Last summer I worked with two fisheries biologists in the midwest. They both said the first thing they do each morning is weed through their emails. For every legitimate question they received there were 5 more from someone who drank a 12-pack and wrote a midnight manifesto on walley management.
One of them took vacation for a week and came back to an unimaginable number of emails. I can't remember how many it was but it was well into the hundreds. People in those positions are more than willing to discuss real issues and answer legit questions, but they're busy enough with their normal job duties and the junk emails tend to bury the worthwhile ones.