Bald eagle
(AP Photo/Chris Szagola)

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.

30 COMMENTS

  1. “The bald eagle is America’s most majestic symbol”
    Adak Island, Alaska where the iconic bald eagle picks through the garbage dump en-masse akin to seagulls at a fishery.
    The lead lie; lets talk about these ‘green’ wind mills that are bird killing machines (smithsonian magazine). How about the Ivanpah solar array in California that incinerates an estimated 6,000 birds annually (science alert).

  2. The point of these studies is to malign hunters and by proxy firearms.

    When you realize this you see that these are good studies based on sound science and methodology.

    The ends always justify the means.

  3. As a sociologist and clinical psychotherapist, we were taught statistics and research methods (1970-2005). Most of what I read coming out since Obama hasn’t been research but trash with little if any viable research method applications. I generally eschew anything coming out of universities now. Especially when financed by the government.

  4. When I was young I shot ducks with lead. Now I have to use steel. My scientific study was conducted over the barrel of a 12 gauge shotgun, but it seems like there are more cripples with steel that get away. There are alternatives to steel that are legal, and out perform lead, but they are very expensive. I save the Hevi-Shot for turkey. Some ammunition manufacturers are producing expanding, copper bullets for use where required. Again, very expensive compared to conventional lead bullets.

    • I posted several links to facts that prove the above hypothesis is incorrect and politically motivated. Those links first went to the moderation god and then disappeared completely. It’s obvious the editors of this site no longer care about truth and honesty.

      • It appears that Word Press has been directed to treat conservatives as Western Asian malinformers. You’ve got to disguise your links, unless they’re for CNN, Berkeley, Harris/Walz, etc.

    • I still have a box or two of #4 lead that I loaded back in the day for jump shooting river woodies and pond mallards. A few years later, they began to phase in steel, and I found myself burning through more shells for the same bag limits.

      Hopefully, losing Chevron will slow down the quack scientists.

  5. So lead shot is banned but every vehicle on the road has lead weights on every wheel, flinging off the wheel weights into the ditch where it is washed away with rainwater. Yea, I know wheel weights are changing to steel but doesn’t work better than lead. But the eviroweeines are worried about lead shot. Ridiculous!

  6. “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.”

    I guess they have never heard of one of the most common and widely used ways to measure bullet performance..retained weight. Unbelievable that “researchers” think they know more about bullet performance than the hunting and reloading community.

  7. This is the type of study that they used with the california condor to ban lead ammo out here. One major problem was that they didn’t differentiate between organic and inorganic lead. Turns out the dangerous kind and the type that was found in animals is organic lead. Organic lead is what was used in gasoline back in the day. It is still is used in AVGAS. Bullets are made of inorganic lead which is much less dangerous and was not found in the animals. The most likely scenario is that animals that had the organic lead in their systems got it from drinking contaminated pools of water. These studies are a complete and total dishonest lie

  8. This is the type of study that they used with the california condor to ban lead ammo out here. One major problem was that they didn’t differentiate between organic and inorganic lead. Turns out the dangerous kind and the type that was found in animals is organic lead. Organic lead is what was used in gasoline back in the day. It is still is used in AVGAS. Bullets are made of inorganic lead which is much less dangerous and was not found in the animals. The most likely scenario is that animals that had the organic lead in their systems got it from drinking from contaminated pools of water that had gas or oil in them. These studies are a complete and total dishonest lie and it’s to bad we keep falling for them. Organic vs Inorganic. Bullets are inorganic sorry try again…

  9. “What the science shows is that wildlife populations have never been healthier in America”

    Well that’s overly optimistic, turkey populations are falling and whitetails are dropping from cwd and bovine tb.

  10. I had to take public transportation (bus) the other day because my car was in the shop. At the stop immediately after I boarded, a bald eagle hopped up the steps, walked down the aisle, and hopped onto the seat next to me. I said it was surprising to see him taking the bus since he could fly wherever he wanted. “Not anymore” he answered. “You see, there is so much lead in my feeding grounds that I have become too heavy to fly. Now, I get food stamps. In fact, I am on my way to Wegman’s right now. They are having a sale on frozen, wild-caught salmon.”

    “How did you learn about the sale”, I asked.

    “Oh”, he said. “A little birdie told me”.

  11. Iowa 1970 seeing Bald Eagle as notable (as rare as an intelligent thought from Cammie). Today a multiple daily occurrence. The difference is today the white headed vultures feed on the endless supply of culled baby pigs are hog farrowing operations. Darwin.

    • So true about seeing eagles everyday in Iowa. I remember when seeing 1 eagle was a notable event and the talk of the coffee shop. Now we see them everyday and the winter gathering at Keokuk is one of the largest in the lower 48. Last January the highest number counted was 343 on on the 17th.

  12. If you aren’t deficient in Calcium, you won’t uptake lead into your system. Pesticides did orders of magnitude more harm than lead ever has. If lead was killing off birds, why are there more now than when they started these studies?

  13. The study emphasizes the real concern about lead poisoning, especially for wildlife such as Steller’s sea eagles. At the college, we conducted similar research. However, we had to report and create presentations. I was having trouble to do my powerpoint presentation and I decided to just order this. I still think it was one of the best decisions in that situation. Although eagles do recover quickly, the lead from traditional ammunition poses a serious risk to their health and the ecosystem. Lead-free alternatives exist and are becoming more common, helping to reduce this problem. Hunters play a crucial role in conservation, but using lead-free ammunition can further protect the wildlife they care about. It is worth considering these alternatives for both wildlife safety and human health.

    • There is an argument to be made about birdshot in water certainly. An argument that absolutely doesn’t apply to handgun and rifle bullets.

  14. Stop federal spending on education. These crack pot studies are being done by, crack pot environmental scientists.
    President Eisenhower warned us about the corruption, that federal spending causes at the university level.

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