Wayne Pacelle, the disgraced anti-hunting activist who previously resigned following sexual harassment allegations and a grifter who was once head of the anti-hunting group Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), is at it again. He’s now camouflaging himself as a hunting supporter, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. And he’s doing it to ban the use of traditional ammunition. He’s not pro-hunting. He’s not even for animal rights. He’s a Washington, D.C., beltway hack who took his show on the road.
Pacelle ignores science and demands government mandates to restrict and regulate actual conservation out of existence. He makes illegitimate claims to bolster attacks by anti-hunting activists. And he does this by running a non-profit that continues to enrich his fraudulent lifestyle.
Pacelle’s Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action are pressing a petition targeted at the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) to ban traditional lead ammunition for hunting in New York. These activists are not interested in science or data. They insist they are not opposed to hunting, rather they just want you to hunt their way. Their way means eliminating traditional ammunition despite the fact there is no sound science to support their off-the-wall demands.
False Narrative
The Pacelle coalition launched their petitions for “comprehensive legal standards” to enforce a transition away from traditional ammunition. The problem is the reasoning is as faulty as Pacelle himself. It’s contaminated with false narratives and exaggeration.
Take this for example. Pacelle posits that lead was banned from products, including paint and gasoline, because of its toxicity.
He adds, “It’s time to restrict hunters from dispersing this toxic metal across millions of acres of New York’s landscapes, poisoning wildlife and putting themselves and their families at risk from ingesting of lead-infused wild-game meat.”
But this is all a lie. What he’s not saying is that he’s talking about entirely different kinds and uses of lead. Traditional ammunition uses non-soluble lead. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not consider expended ammunition, even at shooting ranges, to be a problem of “dispersing toxic metal.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) completed a study in 2008, the most complete study on wild game consumption and traditional ammunition. It found blood-lead levels in hunters consuming wild game harvested with traditional ammunition to be on par with all other members of the community who didn’t consume wild game. In fact, the CDC study proved that the hunters’ blood-lead levels did not approach standard clinical thresholds needed for detection.
Traditional ammunition has been used in North America for five centuries and there are no cases of human health concerns because of consuming game taken with traditional ammunition. None. There are no wildlife populations of concern in New York, including the bald eagle population in New York.
The Wildlife Society Bulletin’s (WSB) 2022 report, “Population impact to bald eagles by ingested lead in New York State, 1990–2018,” covered 28 years.
“From 1990 to 2018, New York State exhibited expanding bald eagle populations with empirical abundances rising from 13 breeding pairs in 1990 to 369 breeding pairs in 2018,” the WSB report states. When specifically testing for it, lead was not shown to be present at levels that harmed populations.
Tired Attacks by Tired Hacks
Anti-hunting organizations, including previously defunct efforts led by Pacelle, don’t begin by demanding a full prohibition on hunting. They work incrementally. They want the public to believe this is a narrow argument about ammunition. It is not. Pacelle is attempting to redefine what is “acceptable” hunting, chipping away until his anti-hunting agenda is achieved. In their own words, the goal is to “restrict hunters” who use traditional ammunition across New York landscapes.
This is a familiar, if worn-out playbook. Look no further than the Pacelle group’s ballot effort to ban hunting in Colorado. It pushed Colorado in 2024 to prohibit mountain lion hunting. The foundation of their campaign was exploitation of the uninformed. It was pure politics, not professional wildlife management.
Effective wildlife management relies on state fish and wildlife agencies, informed by real data, in line with the proven North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Hunters are not outsiders in that system. They are foundational to it. Excise taxes paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers is the chief funder of wildlife conservation.
Anti-hunting organizations, by contrast, are outsiders to conservation. They erode public support for hunting. They stigmatize traditional practices and demand restrictions. But those restrictions are always the beginning of what they think “responsible” hunting should look like.
It’s Not About Ammo
Pacelle’s petition is being marketed as moderation, targeting only ammunition. But that’s a false choice. These patterns have been documented before, and New York hunters need to know it.
Hunters don’t need Pacelle’s blessing. Hunting traditions and wildlife policy, should not compromise with anti-hunting advocacy groups that view regulated hunting as a problem and one to be managed out of existence.
NSSF supports hunters choosing the ammunition that works best for their personal situation. It comes in lots of varieties, all with advantages and disadvantages. NSSF strongly opposes campaigns that would force hunters to purchase more expensive, less available hunting ammunition where there is no peer-reviewed, science-based reasoning for such a mandate.
The debate is not about ammunition. It is about who will define the future of hunting in America — sportsmen and wildlife professionals with real experience and science, or activist organizations with exaggerations and emotions. NSSF will be watching what NYDEC does at Pacelle’s urging.
– Nephi Cole, Government Relations-State Affairs, National Shooting Sports Foundation
