The extremist animal “rights” group, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), is back to its old tricks. Earlier this week, the vehemently anti-hunting and anti-gun group once again called for a nationwide ban on lead ammunition, saying that studies by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the North Dakota Department of Health prove that game shot with lead ammunition poses a health threat to those who consume it.

In a HSUS press release, Andrew Page, senior director of the Wildlife Abuse Campaign for HSUS said, “Extremist hunters have long contaminated watersheds and habitat, dooming animals to slow and painful deaths. Now that hunters know their actions are directly putting themselves and other people at risk, there are no more excuses to use the ammo that just keeps on killing.”

The typically hysterical rhetoric from HSUS has an all too familiar political ring to it: Alarm the public with fear tactics, label hunters as “extremist,” and push for radical, ill-advised, agenda-driven “solutions.” Their real agenda is actually very transparent: They are against hunting and want to make hunting more difficult and more expensive, with the end goal of eliminating it altogether, by any means possible.

In contrast to this rhetoric, the CDC study should actually dispel fears because it shows that consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition poses no serious health risk.

The study, based on tests of lead levels in the blood of 736 North Dakota residents, found that not one of the study participants had a lead level that might require medical treatment.

In fact, study participants overall had lower levels of lead in the blood than the United States population in general, despite above-average consumption of wild game.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife has announced that it will be holding a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the development of the Mobility Impaired Hunting Access Area at Lake La Su An Wildlife Area on Friday, November 21.

The event will begin at 10 AM at this state wildlife area near Montpelier in Williams County. The ceremony will take place off of County Road S, approximately 1 and 3/4 miles east of SR 49. The public is invited to attend.

This event comes as a result of passage of Senate Bill 209, which addressed issues that Buckeye Firearms Association volunteer Bob Harsanje and Region Leader Larry S. Moore had been working on together.

For more information, see:

• HB473: Aiding mobility-impaired hunters
• Mobility-Impaired Disabled Hunter Access
• BFA on hand as Gov. Ted Strickland signs bill expanding opportunities for mobility-impaired hunters