Bad Science, Faulty Studies Continue Attacks on Hunting, Lead Ammo

By Salam Fatohi, NSSF

Yet another study has been published that claims the use of lead-based ammunition by hunters is the root cause of rampant poisoning of America’s bald eagles.

Like clockwork, the media runs with these “studies” with breathless coverage that hunters are killing bald eagles.

A new Cornell University study posits bald eagles are especially susceptible to lead poisoning as a result of hunters taking game in New York and that using traditional lead component ammunition puts humans at severe risk of being poisoned. Overwhelming evidence shows that the recovery of bald eagles is truly remarkable and that across the United States they are thriving like never before, thanks to hunters.

New Study, Same Anti-Hunting Implications

A new study from Cornell University examined 30 different species of bird and mammal scavengers in New York to study which is the most susceptible to lead poisoning. The study utilized and analyzed game camera images contributed by New York residents. According to the study, New York researchers then “identified and analyzed 14 birds and 17 mammals, from American crows to Virginia opossums,” according to the Cornell Chronicle. “Considering each species’ numbers, physical traits and opportunity to scavenge…the team determined bald eagles are most at risk from ingesting toxic debris from lead bullets.”

Noting that the public often reports sick or dead bald eagles more often than other scavengers, Krysten Schuler, a wildlife disease ecologist in the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine, said, “A surprising number of species are at risk, and we can use bald eagles to continue to monitor lead issues because they are quite vulnerable.”

The study analyzed nearly 160 images from 33 game cameras which were captured between 2010 and 2023, so approximately 1 image each month over 14 years.

A variety of animals were seen on the camera images, including scavenging birds like eagles, hawks, owls, mourning doves, woodpeckers, cardinals and blue jays. The images also caught larger mammals such as squirrels, weasels, skunks, coyotes, bobcats and foxes.

That’s the entirety of the study in a nutshell. Trail camera images over 14 years.

Bunk Conclusions

It’s no surprise media ran with the study’s anti-hunter conclusions. The bald eagle is America’s most majestic symbol – everyone wants bald eagles to thrive and anything that threatens their existence should be stopped. But that’s not what has happened, not what the data and science show is currently happening and hunters are largely responsible for the bald eagles’ remarkable recovery. From the media, you wouldn’t know it.

“The findings support ongoing efforts to encourage hunters to use non-lead ammunition,” reported FingerLakes1.com.

“The study said that the most common bullets used to hunt deer shatter on impact into hundreds of fragments that spread into the body,” WGNB TV News added from Johnson City, N.Y.

The Cornell Chronicle added even more laughable conclusions just to make sure news consumers would be thoroughly scared.

“A piece of lead smaller than a grain of rice can kill an eagle, and no amount of the neurotoxin is considered safe for humans – particularly pregnant women and children.”

All the reporting concludes with the study’s key takeaway: hunters should stop using traditional lead-based bullets.

What’s Really Happening

The money given to universities to produce anti-hunting studies would be better off directly spent on conservation and wildlife management efforts. America’s hunters are doing that each and every time they buy more traditional lead-based ammunition if that’s the ammo that works best for them. The proof is in the data.

Nationally, the bald eagle population – once on the precipice of extinction – is back and thriving.

Three years ago, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland reported more than 71,400 nesting pairs of American bald eagles in the lower 48 states, and more than 316,000 individual birds. That’s a quadrupling for the bald eagle population since 2009.

American bald eagles’ remarkable turnaround from the dire numbers in 1963 – when there were only 417 nesting pair – led to Sec. Haaland declaring bald eagle recovery a “truly a historic conservation success story.”

Want New York-specific data to counter the Cornell study? Look at The Wildlife Society Bulletin’s 2022 report titled “Population impact to bald eagles by ingested lead in New York State, 1990–2018.” This study covered 28 years – twice the Cornell study – and comes to a completely different conclusion.

“From 1990 to 2018, New York State exhibited expanding bald eagle populations with empirical abundances rising from 13 breeding pairs in 1990 to 369 breeding pairs in 2018,” the WSB report stated. Expanding further, the WSB report revealed, “Over the same period, the NYSDEC Wildlife Health Unit generated necropsy records on 594 individual eagles that died in New York State. Of these records, 0.082 experienced Pb‐poisoning (according to our thresholds), 0.061 experienced Pb‐exposure (but did not have Pb‐poisoning), 0.418 were tested for Pb in liver but did not have Pb‐exposure nor Pb‐poisoning, 0.241 were not tested for Pb in liver, 0.017 had unknown results, and 0.182 were not tested for Pb in any tissue.”

To be clear, almost 250 New York bald eagles, over 40 percent, were tested and had no lead exposure.

The Facts

Hunters are America’s original conservationists. American hunters have used lead-based traditional ammunition for the taking of game for more than four-hundred years. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) note there has never been a documented instance of a human falling ill after ingesting game harvested with traditional ammunition. Yet over and over and over and over again, anti-hunter activists claim America’s hunters must be punished in order to safeguard wildlife.

To date, hunters have helped contribute more than $27 billion, when adjusted for inflation, in Pittman-Robertson excise taxes to the Wildlife Restoration Trust Fund since 1937. Of which, over 90% of funding is directly from firearms and ammunition manufacturers. The fund benefits all by supporting wildlife conservation efforts that encourage abundant wildlife and habitat restoration along with access to public lands for hunters, anglers and other recreationists.

What the science shows is that wildlife populations have never been healthier in America, all while hunters have used traditional hunting ammunition for centuries. NSSF supports a hunter’s choice to pick the right ammunition for them and their hunt. Calls to outright ban traditional ammunition and put restrictions in place that create roadblocks for hunters are detrimental to the user-pays system that allows America’s abundant wildlife populations to thrive.