a ban on lead in fishing tackle ?

Addressing the gun accidents - of course one has to bear in mind that these are Canadians. When are they not drunk and shooting everything that moves (mostly road signs). What kind of proficiency and safety testing do guides have there? "...his grip on the rifle" - Leave it to you people to hunt ducks with a rifle.
As to the wildlife - Your experiences are contrary to everything I have seen, including in Western Canada. I avoided a black bear and bison my last trip thu, and saw dozens of stone sheep, goats, carabou and a lynx and cougar. In 1980, my first trip thru, we saw stone sheep only. Twenty-nine trips thru Canada and pretty much more wildlife each time.
"I sometimes wonder if the loss of livestock on the abandoned family farms is a factor in all the missing birds and animals" - You are simply not seeing them now. They are hiding in the forest. It is what animals do.
Perhaps you shud get out of the city more - too much time there will eventually cause goofyness.

 

Probably it is to late for that one. Goofyness is already apparent.

 

One of the four was my Californian ex girl friend.She was at a country party outside of Los Angeles. One of the partiers brought out a gun and started shooting things. She was a bit late putting her hand over the end of the rifle as he was aiming at a bird or squirrel in a tree. Of the four people I knew that have been shot by hunters, she was the luckiest by far .All she got out of it was a simple flesh wound with no disabilities.

I just remembered a fifth friend shot by a sportsman. His injury was not a product of hunting. He was a Montana Deputy Sheriff. He was accidentally shot in Montana while accepting a trophy at a skeet shooting tournament.One of the other contestants was rough handling his supposedly empty shotgun when it went off . The Deputy Sheriff was hit by pellets that ricocheted off of a concrete patio. He ended up with a life long tender shoulder but no real disability.

 

Actually it is a biodegradable now.... environmentalists are just in a hurry!

 

I remember a hunter brought his friend in to the emergency ward. He said that He accidentally shot his friend. The doctors all agreed that the man would have survived had the hunter not field dressed him.
Getting off topic now. Shutting up

 

'Hello, 911? I think I just accidentally killed my hunting partner.'

-Calm down, sir. The first thing we need to do is make sure he's dead.

[bang]. 'OK, now what?'

 

Questor - I am sure your a vegetarian, and don't eat fish either. Have you ever seen the dumb scared look a fish has when your taking the hook out, or gaffing it, or the look of horror when you throw that live lobster into the boiling cooking pot, or the look on the chicken before you cut off its head. That broccoli looked really scared last night when I microwaved it.

The point is -- it is food and death is normal, there is no nice death. You will be eaten too someday, whether by bacteria or worms, it will happens. The Langoliers are coming for you.

Guns, fishing gear, etc.... Come on. Check on naturally occurring lead and radon in ground water. Where do you think lead comes from?

No one is going to ban bullets they will just make then from steel. Same thing with lead weights, they will just be more expensive.

 

Vegetarians stay off my property!

You scare my plants!

 

kinda sounds like its got more to do with the kinda people you are hanging out with

I got shot not to long ago and lets just say the guy who shot me has developed this lovely habit of leaving whenever I show up

I definitely dont put up with "friends" who "accidentally" shoot people although it definitely sounds like you know and hang with a lot of em, kinda makes me question your judgment a bit actually but that aside the idea of some girl grabbing the barrel of a gun just as it goes off puts her well into the Darwin awards category

Deal is most folks don't have a clue how to handle a weapon but most folks like to think they do, its human nature.

I been shooting prairie dogs for about 30 years and aside from becoming a pretty darn good shot if I do say so myself I've also made a few mistakes. never shot anyone but I've had a few misfired off that feather trigger setting I like so much, I want that round to just barely chamber without going off.
So I kinda developed a set of rules for operating my doggy riffle. One of em wouldn't include standing any of my friends up down range.

Thing is its experience with the weapon and not just some hunter safety course and then once a week a year after that.

once you get good enough you can even pick your round for the given situation, for instance

if you have a whole squad of prairie dogs all lined up thats called bowling pins and you will want to load up a dear round

that way you can hopefully nail at least to in one shot and preferably more

often if you get say four or five lined up just right you just kinda splash the last one in line with the ones in front
if he's like most he'll be typically so bewildered ( covered in guts and wondering what just happened to all his buddies ) you might even have time to chamber a regular round and send him on his way to be with his friends
you might want to not knock it till you try it cause once you tried gas and poison and all the rest just shooting the little rats is about the easiest and most environmentally friendly way to get em off the pasture

they'd be cute if they weren't diggin holes in my pastures and shooting the little ******** is about the most ecological way to deal
there's also some satisfaction in making a huge shot
one of my best so far was about 800 yards out and although I missed with the first round I corrected and dead centered him with the next
the little darlin just kinda stood there looking around wondering what that funny sound was and if maybe its some kinda bug he should be worrying about
and then BLAM and its over
my buddy wouldn't believe I had actually hit him till we drove out there and I showed him one less problem in my pasture

cheers
B

 

When I was about 14 years old a friend of mine and I were out shooting prairie dogs with a 22 rifle. On that day there were quite a few of them running along the crest of a hill. We knew we shouldn't shoot over the top of the crest but we felt confident that our bullets would drop into forests on the other side of the hill. Once we ran out of ammo a neighboring dairy farmer came charging into our farmyard. He was demanding compensation for two bullets that struck one of his dairy cows. He claimed he spent about 20 minutes laying in fresh wet manure outside of his barn waiting for us to run out of ammo.In between yelling and swearing a lot he demanded that our families come over to his place and inspect the six new bullet holes in the side of his barn that had supposedly almost killed him as he laid in the manure. We never did make it over to his place to inspect the damage. Our fathers paid him $175.00 compensation for injuries to the cow. That was about half the price of a young premium Holstein at the time.

 

I have a farm with horses and 10 acres of woods and yesterday while someone was walking the track hunters shot at a deer on my property so I immediately called the cops, the thing is they were within less than a hundred feet of houses bordering my farm and not too far from a pasture with horses in it

needless to say this is not an area for hunting

 

I own an acreage within ear shot of three gun ranges. In twenty years there I've never heard of any stray bullets but the never ending racket gets irritating on weekends. I do have good reason to worry about stray lead in the environment. I once rented a metal detector to locate my property pins. With the metal detector screeching everywhere I aimed it I thought I must have gold nuggets on the property. As I enthusiastically dug for gold and survey pins all I found was hordes of old large caliber bullets. I never would have believed that there could be so many thousands of spent bullets on a 5 acre parcel. In my prairie dog hunting youth my friend and I used to go through 4 50 count boxes of 22s on a Saturday. As a 10 to 12 year old in Ontario I used to go through 100 bullets on a weekend while my cousin there would go through between 200 and 400. By the time a farm is a hundred years old I wonder how many tens of thousands of lead bullets can accumulate there as generations of kids fire off their pellets and cartridges.