Ducksterman: Coot migrate like other birds by flying. The reason people don’t see this migration is because the coot travels by night. This is not a flip response but info I have read in several different publications.
Tim
Duckster: Check this article: http://www.nodakoutdoors.com/valleyoutdoors90.php
Tim
Tim -
From one old coot to another, that was a very interesting article. Thanks for the link.
John
Duck - you can be an old coot too, if you want to be, even though … well, what’s in a name, after all.
Why would a duck want to be a coot:p:p:confused::rolleyes:
While many of the folks trying to get lead banned would like you to, as Ed describes, transfer the ‘precentages’ from the study birds to the entire population.
That’s not just a stretch, it’s bad science. Where did the ‘study’ birds come from? Were they seeking dead birds for the study, or did they just ‘study’ dead birds found or turned in? Either way…
Based on simple logic, such a study is ALWAYS ‘weighted’ to show much HIGHER mortality due to human interaction (regardless of the ‘cause’).
The birds found were found where people go. Obviously you can’t find a dead bird if you don’t go there. People fish where people go. People don’t fish where people don’t go, so birds in areas where people don’t go would have a much lower chance of getting some fishing related lead in their systems. Simple.
One thing I found interesting about the Michigan study. Michigan is a ‘sportsman’s paradise’. The ‘numbers’ of dead birds from fishing represent how many hundreds of thousands of angler hours over that 14 years? Maybe millions? Don’t know, but it’s alot. Seems like mortality from human interaction would be ‘higher’ in Michigan, due to all those fishermen, yet the numbers are very small.
I still think it’s insignificant.
Don’t use lead if you don’t want to. But don’t feel guilty if you choose to do so.
Buddy
That’s ducking the issue !!
Lead legislation is officially out of control now. Within ONE week, my newspaper ran two Associated Press stories on legislation already under way and in some cases passed effecting motorcycles sold to children (their parents actually since they’re the ones who buy them) and children’s books printed before 1985.
Most mini-bikes have lead in the seats, so now they’re being yanked from the shelves putting bike shops in a tough spot because they now take anything they bought for stock as a loss. Also, library’s nationwide are looking at their children’s books particularly those with red and yellow ink (higher lead use).
Yes, lead hurts birds and potentially fish, but the biggest alpha animal concern will have the greatest/most widespread economic impact – humans. Most specifically someone’s child.
I have to use steel for ducks and geese, but I still buy lead whenever I can because it’s cheaper. I still use lead sinkers (I live in Nevada) because I still think lead is heavier than any of that other non-toxic crap. I don’t stick my fingers in my mouth nor do I pick my nose afterward.
Still, knowing now what it can do would I let my kid use it? Yes, as long as it was in sound situations such as tackles and ammo. Would I let him eat lead paint chips? Only with the appropriate dip to go along with it.
But this is the place where our society is at. Is it the Republicans? No. Is it the Democrats? No. It’s crazy bleeding heart parents, most likely none of whom grew up in an outdoors-influenced childhood. They heard about the illnesses from the paint chips and brought it into modern day. Manufacturers mostly limit lead or eliminate it not so much because they are afraid or think it will hurt people, but because they’re scared of the crazy bleeding-heart parents.
If you told one of these people you put a small lead pellet into their tofu fake-steak they’d probably have a nervous breakdown.
You want to know something that CAN REALLY hurt your kids? Mercury, baby! Nevada’s full of it! Several public fisheries have restrictions on eating fish. And I won’t even mention the uranium…
I really appreciated the Bobs post that got this going as it’s something that I do follow. Serveral have asked what the original study is and it’s called:
Environment Protection Agency 40 CFR Part 745
Lead Fishing Sinkers: Response to Citizens Petition and Proposed Ban
I for one, can say I’ve kept up with this as I have a vested interest, I make lead jigs and sinkers for my fishing pleasure.
Now I have switched from lead split shot to tin. That alone if everyone switchs to tin split shot that will lower it. With all the pollution put into ourwaters lead is not the only ONE.
It was PROVEN in one of the original Minnesota studies that lead products were put into the 5 of the birds that were studied. Now overall if that happened what kind of skue does that put on all the studies percentages.
I agree with everyone who’s stated it MORE STUDY NEEDS TO BE DONE!!!
