Comments on: State game wardens oppose lead ammo ban

By: Miles Young

Miles Young — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 21:03:35 +0000

Matt:
Your right Matt I have done and still continue to do consulting work; we all so something with our lives. I have never worked for HSUS, ALF or any of the large environmental activist groups. In fact if you do a little research you would find I have spoken against blanket prohibitions such as stopping hunting completely, banning the pet trade etc. I’m hardly held in high regard by these groups. I tend to work for private individuals and or small HOA’s that are having troubles with developments in their neighborhood. I do believe in listening to both sides of any issue. Regarding this specifc issue It’s just an opinion based on my prior experience; no one has paid me for thoughts.
You know what they say about the internet ” if its on there it must be the truth!”. It’s very easy for the media to hunt and pick out the parts it wants to make a story even if the selected pieces are far from a true representation.

By: Matt Davis

Matt Davis — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 22:26:41 +0000

Miles Young and his 26 years experience is a go to guy to the animal rights groups. It appears that when they need to have someone that will agree with their opinion they call on Miles. I do not personally know this gentleman but I do know if you Google his name on the net he is always associated with some animal rights group and they are quoting him. Check it out for yourself.I know Mr.Young has done consulting work in the past and it appears like HSUS,ALF and other radical animal rights groups are his clients. Straighten me out Miles if I am wrong.

By: Miles Young

Miles Young — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 20:27:22 +0000

I’m a retired game warden and hunter and the CFGWA does not represent me nor several of my retired game warden friends on this issue. To us its simple common sense. We worry about lead for humans in our water supply, paint, toys for kids and in fact our food sources. Why would lead not also be a problem for the animals? Just the fact that we are introducing more lead into the systen is reason to consider the consequences. Studies on either side are sometimes tainted by who authored the study or from special interest groups. It’s totally ludicrous to for CDFW to say that 99% of hunters are complying with the lead ban in the “condor zone”. Why not take a look at how many warden/hunter contacts are being made and how many hours are wardens really spendng working that area. Maybe from the small number of hunter contacts the wardens have made the “reported” compliance is 99% but what is it really for the actual amount of hunter numbers in the field. For political reasons CDFW has to report positive results – they need a win every now and then. Not sure I trust some studu done in Germany or another state for that matter as to its value in California. Whatr everyone agrees on is that there are a lot of source of lead out there killing humans and animals. Why not at least get rid of one source?

By: HuntForTruth.org

HuntForTruth.org — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 18:06:05 +0000

Animal rights groups like the Humane Society of the US, Audubon California, Center for Biological Diversity, and Action For Animals are running a campaign aimed at the banning of lead ammunition for all hunting in California. One way they are trying to accomplish this is by sponsoring AB 711, which calls for a state-wide ban on most kinds of hunting ammunition available to the public. The same groups may try to expand the ban to your state. These groups claim that scavenging animals, such as the California condor, ingest and are poisoned by pieces of metallic lead bullets present in gut piles of harvested game left in the field by hunters. They rely on certain scientific papers that allegedly support these claims, and often use the poisoning of the California condor to justify their anti-lead ammunition agenda.

But there are serious scientific questions about the validity of their claims. The failure of the hastily-enacted California lead ammunition ban legislation of 2007 (AB 821) suggests that these groups are wrong. AB 821 banned the use of lead ammunition in the “condor zone” region of California. It was strong-armed through the legislature, bypassing the usual path involving the more scientifically inclined California Fish & Game Commission, based on the promise that the ban would lower the condors’ elevated blood-lead levels, and solve the lead poisoning problem. But AB 821 has not resulted in lower blood-lead levels or otherwise reduced lead poisoning in condors. Despite the California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s acknowledgment that 99% of hunters are complying with the lead ban in the “condor zone” since the law took effect, condors’ blood-lead levels, poisoning and mortality have increased since 2007!

Lead ban proponents also argue that there is a human health risk from eating meat from game shot with traditional lead ammunition. However, a recently published study out of Nuremberg, Germany, found that lead fragments in the gastrointestinal tract were found to be insignificant from a human health perspective. The study found that metallic lead used in lead ammunition even in a finely divided form, cannot, if ingested, be absorbed directly into the body’s organs, tissues, blood & bone.

There are obviously other sources of lead in the environment. These alternative sources are likely an industrial lead compound (e.g leaded gasoline, paint or pesticides), which is far more soluble and bioavailable to condors. We have identified some of those potential alternative sources, and we encourage you to join the hunt for the truth with us and learn the real facts! To learn all the facts in the lead ammunition debate, visit http://www.huntfortruth.org.

By: Rex the Wonderdog!

Rex the Wonderdog! — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 01:47:51 +0000

More gun laws, just what we needed, as if there is nothing else to focus our LASER tight attention…