Hunters and recreational shooters using traditional ammunition consisting of lead components are being demonized as part of environmental activists’ campaign to ban the use of lead ammunition and to restrict or to eliminate hunting and recreational shooting entirely. Across the U.S., anti-lead ammunition and anti-hunting groups have lobbied legislators and regulators to ban the use of traditional ammunition claiming that wildlife consume lead ammunition in carrion from lost game, or gutpiles left in the field by hunters. Activists claim that the science is settled regarding the nexus between lead ammunition and lead poisoning in wildlife.
Since 2003, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the California Rifle and Pistol Association Foundation (CRPAF) have raised serious questions about the purported nexus between traditional ammunition and lead poisoning and/or mortality in California condors and other wildlife. Hunt for Truth has investigated and uncovered substantial evidence that the groups behind the assault on traditional ammunition have based their efforts on “faulty science,” as a result of researchers using questionable scientific methodologies, sampling protocols and data to advance their anti-lead ammunition agenda.
In response to the threat posed to hunting and recreational shooting sports, the NRA and CRPAF have engaged the expertise of the environmental and civil rights law firm of Michel & Associates, P.C., along with reputable scientists, experts, consultants and volunteers to defend lead ammunition and our traditional hunting heritage. These professionals are engaged in a long and arduous process of investigating, procuring and analyzing hundreds of thousands of documents from public records requests concerning the California condor, Bald and Golden eagles, Mourning dove and other wildlife. Most importantly, the documents include researchers’ “original data” and internal documents not previously obtained or reviewed by independent analysts or the public at large.
The NRA, CRPAF, and other like-minded wildlife and natural resource conservation groups continue to review various regulatory threats to the hunting and shooting traditions. Where the science unquestionably supports wise conservation management decisions, Hunt for Truth supports wildlife managers in their efforts to conserve our natural wildlife resources. But when the anti-lead ammunition movement offers politically biased, distorted, unsupportable and/or “faulty science” to impose regulations that do not implement sound wildlife conservation, Hunt for Truth will continue to work tirelessly to expose their agenda and disseminate the truth.