To all those who say switch?? It’s not cheap!!! The orginal study quotes $400 or more a year to switch over. The latest check for a non-lead material which will only weigh 2/3rds the weight of lead is 70%Bismuth/30% tin. Cost $26 a lb. IF you buy at least 50 lbs.
Joe Cool posted: ps. the jigs without hooks part throws that whole study in question in my opinion. that seems like a unique enough situation that anyone with some fishing knowledge would include an explanation
Now some of the explanations I’ve read say that the hooks rusted out and broke off?? True??? Don’t know. Now I can say that i’ve caught several smallmouth and walleye back home and they had a jig head coming out their poop shoot and the hook is NOT rusted through. How the Heck it ever passed through their systems I have no clue.
The knee jerk reactions, flawed reports, Illegal implant of lead into birds, and the lack of CONTINUED REAL AND ACCURATE STUDY all have to be fixed. But one area of concern to me is pollution released into our waterways just how much of a lead content does IT have??? What about old underground storage tanks??
Until I get totally banned from using lead to make tackle I’ll use it and NOT feel guilty. I keep up on the subject, I read everything on it I can get my hands on.
Fatman
I know I just posted but I went back and re-read a response by Extremely Low Budget FF:
You posted the following:
http://www.michiganloons.org/lead.htm
It documents 42 cases of lead poisoning in birds in the data table at the end of the article.
20 from jigs including one with hooks
6 from sinkers
5 pieces of lead including 2 with hooks
4 from lures
3 from split shot including 3 with monofilament
Folks wonder why no one believes studies??? You yourself to try and prove a point left things out: The varieables on the chart read:
Sources of Lead
Jig 20 * 1 with fish hooks
Sinker 6
Piece of Lead 5 ** 2 with fish hooks
Lure (jig) 4
Split shot 3 *** 3 with monofilament line
none seen 3
pellet (shot) 1
By posting this the way you did you not only leave out two items from the chart, but the BIGGEST thing this leaves out by someone not reading the the chart from the report shows that there are 2 Categories that are more dangerous than lead fishing tackle. Drownings and Other with their meanings listed. And within the Other listing that 13 show No diagnosis.
This alone screws up any meaningful data for someone to make a decision.
42 Birds over a 14 year period (3 birds) and they don’t list the TOTAL number of loons in the state during that entire report.
I believe this is a big part of what Bob posted, TOO MANY FLAWED REPORTS!!! and if only some information is taken from many reports it makes the situation worse than it is.
Fatman
What I found so objectionable in all the ‘position papers, press releases, and literature’ were the wholesale assumptions made.
First, the numbers were ‘low’ where fishing causes were concerend. Extremely low when you compare it to all the fishing hours and tackle used. Yet, just because we use ‘lead’, we have to be causing irreparable harm to the bird poptulations. No data listed came close to even suggesting that.
Second, they assume that we are all clumsy and irresponsible. EVERY paper on the subject points out, usually in the primary paragraph, that split shot are small and anglers routinely drop them in bunches and don’t pick them up. It happens, sure, but the literature makes it sound like this happens more than it doesn’t happen, and that we are just scattering these things all over the banks of lakes and rivers without even bothering to bend down and retrieve them…one way they justify their ‘extrapolation’ of how much lead gets into the environment.
That is another thing…their unproven theory on how much lead is ‘expended’ into the environment. They take what is PRODUCED each year and decide that most of it is expended because people buy more each year. I know a lot of fishermen, both fly and conventional, and I deal with a lot of novice anglers (not fly fishermen, just folks who may want to catch a stocked trout or two while camping).
I know where most of that lead is. It’s sitting in tackle boxes in garages all over the country. Until it gets thrown out…some of it sits for years, but most of it ends up in the trash. My ‘theory’ is just as valid as theirs is, but it’s never even considered in the ‘studies’. They just state the ‘amount’ as fact and then go on and complain about what is, bascially, a made up number.
And, nothing, no one thing listed, made me even consider that fly fishing with lead in your flies or crimped onto your line is responsible for even a statistically plausible level of damage to bird populations anywhere.
Our bait and jig fishing brethren may be causing a VERY few deaths, but it’s likely that we, as fly fishermen, are not.
