Received this from Hornady.

Quote::

Reject the HSUS petition that threatens hunting on public lands! Call Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and tell her to reject the HSUS petition that threatens hunting on public lands! Call 202-208-3181 and email our pre-written letter to voice your objection. The future of hunting is under attack! Hornady® Manufacturing urges firearms owners, hunters and sportsmen to call Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and demand she reject a petition filed by the HSUS that seeks to ban hunting with traditional ammunition on public lands. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), anti-hunting groups, and five individual sportsmen have teamed up to file a petition with the Interior Department demanding rules that ban hunting with traditional ammunition on public lands – more than 160 million acres of federal lands managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That’s one-fifth of the total land area in the United States. Weighing in at a hefty 50 pages, this petition is rife with emotional statements based on fuzzy science, and fails to make the case that using traditional ammunition threatens wildlife or humans in such a way as to justify eliminating it altogether. It claims prohibiting lead ammunition should be an easy accomplishment since non-lead alternatives are available. But this is nothing more than a back-door way to ban hunting altogether, by making the sport of hunting in America cost prohibitive. Once the rules change with regard to traditional ammunition on public land, it opens the floodgates for over-reaching restrictions on hunting as a whole. Tell Interior Secretary Sally Jewell how this petition falls short on reason and logic: • It lacks sound science to support banning the traditional hunting ammunition used by hunters for centuries. • It is another attempt by the HSUS to ban hunting altogether. • The adverse impact of traditional ammunition upon wildlife has not been substantiated to the point of necessitating such a drastic move. • There is no evidence that consuming game taken with traditional ammunition poses a human health risk to hunters and their families. • Approving this ban would reduce the 11% excise taxes currently raised from the sale of traditional ammunition, which is used to support wildlife conservation. A ban of traditional ammunition would harm the very animals HSUS claims to protect. CONTACT THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR TODAY! Here is a list of the groups filing this petition: • Humane Society of the United States • Fund for Animals • Defenders of Wildlife • Natural Resources Defense Council • Wildlife Conservation Society • International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council • National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association • South Florida Wildlife Center • Chocolay Raptor Center • Upper Peninsula Environmental Coalition • Northwood Alliance • National Wolfwatcher Coalition • Five individual sportsmen, including Judd Hanna, former California Fish and Game commissioner The truth has been clearly revealed. HSUS and its ilk want to ban hunting altogether. Don’t let them succeed. Call your officials today: Dept. of Interior Office of Communications: 202-208-6416 Dept. of Interior Executive Office: 202-208-3181 Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at 202-208-3181 or submit a letter and demand the rejection of the HSUS petition.

You can go to this site and use their pre-written letter.

www.hornady.com/in-the...our-rights

Thanks for the heads up Lester, I filled out the info at Hornadys web site and sent the letter. I will also print out the word doc and bring it to work tomorrow and get more people involved as we are all hunters at work.

Plus also sent a letter to Sen Chuck Grassley.

Got that a little while ago and sent my letter. Has anyone EVER heard of someone who suffered from lead poisoning as a result of eating wild (shot) game?

No. They tried to shut down our gun club next to a lake saying it was contaminating the lake with lead. The ground run-off was tested several times for lead and none was never found.

Pumpkinslinger wrote:

Got that a little while ago and sent my letter. Has anyone EVER heard of someone who suffered from lead poisoning as a result of eating wild (shot) game?

I only know that lead shot is very dangerous for ducks. On the other hand: steel shot is dangerous to plants, trees, animals, ... we even had here someone with apendicitis caused by blockage of rusting steel shot. He almost died...
I'm sure you know several hunters with 1 or 2 lead pellets in their body, but do you also know people with steel shot in their body and not having problems?

Now for the shooting side I don't see much difference between lead shot and steel shot. But for the game... steel shot makes hunting a very bloody business...

I haven’t heard about anyone getting sick from lead poisoning; however, most of the concern is not for humans, but for our wonderful feathered friends, the raptors.

I sit on the Hunter Ed Advisory Committee for Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, and we received a briefing from the big game biologist about lead fragments left in game animals 2 years ago.

He was equipped with X-Rays from demised critters, from deer to a prairie dog exploded with a frangible hollowpoint bullet.

The lead glowed on the X-Rays, and the prairie dog was lit up like you wouldn’t believe…the bullet did exactly as a hollowpoint should in ethically dispatching said rodent.

Even a deer shot through and through with a .50 caliber round ball from a muzzleloader show some fragments of lead present.

Most of the greenies concern comes from eagles, hawks and owls eating the gut piles of big game or snacking on the carcasses of prairie dogs.

Almost all sportsmen and women know that it is a pretty flimsy argument to think that all the raptor’s food supply comes from following hunters around to get a free meal.

With that said, all a biologist has to do is find high lead levels in a dead raptor to excite the anti’s, and we are off to the races.

One only has to look to California to see what a lead ban for rifle bullets can do.

Done and sent.

In most cases lead poisoning is a farce.

Frankly, I have mixed feelings about lead shot and it's effects on the ecology and wildlife, but I don't hunt birds, geese, or ducks anymore. Now if they took a wrong turn and came on my land they'd get shot with whatever I had, and that's lead. I don't use a shotgun on turkeys. If I use a handgun other than for practice I don't think I'll worry much about the recipient of the bullet getting lead poisoning. As for my rifles I have been using solid copper for the last ten years and am happy with them.

Regardless of our individual positions on lead my real concern is that anytime anti-hunting groups make any inroads into our hunting rights it just makes it so much easier for them to come back for more and more. Death by a thousand cuts. By the way, copper is toxic too.

lesterg3 wrote:

By the way, copper is toxic too.

Talking copper bullets, they don't fragment and spray lead particals through the meat. They typically retain all the weight and most pass through the animal. When I hunt for meat, I just about use copper bullets exclusively. I've tested the lead-core bullets and its a guess where the lead bits are going to end up unless its a pure broadside lung shot.

Yep, I like them and if I didn't I'd have several thousand rounds I'd need to shoot up before I could change back.