This is the fall that I get the lead out.

I’ve got several boxes of lead shot game loads that I plan to burn up during the dove hunting season that begins tomorrow.

But after those are gone (probably mostly by blowing holes in the air behind the speedy targets) and on the threshold of the 2008 hunting seasons, I am switching exclusively to steel shot for my small game hunting.

Though veteran shotgunners occasionally might wistfully recall the good-old days of 60-yard kills with our ballistically superior lead-loaded magnums, we largely have grown accustomed to shooting steel or more expensive non-toxic shot alternatives.

And truthfully, the first steel shot loads were hastily designed and arguably not very good. What’s more, they held the potential for damaging some guns.

Three decades later, even the most basic steel loads available today are infinitely better than the best steel loads of the past.

Lead shot’s toxicity to wildlife, humans and the environment notwithstanding, my reasons for switching exclusively to steel shot loads this fall are less noble than they are practical.

Sorting out the places I can and can’t use lead isn’t worth the effort. In South Dakota and Iowa, I am required to have only steel loads when hunting anything — ducks, pheasants, rabbits — on public hunting tracts. The same holds true in Iowa.

In Minnesota, steel is required for any waterfowl, of course. But at least for the present, it is still legal to use lead shot on state wildlife management areas for upland game.

But once I step into a Federal Waterfowl Area, the only thing I’d better have in my pockets, regardless of the small game species I am hunting, is non-toxic loads.

And sometimes, it seems, my hunting coat has too many pockets. More than once, after exchanging all my lead-shot shells for steel to hunt pheasants on a WPA, I have reached into a pocket and discovered I had accidentally missed one of two lead shot loads.

You don’t suppose the conservation officer has heard that one, do you?

An added bonus will be that I won’t have to pass up the occasional opportunity for a duck or goose unlucky enough to pass within shotgun range while I’m pheasant hunting.

Last year, I mostly made the switch, using the last of my lead pheasant loads before switching to steel late in the pheasant season. And truthfully, so far as I could tell, the birds came down as hard and as often.

Traditionally, steel shot shells have been considerably more expensive than those loaded with lead. But with the ever-escalating price of lead, I’m guessing that the difference switching exclusively to steel this fall will be negligible anyway.