WADR- and I do mean that sincerely-- your information about duck and geese mortality from Lead shot is WRONG! Glen Sanderson, a grad student at the U of Illinois here at Champaign-Urbana did the original research on this issue, and his PRE-LIMINARY rsesults were seized by Ted. Kennedy, and the Greenies, and created the Fed. laws banning lead shot for Migratory waterfowl. Proper training and controls were NOT USED to separate those dead birds with lead toxicity( in their blood) caused by INGESTED lead shot, and those wounded during normal hunting season, but not recovered by the hunters.
THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE OBSERVED VISUALLY!
Glen spoke about his bitterness at being associated with this federal law, to the Exchange club of Urbana, several years later, after better research was done and completed that showed that lead shot- even ingested-- did not contribute to increased duck and geese mortality.
What he did find of importance to us, is that lead QUICKLY combine with calcium and iron, two of the most common minerals found in soils in the USA to COAT the pellets with a hard covering, that is not worn thru in these birds "craw" and digestive systems before passing out of the birds.
Lead, being so heavy, also Quickly sinks into the mud and continues to sink deeper with each passing rise of water, while the Grit" birds pick up to use to grind seeds in their craws actually "Float" to the top!
In short, the Federal restrictions( BAN) is based on "JUNK SCIENCE" used to reduce the ranks of hunters( You note) in Kennedy's war against private ownership of firearms. ( Stop hunting goes the thinking of the leftist Greenies, and you get rid of the most common Legitimate- self-defense is not a legitimate reason to own guns[Great Britain says so, now]---use for the privately owned firearms.) The anti-0gun movement is an international Conspiracy of like thinking social engineers, who all believe they know better than you how you should live. Because it dsoes not work lie more traditional criminal conspiracies, anyone who speaks about it is labeled a ' Nut", and dismissed. One only has to watch the passage of gun laws, in Europe, Canada, Australia, and in various states here, to see the common patterns in language, and goals sought by these folks to see how much they actually work together, as loosely as it may be-- to achieve government control over our lives.
[ When the Stockton, California school shooting took place, and that city pass its "Assault Weapons ban ordinance", that exact Ordinance was sent to college towns where Democrats had a super majority of members of the city councils, with only the name of the city and state covered with "White-Out" time to co-inside with major TV events, so that the ordinances could be passed quickly and quietly before the shooting public could get organized to oppose it. We saw the ordinance show up for a "study session" of the Urbana, Illinois, council the night of the Oscars, and then set for a vote the next week when the Final NCAA Basketball games would be televised. The same thing happened at Columbus, Ohio, home of the university of Ohio, and several other college towns.
We gun owners beat the ordinance from being passed, thru a variety of actions, which included convincing a " Blue-Dog" Democrat on the council that he had been lied to by other Democrats pushing the ordinance, when they told him only criminals owned and shot semi-auto "Assault weapons". He told a friend of mine, who had gone to HS with him that he was shocked at all the VIPs that had called him and asked that he not make them criminals because of the kinds of guns they owned. He didn't even know that these people owned Any guns!]
{Later, we had a source f informmation in the Million Moms March who forwarded copies of e-mails that were being sent to local "chapters" right out of the East Wing of the White House by Hilary Clinton's friend, Linda Bloodworth-Thomas.
We defeated the local group by organizing counter-protests every time they showed up to protest some politician who didn't agree with them. Those MMM emails would typically go out at midnight, and we would have copies of them by 1 A.M. so that we were exchanging emails and planning strategies by 10 A.M. the same day, often before all the local MMM members had read their emails!
Glen Sanderson was a very bitter Scientist of how his preliminary research was used by these Anti-gun politicians to create a situation where there are actually more crippled ducks and geese dying slow deaths each hunting season. He told us that he had sent letters to Kennedy, to the committee members, and to the Fed. FWS with copies of his final data, but had been totally ignored. The Democratically controlled Congress had won a battle against the hated NRA( that is you and me, folks), and that was all that mattered to them.
The non-=toxic shot law is not about saving waterfowl: its about bigger government free of the requirement to actually work for the governed- and not the other way around. Its a political and cultural war between Urban Americans, and rural and suburban Americans who believe and support Traditional American values and detest the idea of Big Government. The responsible ownership and use of firearms, and the responsible stewardship of America's wildlife are ideas foreign to most people living in Urban settings today.
Sorry for the soap box, but these are things that all gun owners- even Mlers-- need to know. We can't pretend that politics is not having an adverse effect on our sport. And, we need to understand our enemies, so we can defeat them.
( I can assure you personally that the NRA-ILA never thought to develop a " Source of information within the MMMs, as we did. I asked them, and discussed with those officials how we were getting information in time to organize counter-demonstrations, at a Gun Rights Policy Conference in Alexandria, VA.)