever end? The anti-hunters are always looking for ways to restrict our sport. It's a never-ending battle, it seems, and while they have stepped back a little on trying to ban certain types of firearms, now these zealots are going after our ammunition.
Why would banning lead ammunition restrict hunters? Because the alternatives to lead are much more expensive and this would hinder those with a limited budget. You go through plenty of shells when hunting doves and it will get pretty expensive if you cannot use lead.
So how bad is lead to the environment? The radical environmentalist would have you think that lead is more toxic than nuclear waste. Hunters just want real data to decide, and not much of that exists.
Following is some information gleaned from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) web site. While the crazed tree huggers would shout this is a biased site, it was the only place that stated a reasonable argument. Other sites that were against lead ammunition (that showed up on my web search) based their arguments on marginal data or were sentimental, creating an argument based on feelings and faith in their environmental message.
According to the NSSF web site:
Wildlife management policy is based on managing population impacts, not on preventing isolated instances of harm to specific individual animals in a species. Absent sound scientific evidence demonstrating a population impact caused by the use of traditional ammunition, there is no justification for restricting or banning its use.
With very limited exceptions, such as waterfowl and possibly the California condor (upon which the evidence of a causal connection to spent ammunition fragments is far from conclusive), there is simply no sound scientific evidence that the use of traditional ammunition is causing harm to wildlife populations. In the case of raptors, there is a total lack of any scientific evidence of a population impact. In fact, just the opposite is true. Hunters have long used traditional ammunition, yet raptor populations have significantly increased all across North America - a trend that shows no sign of letting up. If the use of traditional ammunition was the threat to raptor populations some make it out to be, these populations would not be soaring as they are.
And is lead ammunition a threat to humans? To put this issue in perspective, consider this statement from the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH), a state agency that has tested the blood lead level of Iowa residents for more than 15 years: "IDPH maintains that if lead in venison were a serious health risk, it would likely have surfaced within extensive blood lead testing since 1992 with 500,000 youth under 6 and 25,000 adults having been screened."
Iowa has never had a case of a hunter having elevated lead levels caused by consuming harvested game.
There is simply no scientific evidence that the use of traditional ammunition is having an adverse impact on wildlife populations that would require restricting or banning its use beyond current limitations, such as the scientifically-based restriction on waterfowl hunting. And, there is absolutely no evidence that consuming game harvested using traditional ammunition poses a human health risk. In fact, there has never been a single instance of an elevated lead level in a human in the history of the United States due to consuming harvested game.
The excise tax dollars (11 percent) manufacturers pay on the sale of the ammunition some demonize is the very source of wildlife conservation funding, the financial backbone of the North American Model of wildlife conservation. The bald eagle's recovery, a truly great conservation success story, was made possible and funded by hunters using traditional ammunition. Needlessly restricting or banning traditional ammunition absent sound science will hurt wildlife conservation efforts as fewer hunters take to the field.
The above editorial does not necessarily reflect the opinion of iowawhitail.com or the administrators and moderators of this website.
This post is intended for informational purposes only, you decide.
