The overwhelming majority of bullets are used against paper or steel targets. Most hunters take the entire carcass for butchering, so the eagles arenât eating lead from animals shot and left in the wilderness. And given the volume needed, I wouldnât be surprised that theyâre eating fragments fired at steel targets that they mistake for rocks to keep in their stomach to grind up food.
Comment on Littering đŻ
Solumbran@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
âChoose lead free ammunitionâ
No?
Just stop shooting guns and murdering things like a crazy ape?
ArgentRaven@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
zxqwas@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Donât know what they do over there, but we usually get the lungs and guts out as soon as possible in order to keep the meat from spoiling. Long lived predators that likes to scavenge can develop lead poisoning from those remains if itâs their main source of food.
If confusing with rocks was the main source youâd expect it to be just as common in other birds.
Danquebec@sh.itjust.works â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Does that mean hunters also eat lead?
zxqwas@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
You tend to be generous with what you discard because you donât want to eat lead.
I could only find one report where they measured Pb in blood. People who self reported eating game meat in Utah had 30% higher lead levels than people who did not.
Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
This is untrue, gastroliths are associated only with birds that eat plants. They grind up food, which isnât necessary for meat. Eagles eat bullets from animals that have either been shot and abandoned, lost, or had parts of them discarded as zqxwas pointed out.
Solumbran@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Thatâs why I also mentioned to stop shooting guns. If you are shooting in such an unsafe way that fragments fly around and get lost, then you shouldnât be allowed to shoot in the first place.
kn33@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Youâre not familiar with the concept of an outdoor target range, are you?
Cethin@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
OK, I think this is an incredibly stupid argument.
From the ethical perspective of anti-meat, hunting animals is so much better. They get to live natural lives, and they die in a similar manner to they do in nature (maybe a little faster, which is good).
From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people donât like to be attacked by wild animals. It also doesnât consume many resources, as theyâre just living their lives in nature.
I donât think thereâs any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it. Thatâs fine, and you can just not do it. Iâve never hunted in my life, and I suspect I never will. Itâs not really something I want to do. I canât construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you canât either. If you can, give it a shot, and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors. Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they arenât hunted by humans.
Senal@programming.dev â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Crazy ape comment aside (iâd put it closer to apes with delusions of grandeur but thatâs just me), not shooting guns and allowing hunting arenât mutually exclusive.
Especially given all the hunting that happened pre-gun.
I donât know if itâs on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).
Cethin@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Sure, you can hunt without guns. I donât really see an argument for not using them though, as long as thereâs no lead. Whatâs really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever? I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms.
I didnât make any proposals in my above comment. I donât know what you mean by saying you donât see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isnât negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?
graycloud@leminal.space â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Where I grew up, most people use a Have-a-Heart trap or a snare, then a knife or captive bolt gun (no bulltets).
Senal@programming.dev â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Sure, you can hunt without guns. I donât really see an argument for not using them though, as long as thereâs no lead.
In the isolated context of lead poisoning alone, sure, banning lead is an answer.
In the greater context of gun ownership in general, itâs more tricky.
But i wasnât advocating either , simply pointing out that banning guns and allowing hunting arenât mutually exclusive.
Whatâs really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever?
There are some , but i wasnât pushing for any so iâm not sure they are relevant here.
I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms.
Either you havenât thought this all way through or you are intentionally ignoring the whole host of other emotional and logical arguments around gun control.
If you can ban hunting with firearms, you can also just ban using lead ammo, so I donât see how banning them is the best option in general.
As was said previously, in this isolated context you are probably right, in any kind of wider context, not so much.
I didnât make any proposals in my above comment. Itâs entirely statements of observations. I donât know what you mean by saying you donât see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isnât negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?
Thatâs possibly my bad, i meant more that you were making statements without any (written) consideration to the wider context in which they were made.
I donât necessarily disagree(or agree) with you, but i absolutely think your arguments need work.
Examples:
I will preface this by saying that my perspective on ânatureâ is that we are part of it, even will all the fucked up self destructive stuff we have going on , so itâs not like we can really do anything âunnaturalâ, i use the term natural below to mean nature if we didnât have such an outsized effect on natural processes.
From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people donât like to be attacked by wild animals.
Thatâs only true in an ecosystem where the predator (us) and the prey are in natural equilibrium, which Iâm sure youâll agree is absolutely not the case.
Without that natural equilibrium you need formal and enforced regulation to make this work.
This magical ânaturally healthyâ state of existence glosses over a lot of problems with that statement.
It also doesnât consume many resources, as theyâre just living their lives in nature.
Also requires a natural equilibrium or regulation as a baseline.
I donât think thereâs any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it. I canât construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you canât either.
