Editor and Mr. Paulek:
I read with great interest your article in the Idyllwild Town Crier dated Oct. 2, 2014. I also read California AB 711.
As a young boy I ate pheasants and ducks killed with lead shot all through World War II and into the 1950s. Therefore, I must have ingested a fair amount of lead shot.
We were careful eaters. If we found a pellet, we spit it out. These game birds were a supplement to meat stamps. Farmers were happy to have hunters shoot the pheasants who ate their grain.
I am pleased to report that neither my brain nor my body were affected by lead ingestion. I graduated from high school, college and graduate school without mental or physical impairments. I married, was gainfully employed and was able to reproduce.
What I find reprehensible is the title of your article: “Warning: Consumption of game meat shot with lead ammo may be hazardous to your health.” And, the explicit belief that any amount of lead is hazardous to human health.
Game animals killed with copper-jacketed, lead-filled bullets would have infinitesimal amounts of lead, if any, in the meat. Game birds would probably have some lead shot, which you picked out when you chewed the meat. All those years growing up in Chicago I understood what “lead poisoning” meant, and it certainly did not mean ingestion of minute amounts of lead.
If it were true that game animals shot with copper-jacketed bullets were dangerous to human health, then why are not wounded soldiers dying by the thousands from lead poisoning? My deeper suspicion is my belief that the campaign against lead bullets or bullets containing lead is related to the anti-gun effort to first reduce and then eliminate the private ownership of guns.
William R. Faurot
Idyllwild
