Colorados vote to limit furbearer take

We were mandated steel on WPAs in NW MN in 1978. The only shells available were from Federal in #4, I don't remember the charge size, I want to say 1 oz but it could have been more. We never missed a beat, ducks died just the same as with lead. Here's the big BUT. Before steel we hunted ducks with 7 1/2s out of skeet guns and over decoys and probably never took a shot over 25 yards. We couldn't tell the difference. Getting bird in close was what duck hunting was to us. My X-FinL went 23 ducks for 25 shells he didn't have a dog so he had to swat two on the water.

I now shoot pre-WW 2 hammer sxs for ducks and my load is 7/8 oz of 6's or 5s bismuth at a paltry 1100 fps. It kills them deader than dead.

Steel shot is deadly on water fowl if you stay within its limitations.

Shoot the ducks you know you can kill, pass on the ones you hope you can kill.


Yes, ducks did die from ingesting lead shot and some of the die offs were heavy. Here's the big BUT. Die offs were in the spring and summer when nobody noticed dead ducks back in the reeds and rushes and migrating ducks didn't feed long enough in trouble spots to be effected.

Yes the lead ban was overly instituted. Most of the trouble spots were hard bottom shallow lakes where dabbling ducks could pick them up. Soft bottom lakes the lead shot sank out of reach and were not nearly as bad as the hard bottom lakes. A total band was much easier than spot checking hunters on each lake and it covered areas that might be problematic but never were studied.

I started hunting ducks around 1956, we had beach blinds on lake Michigan, hunted Horicon marsh and other marshes in South Central WI. We would jump shoot every creek and river. Dad would drop me off at one bridge or boat landing and I'd float the river and he'd pick me up down stream at the end of the day.

You can tell me I'm full of shite. Like Elmer Keith said, "Hell I was there"
 
The '2 a day' limit, banning leghold traps, banning lead shot, no spring bear hunting, etc. is all a ruse to end hunting, and by design, private gun ownership.

I shot my first duck in 1964, at age 8, on the Mississippi in Western Illinois, and have hunted them nearly every season since.

I'm trying to avoid getting political, but the Left/Democrats/Communists, but I digress, make everything political. They attack us from every angle, and they especially go after the smaller groups, like trappers and varmint shooters, picking them off, one by one.
 
I am black pilled on the state of our country. The communist left wing and the incompetent right wing are two wings of the same bird. They are both working to destroy us at every level.
 
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