Overhunting and ecosystem collapse, trophy hunting, selective hunting (think ivory), disease control, hunting for âsportâ (think fox âhuntingâ).
Those were just off the top of my head.
and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors
an equilibrium, not the only equilibrium, it also mentions evolution of equilibriums but is presented from a perspective that the equilibrium presented is now fixed (it is not).
we are also animals, so us dying and being eaten also fall under this, so by that rationale another effective solution could be to reintroduce more (non-human) predators and a few of us die here and there, but the animal populations now stay under control.
Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they arenât hunted by humans.
Until a new equilibrium is reached, because thatâs how ecosystems work (or collapse, depending).
Aarkon@discuss.tchncs.de â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Just because something happens on its own in nature doesnât mean itâs a good thing per se - for instance, I prefer the warmth of my heated house over the ânaturalâ cold temperatures of the winter months. Thatâs the famous âappeal to natureâ fallacy right there.
Also, like others already pointed out, hunting deer is only necessary because we eradicated most of their natural predators. Making the case for hunting today in order to fix a problem hunting created in the past feels oddly circular to me.
qaeta@lemmy.ca â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
I mean, kinda yes, kinda no. We generally werenât hunting predators primarily for meat, but for community safety. The meat was a byproduct of not wanting a bear or something to decide our children would make for a tasty snack.
Cethin@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Itâs not circular, because it needs to be done. If it isnât done we have massive problems. It doesnât depend on any other logic. Sure, the issue was crested, in part, by hunting also (a lot just because predators wonât live near population centers though), but the argument that it needs to be done isnât dependent on you agreeing with killing predators.
hector@lemmy.today â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
A little off subject, but I want to start a movement to have farmers raise a few cows and pigs in the old method, letting them roam around and forage, not treating them horribly, and then selling the meat directly to consumers. Because if you bought an entire cowâs worth of cuts at a grocer, itâs an astronomical sum, even as the rancher is getting barely enough to get by from it, the agriconglomerates hold the gates and are squeezing everyone, and itâs forced these factory style farms to proliferate to stay in business, as the corporates wonât pay enough for the old style of farming to be worth it, but still charge more than enough so that old way would more than be worth it if we cut out the parasitical mega corporations.
Itâs kind of baked in though, usda inspections and the like on beef, itâs illegal to go outside of them really, barriers to entry that probably are ruinously expensive for someone doing a handful of cow shares, but affordable for a conglomerate doing a thousand head
But thereâs a way around it, doing cow share programs, selling directly to people but itâs grey area.
Anyway itâs a major harm reduction as far as Iâm concerned. People arenât going to stop buying meat. We can give farmers more money, save consumers money, and give the animals better lives, by cutting out these mega corporations from the deal, and in doing it with meat, itâs an in to do all sorts of vegetables and the like as well, we need community sponsored agriculture that is not more expensive than the grocers, and I think thatâs more possible now with rising grocery costs.
Unquote0270@programming.dev â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
You must be exhausted after all those huge jumps in logic and reasoning.
Cethin@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
You must be pretty rested, because you didnât even try to make an argument. What were the leaps in logic? Can you actually explain, or are you just implying there are to sound smart, but canât actually identify any?
Unquote0270@programming.dev â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
You appealed to pretty much every strawman there is when it comes to animal rights.
Unquote0270@programming.dev â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
You appealed to pretty much every strawman there is when it comes to animal rights.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
I have a half assed argument against hunting, and itâs mostly my being a picky ass. Most of the time, the game around here, you get better meat from the store. So people just let it sit in their freezer and it ends up going to waste. Which reminds me, I have some moose ass in my freezer I gotta eat.
FatVegan@leminal.space â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Letâs try the not poisonous bulltes first. Because something tells me that Americans canât even do that.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
We killed the predators on a lot of our continent. Deer hunting is ecologically necessary here. And thats before we get into the boar problem
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
ecologically necessary
Not if wolves were reintroduced to native levels.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Yes, and you all understand just how controversial it is to do as well, considering that reintroducing predators is something people are trying on both our continents. Reintroducing wolves to the forests of the eastern united states may happen in my lifetime but is unlikely as the people who live where they would be enjoy hunting for meat and donât like the idea of having to shoot wolves that get too bold. Theyâre currently controversially being reintroduced in the West like near Yellowstone. Other predators like cougars also need to be allowed to populate more. Even then though, nothing on this continent but humans is taking down boars. Theyâre giant and massively invasive, an ecological calamity.
But for the time being, hunters should be switching to lead free shot, and they should continue hunting white tail deer. Target shooters should also be using lead free shot, in general if you donât want particles of it in your bloodstream donât shoot with it.
qaeta@lemmy.ca â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
The wolves were driven off for a reason. They had a tendency to snack on pets, livestock and small children until they learned to fear us. Those issues all come back if they stop fearing us again.
