06/16/2026
There they go again. It appears the anti hunting and fishing crowd have gotten a copy of my editorial in Outdoor Life about why states should adopt a constitutional right to hunt and fish.
Their rhetoric is the same tired play book that spreads a lot of fear but skips some of the most important facts — and completely misses the biggest one.
Colorado already has strong statutory protections for hunting and fishing, but statutes can be changed by the legislature or overturned by the next ballot initiative.
That’s exactly what anti-hunting groups have tried for years — including the 2024 Prop 127 effort that would have banned hunting mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx.
Voters soundly rejected it, but these “ballot box biology” campaigns keep coming. Constitutional protection makes it much harder for activist groups to chip away at our rights and science-based management through the courts or future ballots.
Initiative 302 does not ban other management tools. It simply states that hunting and fishing are the preferred means of responsibly managing wildlife populations — the same model that has worked for over a century under the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.
The actual text explicitly preserves Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s full authority to regulate for sound scientific management, public safety, or to protect future hunting and fishing opportunities. Biologists still decide what tool is best for the specific situation.
Here’s the point the critics never want to answer: If this amendment “doesn’t do much” or is just harmless language, why are anti-hunting groups fighting it so aggressively in Colorado — just like they did in Florida, Ohio, Maine, and every other state that has moved to enshrine these rights?
They know exactly what it does. That’s why they’re pouring resources into stopping it.
The examples from Wisconsin, Florida, Maine and elsewhere are important, but every state’s experience with a constitutional right to hunt and fish will be unique.
What will be the same in every case is this: it slams the door on the radical attempts to criminalize, ban, and ultimately end hunting and fishing in America.
That is the point. It defends and expands our opportunities to pursue and responsibly manage wildlife using a science-based model — not politics and emotion.
Hunters and anglers already fund the vast majority of wildlife conservation in this state through licenses, tags, and excise taxes. Protecting the right to hunt and fish protects that funding model and the wildlife it supports.
Hunting and fishing are already legal. 302 isn’t about next season — it’s about making sure the next generation still has the same opportunities to hunt and fish where generations before them have and that wildlife management stays in the hands of biologists and voters, not politicians or one-off ballot measures driven by emotion.
Don’t fall for the fear-mongering. Read the actual language of 302. Then sign the petition to make Colorado the 25th state with constitutional protection for our outdoor heritage.
Save Colorado’s Heritage. Join tens of thousands of Coloradans who already have signed for 302.
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