Oh, please! Lead easily oxidizes and combines with other minerals in the soil- chiefly iron and calcium. If an animal were to eat a piece of lead shot picked off the ground, the thick oxide will protect the lead from the digestive juices until it passes safely out of the animal.
The problem with the American Bison, is that it had no resistance to a lot of common diseases that cattle, brought into the Great Plains by migrants, and " 49ers" seeking gold. For many different reasons, cattle wandered away from wagon trains, or were stolen by Indians, who allowed them to graze near, or with buffalo, not knowing-- either the settlers, or the Indians, that many diseases which are only minor problems for cows, would devasted buffalo. Just as measles killed thousands of Indians, because they had no immunity to the child hood disease. Dr. Sam Fadala pubhlished a significant paper on the demise of the buffalo, and totally destroyed the idea that Hunters and bullets killed off the herds. There was Just not enough lead and powder taken into the Great plains to accomplish that feat.
The current anti-gun efforts to ban guns by banning lead bullets uses unreliable data from a preliminary study where the author himself later indicated that the initial results have been proven wrong. Its politics- about power, and control-- not about animals, or guns, and hunting.
For example, The Mayor of Chicago closed the Chicago Gun Club, which had existed on the Outer Drive North of the Loop for more than 75 years, claiming as his reason that the shot was polluting lake Michigan. He had not taken test samples, nor sent them to a lab, before this announcement, but others defending the club did. The results came out of the labs too late to save the club- the Mayor had the bulldozers there the next day, before any court injunction could be obtained--- and showed that the shot quickly oxidizes with the heavy calcium deposits in Lake Michigan water. The lead also quickly sinks in the sands and silts at the bottom of the lake, and pose no risk to fish or birds who feed in the area.
The Chicago Suburb of Naperville, which has a Trap and Skeet range in its City Park was the next target to ban guns. This time, testing was done before the city council voted on what to do. The results indicated that the shot is oxidizing with iron in the soils, and quickly coats each pellet with a hard crust of Iron oxide. There is also calcium in the grasses and soils, and you sometimes see a mixture of colors around the pellets. NO evidence of poisoning of people, animals, birds, NOTHING was shown to result from the club shooting there. But, the council " compromised", and allowed the club to stay open ONLY if they shot Non-toxic shot at the range.
Buffalo are herbivores- they eat Grasses- ONLY. They don't pick up rocks, or bullets, to swallow. They don't accidentally Swallow bullets or rocks, either. Like cattle, they have multiple stomachs which digest the grasses they eat. They EAT A LOT of grasses each day. But they don't eat rock or bullets. Unlike Birds, which use a " craw" or gullet filled with tiny stones, to grind up seeds, and grasses they eat, and therefore have to pick up stones daily to replenish their "craws", mammals don't have this kind of digestive system. A Bird could pick up a piece of lead shot, the size of the stones he normally picks up, by mistake. However, again, the thick oxide coating of iron or calcium, or both, protects it from lead poisoning. The original study at the University of Illinois, by Glenn Sanderson, attributed too many dead waterfowl to lead poisoning from ingesting shot, before they did a better, more complete study to find out how many birds were hit by shot, but not killed and recovered by waterfowl hunters during the hunting season. The mortally wounded birds were woefully unestimated by his first study. He told us that the other problem was how they were disecting the dead birds to discover the Cause of Death. They assumed, wrongly, that all shot pellets found in the digestive track had been Ingested, because the decomposition of the birds they studied was so severe, that they did not have the flesh on the birds to determine entrance wounds. When they went back to check their results, and recovered more freshly or recently dead birds, with feathers and flesh still present, The high mortality from Ingesting lead result of his preliminary study could simply not be supported by the extended data.
But, it was too late. Congress, and the anti- gun/ Anti-hunting left wingers had already seized the day, and pushed through the legislation. Once done, its next to impossible to reverse any Federal legislation.
So, Please don't propagate this nonsense about buffalo dying of ingesting bullets. Or that waterfowl are dying from ingesting lead shot. The restrictions on lead shot use- most recently in California- the true Left Coast-- is about Power politics, and the influence that anti-hunting groups have on a state's legislature. It has no basis in science. Even in the Condor case, the " science " proffered was Junk Science, at best. MOre Condors have been lost to accidents of colliding with high tension power lines, than from ingesting any lead, but you won't see the legislature banning Utility power lines! Yah THINK????
