Patrick Burns gives us his thoughts on California condor conservation and species loss. This post sort of got kicked off by an e-mail discussion that he, Steve, and I had about a lawsuit in California that seeks a ban on lead bullets. The plaintiffs maintain that many condors die after feeding on the carcasses of deer and other wildlife killed with lead bullets or buckshot.
In another post, Patrick congratulates Matt and his whippet Rina on her success in her first season hunting.
Finally, I had thought of doing a post entitled "Terrierman Gets Skunked." Though it sounded good, that wouldn't have been technically correct as it wasn't Patrick, but terriers Moxie, Mountain, and Pearl who got sprayed. I have to say I was very impressed at how matter-of-fact Patrick was in dealing with three skunked dogs.
6 comments:
How strong is the evidence that lead from bullets actually is poisoning the condors? I'm thinking of things like autopsies, or mathematical models would be extremely relevant to the article.
Also, I'm going to call bullshit on the titanium bullets. Why on earth would anyone make bullets out of titanium? It's hard to cast and an absolute nightmare to machine without lots of high-quality equipment and industry experience. It's also less dense than steel, which yields bullets with pretty suspect ballistic coefficients to begin with. A titanium bullet wouldn't penetrate bone any better than much cheaper bronze or tungsten "african solids" either, in fact it would perform slightly worse thanks to the lowered ballistic coefficient and sectional density. Finally, since titanium wouldn't deform much (just like steel bullets) its would have lousy terminal ballistics.
The BEST substitute for hunting bullets is bismuth, and probably will be until some very clever metalurgist whips up something as cheap and effectgive as lead.
Of course, the utter ridiculousness of titanium bullets doens't keep idiots like Senator Kennedy from claiming that they're picking of police officers left and right.
Also, isn't the phrase "prehistoric raptor" redundant at best? Surely all living varieties of birds of prey speciated before the historic period!
-R. Arthur Wilderson
I was curious also to read about "easily available" titanium bullets, too. I remember from my aerospace days that titanium is flammable - you have to be very careful machining it. Doesn't sound like an ideal bullet to me. I looked up the MSDS which confirmed it
http://www.espi-metals.com/msds's/titanium.pdf
Also if you google "lead bullets" you get all sorts of suppliers who want to sell them to you. If you google "titanium bullets" you get references to fountain pens and fantasy game sites. So much for easily available
But I also found this article by Dave Kopel which says they are illegal
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel200403010926.asp
Jacketed titanium slugs were banned as armor-piercing ammunition, according to him.
I'd love to hear more from people who know more about firearms than I do.
Mr. Wilderson and Reid are both right (good article Reid). One of the suggestions often made for "safe" bullets is copper-- but are they legal? Sometimes it seems there is an accidental conspiracy between anti- hunters and the ignorant!
I notice certain kinds of full metal jacket military loads are still for sale. Someone must explain (to the ignorant) that these are NOT good general hunting bullets-- they don't kill well because they don't expand.
I know that my uncle has some bronze, "African Solid" bullets for his .505 Gibbs on hand. These are bullets designed _not_ to expand, since any expansion would attenuate penetration, and you tend to want to poke a really deep hole in anything you shoot a .505 gibbs at. I'm pretty sure they're legal ammunition, although this uncle has also casually dropped reference to some AP rounds he has sitting around, so they may not be.
I'm also pretty sure you can get "African Solids" made of tungsten. Those would be better armor-piercing rounds than anything made out of titanium.
Incidentally, if you happen to own a gun that shoots a Combloc caliber (7.62x25 and 7.62x54 especially) it's not that hard to find surplus, steel cored ammo. It's surely technically illegal, but it's just as surely out there, since that what the Soviets turned out to shoot through them. Something to keep in mind if you need to fight off kevlar-wearing ninjas, or hunt glytodonts I suppose. Of course, a regular 7.62x54 (or a 30-06 for that matter) will penetrate any body armor short of Class IV, which is the highest class there is.
I'm getting horribly off subject.
How many deer in the condors' habitat would be carrying lead bullets inside of them? I know that people don't eat the bloodshot bits of meat where the lead errodes into, but I assume condors would have no such reservations. Just how much lead would they tend to ingest anyhow?
Any why wouldn't it kill off other raptors? Or does it and we just don't hear about it?
After having read terrierman's post over again, I had a few more thoughts:
1) Would the isotopes from lead bullets be any different than the isotopes in other sources of lead?
2) If the california condor is overspecialized because it's a line of sight scavenger, are old world vultures overspecialzed? Only black and turkey vultures have a sense of smell worth mentioning, and some of the gryphon vultures are verging on condor-sized. Why aren't they in so much trouble?
-R. Arthur Wilderson
Arthur raises many good points.
MANY large African calibers feature "solids" of various kinds-- "large' meaning anything over .375 H & H, not just monsters like .505 Gibbs. Would they be legal in the US? I doubt they would be needed.
A lot of military calibers are available in cheap steel- core etc loads, for practice shooting. I assume these are not legal or sensible hunting bullets (I have some in a Soviet caliber, 7.62 X 39).
Lead is surprisingly toxic-- I know of a falcon that sickened and died from one undiagnosed pellet.
Some good non- toxic bullets are now available, like the excellent Barnes "X- Bullet". (Source: the Peregrine Fund!) These are premium-performance bullets too. I'll likely blog on the subject further after Christmas.
First off titanium jacket and solid titanium bullets do exit we use them in the marine corps round from our aircraft our titanium jacket with a core of spent uranium so they will go through any mobile armor solid titanium exits as well and usually are coated in teflon but they arnt practical ive only seen them in 7mm and ur lookin 80 to 100 dollars per round and they dont expand just go right through the target. I do find it hard to believe condors contracting lead positing from deer killed by lead bullets its a very small amount of lead and unless the condor eats the bullet it self it could not get any lead its lead its not radioactive.
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