Buddy
OHHHHHHHH MY GAWWWWWWWWD!!! 42 dead loons in 14 years!
That’s like 3 a year.
How about this stuff…
http://wildlife1.usask.ca/wildlife_health_topics/botulism/botulisme_org.php
http://loonwatchprogram.blogspot.com/2008/01/botulism-e-update-from-canada.html
This is a spreading epidemic that has killed 75,000 birds, including 9000loons, in the Great Lakes since 1999 (from a 2007 report) That’s eight years!!
More than 1300 loons died during 2006-2007 from type-E botulism poisoning along the shores of northern Lake Michigan.
Erika Engelhaupt, Noreen Parks and Tasha Eichenseher
Environ. Sci. Technol., 2008, 42 (7), pp 2208?2210
That’s ONE YEAR, Danbob…on one lake.
Geez! Get real!!! “Getting the Lead out” is just a waste of time and money. It’s used to divert attention away from the real problems. It’s the animal rights terrorists that use that study to their means…to take your rights to go fishing away from you, one small step at a time.
Take those lead blinders off. Those studies are old now. I’m willing to admit that before this problem came up in 1999, the lead issue was worth a look, but today…it’s going to do sweet (bomb) all. If it makes you feel like your doing something positive, by all means stop using it but don’t think it’s going to save the species (any species) because it isn’t.
Jeeze…
I think the point here is…
LEAD IS BAD.
Ed has it right here:
Please don’t lead people astray by telling them that tossing a known poison into our rivers and streams does not have dire consequences. It does!
Disagreeing here does all anglers a disservice by arguing that lead does not have a negative impact. IT DOES.
It may not be as bad as other things (habitat destruction, epidemics or whatever), but Every Angler should be making a consious effort to minimize there use of lead.
I’ll fully admit there are worse problems out there (including the pharmecueticals from water treatment plants, and runoff from roads), but doesn’t every little bit help? For a couple bucks difference, I can’t justify using a product that is known to have harmfull effects (even if only a few swan deaths are scientifically proven a year in one study, take the stats and stretch it over the continent where people fish…). I’m not really pleased about kiling anything incidentally and I will do what I can to prevent it. I don’t take blind shots while hunting, why would I pursue an activity that has a chance of killing others, when I know I can minimize that?
Kinda parallels the attitude in this good article http://www.madduck.org/article/paradox
Stop holding on to lead… it’s just a bad habit.
Every conscious effort to do right by the environment is a positive step forward… fighting to justify the use of lead is certainly not helping any cause for how important anglers are, inregards to conservation of freshwater resources… I’d argue the opposite actually… it makes all anglers look like a bunch of backwards idiots only concerned with our own short term enjoyment.
Good for you pharper! That is exactly the attitude we should all have.
I’m really going to go out on a limb here and probably even going to cut the branch off behind me “BUT” if all of these gazillion lbs of lead that have been removed from the earth were returned to the earth, Who do you think would start yelling the loudest?
Lead put back on the earth like this?
The quantity of lead shot, nylon fishing line and other litter discarded at a coarse fishing lake. (lead not lost while fishing, but while trying to put it on the line?)
Or of course if you put it in water it starts to “leach”
Lead emissions from lost fishing sinkers
There is a good summary in this Washington State document: http://198.238.33.67/fish/papers/lead_fishing_gear/fpt_06-13.pdf
Buried in a dry (or at least non acidic) pit… no problem 
Glad to see you added the monofiliment pharper. I don’t know the statistics but my bet is more birds have died from mono than lead.
The older I get the more I have realized how little I believe what I read. “SHOW ME”. Don’t tell me and use some articles that “say this” and “say that”.
Why don’t we change the discussion to all getting together and fishing.
Ahh, but like Newton said…" If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
The articles are written by bigger eco-toxicology experts then I ever want to meet. The only way to ladvance in something like this is by questioning the work and building on it or rebutting it.
I don’t doubt there are more deaths from mono… I’ve seen quite a few and rescued a few birds and animals myself.
But that is another issue, and possibly a more revelent one to flyanglers A Cause of Mortality for Aerial Insectivores
I’m all for fishing… It should be above freezing here this weekend!!!
Harps
Got me there Harps,
Here’s hoping the weather works out for you. We had temps in the 50’s today but supposed to snow tonight. Go figure.