Opponents of Assembly Bill 711 are fond of saying that a law requiring the use of nonlead ammunition for hunting would end hunting in California. Well, one way to verify that claim would be to see how the practice of hunting has responded to earlier restrictions on the use of lead ammunition. A quick check shows that hunting did not end in 1991 when the federal government prohibited the use of lead shot in waterfowl hunting. And apparently the many states that have laws on the books restricting its use even further haven’t ended hunting either. But California provides an even better platform for comparison: the 2007 restriction on lead ammunition in the range of the California Condor. If the opposition’s claims were true, we would probably see a dramatic decline in hunting in that region, right? Well, turns out the opposite is true. According to statistics from the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, hunting has actually increased in the Condor range since the law went into effect. In 2007, the year before the law went into effect, 26, 818 deer hunting licenses were sold in for that area. In 2012, the most recent year for which we have complete records, 27,453 were sold.