Ya'll see it ?
Electrified and shot. Pretty high % blasted.
Just nature taking its course.
Course they need thinnin

I read it.

Were you at all surprised ?
I was ... a tad.

I was surprised that they ID'd a cause of death in less than half the 400-some birds collected. Also, that seemed like a lot of birds for 120-some miles of power lines.

Also surprising was that some birds initially written off as electrocuted were actually found to be shot during autopsy. I guess they were shot and then fell on the power lines?

The high percentage of shot birds was a bit surprising also, but understandable. I agree, raptors need thinning.

I thought that maybe they had been shot earlier, healed and survived, then hit the wires sometime later.
It could skew the results of the survey in a desired direction ..... if there was a desired direction.

I wouldn’t mind finding the actual results of the studies.

Thanks !
(I corrected the spelling in my previous post)

Here's a recent story, two guys charged with killing 3600 birds, many eagles, to sell on the black market.

Shooting Eagles

Makes a guy wonder how many more "shooters" like this are out there.

Interesting K, thanks.
When I was a kid, a local rabbit/bird dog club leased a big chunk of brushy ground for their trials and such.
They let us hunt/trap anything but the rabbits and game birds.
Hawks and fox were relatively thick there.
"Rumor has it " that they paid a bounty for every hawk taken out of the equation. And, there were many !
Good fur prices covered the fox deal.
Smallish 20' gum trees were scattered throughout the property. You could sometimes see up to 10 red tails from one spot.

I just renewed my F-F-G subscription. I tried to do it online but when I applied the early bird code it switched me from a two-year sub to a one-year sub and I couldn't get it to switch back.

I called the office and got the two-year subscription. The early renewal special is an extra issue. So 25 issues for $38.95.

I really would have expected if they were using a 10/22 that they would get pass through on a bird and not riddle it with shot as the image suggests

Yeah, good catch.

my question would be when was the study done. were there any hunting seasons open if so what.

people are probably quick to blame the hunter but I wouldn't be so sure it isn't the person running small flocks of chickens harassing or out right shooting hawks that circle their chickens

I would be curios what shot size they are finding

The summary says the study was conducted 2019-2022. The article about the study was published in the August 2023 issue of iScience.

The article is just a summary. I'd like to find the actual study conclusions and reports if possible. I haven't had time to really look yet.

410 birds in 121 miles over 4 years seems a little less extreme

of the 175 they could determine a COD 66% 115 birds shot by their numbers 28% of the total 410.

also makes you wonder is merely the presence of shot in the xray sufficient or did they have wound channels and bleeding

if a hawk catches a pellet but heals and lives another year before dying for some other reason was the COD labeled as shot because shot appeared in an Xray ? it seems like a good question that maybe wasn't getting asked

if a hawk eats a game bird that is shot but wasn't recovered and has shot in it's gut the COD isn't from being shot.

I hope they addressed all of this in the actual paper

when ever an author starts tossing around 66% when it is really 28% the seem to be Jacking the numbers for a point deceiving the reader. into a conclusion that leads them away from the rate of electrocuted or collision birds.

many ways to fix a study take a digital xray of every bird , anything showing any metal fragment is shot , anything with a broken bone is a collision and everything else is undeterminable and suddenly electrocuted birds is way down.