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Coyotes are also present in many places in the US, and birds of prey can harm pets too.
No excuse for eliminating a healthy and necessary species from the ecology. Human ego trumps all
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.wtf â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Plenty of people hunt for food. Lead ammo should be avoided though.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
I think you might have some ontologically incongruous standards. We are crazy apes. You can take the guns away, but the murder will persist for millennia, if not gene edited out. Banning the guns and lead bullets is more likely to work than expecting humanity to spontaneously diverge from its evolutionary roots of the bang bus murder ape
Solumbran@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
I donât know, humans are good at diverging from their instincts when it comes to letting sick people die, but when it comes to killing less, they cannot anymore?
I think that low-ass standards are what prevent humans from getting any better, if you start justifying mindless murders as âjust instinctâ then of course people will be fine with it. And funnily enough, thatâs one of the main arguments that hunters use, saying that theyâre just doing something ânaturalâ.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
We are killing less. And overwhelmingly so. If you donât count faceless, recontectualized packaged cow, chicken, and pig meat. Weâre also still pretty good about keeping our close group alive, but medicine men, insurance, and numbers over 100 are a strictly cultural practice not cemented within our genetic memory in any meaningful way, so society as a whole suffers under the burden of our limited empathy.
You can also get into the economics of governance to get a good look at what it would mean to move the systems in place enough to reach the sort of universal socioeconomic safety that youâd personally find acceptable. Iâm a fan of Europeâs deal⌠up to a point.
I really donât mean to cut things off, but the scope of this conversation would necessarily reach so incredibly wide that I donât believe I can keep your attention or mine for a dozen pages of philosophy, biology, anthropology, history, psychology, and economics. In short, I, personally, can only expect people to fit neatly into a groove so long as it isnât too far removed from the one we dug a hundred thousand years ago.
SinningStromgald@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
⌠bang bus murder ape
Adding that into my book of wonderful phrases.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Just donât credit me, Iâm pretty sure I plagiarized it in part from elsewhere
athatet@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
People donât really change their actions very often. I mean, people are still posting on twitter, for example.
Damarus@feddit.org â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
The American mind cannot comprehend this
arrow74@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
What are you even talking about? There a plenty of people that hunt even here in Germany
Damarus@feddit.org â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Iâm talking about a whole country being obsessed with owning and firing guns. I donât observe that in Germany. Also a hunters license comes with mandatory education about responsibility and preserving wildlife.
arrow74@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
So do hunting licenses in the US. Wildlife enforcement has some of the most authority in the state.
The issue is the states allow inherently unsafe munitions to be used. If they changed hunters in the US would comply
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
We have a monopoly on hunting 30-50 feral hogs tyvm
Pirat@lemmy.org â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Not sure if youâre American or not but hereâs a question for you. These bald eagles are allegedly dying from lead poisoning from eating creatures shot by lead bullets/pellets. This must mean they are scavenging. Yes, I know bald eagles do that a lot but they also kill their own prey. So why arenât vultures dying of this lead poisoning. Vultures only scavenge so it should happen much more often.
Hereâs another thought. 80% of eagles brought into a clinic may be dying of lead poisoning but that 80% is part of a small number overall. Notice they never say how many eagles are brought in.
Hereâs another thought for you: When someone says such and such is the fastest growing demographic for such and such a thing, it could just mean that there were very few such incidences. 2 such incidences occurred when there used to be just one. WOW! Hundred percent increase? Such incidences have DOUBLED!
Donât let Rita Skeeter twist your thoughts. Get the whole story.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Ingestion of lead ammunition is the primary reason California Condors almost became extinct, are still endangered, and arenât having the greatest success with being reintroduced.
As for bald eagles, theyâre lazy smart, if they see takeout just sitting there, theyâre not gonna make dinner from scratch.
Pirat@lemmy.org â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Secondary reply: I donât know If Iâd call bald eagles smart. When I drive by a road kill that has vultures and a bald eagle feasting at it, the vultures fly away from the road while the stupid eagle flies right in front of my car. Iâve nearly had them smash into my windshield several times. It is now my standard reaction to slow down if I see a bald eagle eating road kill. I donât worry about the vultures because they know what to do.
BTW, bald eagles were nearly driven extinct by DDT. We quit using that so bald eagles are now numerous enough that I have to brake to keep from hitting while they eat road kill despite the lead poisoning.
Pirat@lemmy.org â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Not denying the condor thing. Still didnât answer the vulture thing. Yes, I know condors are a type of vulture but so are black vultures and turkey vultures which are more common than ever.
Damarus@feddit.org â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
I couldnât tell you and I donât really care. Just jumping on the opportunity to mock gun culture