Protect Colorado's Constitution
Implications of The Right to Hunt in Colorado
Does the right to hunt belong in the constitution?
Does the “Right to Hunt” belong on the same list as fundamental freedoms?
No. Here’s why:
Colorado’s Constitution is meant to protect fundamental rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, due process, and the right to assemble peaceably.
These protections apply to every citizen equally.Creating a constitutional “Right to Hunt” would prioritize the interests of one specific group above the rights of all other Coloradans.
This isn’t a debate about the merits of hunting itself; it is a question of whether this activity should supersede the will of all other Coloradans.
Constitutional rights are absolute and can bypass the democratic process, effectively stripping voters of their voice in future wildlife management decisions.
This amendment would also severely limit Colorado Parks & Wildlife’s ability to implement science-based conservation.
If a regulation is found to conflict with a constitutionally guaranteed right, that regulation is unconstitutional and invalid.
This proposed mandate shifts authority away from the professional scientists and wildlife experts at Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Colorado would likely face protracted and costly legal challenges, like other states have in cases of Right to Hunt vs Wildlife Agency.
These expenses for litigation are not free; they are funded by you, the Colorado taxpayer.
Outdoor activities like hunting and fishing are currently legal and protected under Title 33 of the Colorado Revised Statutes. Since these activities are already secured by state law, why is a constitutional amendment necessary?
The reason is that it functions as a method to circumvent the democratic influence of the public, your voting voice.
This amendment ensures that even if citizens support a future ballot measure, the constitutional status of this right would invalidate the will of the voters. Stay informed and do not allow your voice in wildlife management to be permanently silenced.
The Financial Consequences
IOTR is using their big money and power connections from out-of-state, Washington DC, and all across the U.S. to try to convince Coloradans that Initiative 302 is a simple right-to-hunt-and-fish (RTHF) constitutional amendment.
It isn't.
This same big-money gang will send its high-priced, overly litigious lawyers to Colorado to fight Colorado Parks & Wildlife endlessly in court. Just like it did in Wisconsin.
Can taxpayers afford to fight special interest groups? No.
Coloradans lose and so does our wildlife commission.
NO to Right to Hunt:
Uphold integrity in sportsmanship
The Wisconsin-based IOTR has had their hands in many such RTHF cases in other states and local communities where voters were duped into voting for similar constitutional amendments on the ballot in other states.
And these out-of-state interlopers are leading the charge here in Colorado.
And there’s no reason to believe their hands won’t continue to meddle in Colorado’s wildlife business if Initiative 302, The Right to Hunt, somehow manages to become a constitutional amendment in this coming Fall’s election cycle.
An international trophy-hunting club has put up $1 MILLION to push this intiative through.
The Most Inhumane Forms of Trapping Could Return
Ballot initiative 302, The Right to Hunt, could crack open Colorado’s trap ban by calling cruel devices “traditional methods." If that happens, steel‑jaw leghold traps, body crushing traps, strangling snares and M-44 cyanide bombs could slip back into our wildlife areas through the courts.
Refuse to sign 302
Colorado courts follow a long‑standing rule: when two constitutional amendments conflict, the newer one often takes priority. Ballot Initiative 302 creates a brand‑new constitutional “right to harvest wildlife” using vague terms like “traditional methods” and “preferred means". If that language conflicts with the 1996 trapping ban (Amendment 14), which banned the cruelest forms of traps, courts could be forced to “harmonize” the two — and Colorado precedent shows that can mean narrowing the older amendment so the newer one can function.
That opens the door for advocates of inhumane trapping methods to argue that:
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the leghold‑trap ban burdens the new right
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CPW can’t restrict certain devices without violating the Constitution
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courts — not biologists — must decide what counts as a “traditional method"
The Legal and Financial Boondoggle
The principle and right to hunt and fish have been the law in Colorado for generations and are highly regulated activities. Nonetheless, CPW is charged under Title 33 state statutes to protect, preserve, enhance and manage all wildlife resources of the state.
Successful wildlife conservation and management requires that CPW have broad management flexibility to respond to change. Under Initiative 302, CPW would be handcuffed from being able to continually respond to the known and unforeseeable environmental conditions, development pressures, and changing demographics that have and will continue to have impacts on fish and wildlife in Colorado into the foreseeable future.
Part of that management strategy will always include utilizing hunting and fishing as a tool among many that CPW’s professional wildlife managers use to support healthy game species populations. And no matter whether you fish and hunt or not, the Initiative 302 Trojan Horse contains such deliberately vague and undefined language that could actually endanger our way of life in Colorado.
Constitutional amendments to protect the RTHF can indeed have unintended detrimental consequences for both the hunting and fishing itself and wildlife conservation.
Legal analysis in Colorado suggests this constitutional amendments could introduce legal ambiguities that would create friction with long-term management goals while failing to support changing and important social values and recreational opportunities.
If this initiative passes, trapping groups could argue that:
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Colorado’s ban on leghold traps, snares and M-44 cyanide bombs burdens the new constitutional right.
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CPW cannot restrict certain methods without facing constitutional challenges.
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Courts — not biologists or the voters — should decide what wildlife-killing devices are allowed.
Courts mean more lawyers, more waste, more out-of-state lobbyists, more delays, more of your money down the drain.
Non-Resident Lobbyists Will Hold The Power
The Trojan Horse: Constitutionalizing A Special Right
If this makes it into the Constitution, who has the power?
An "International" membership-hunting group in Wisconsin has put up $1 MILLION to push this initiative. They don't live in Colorado. That's not grassroots, that's big-money special interests.
It’s the national AND international groups, including the NRA Institute for Legislative Action and private-membership groups with lawyers on retainer, consultants who specialize in ballot language and wealthy networks with enough money to turn every Colorado Parks & Wildlife decision into a "constitutional rights" battle.
This isn't about the Right to Bear Arms, it's about special interests nullifying the rights of the Colorado people to have a voice and not disenfranchise our vote.
These special interest groups do not represent Colorado residents or ethical sportsmen & women.
Once "preferred means" and "traditional methods" are locked into the Colorado Constitution, Right to Hunt becomes a weapon against Coloradans, ethical hunters and wildlife policy for years. This isn't about conservation at all. It's a power grab that will cost taxpayers millions.
NO on 302: Uphold integrity in sportsmanship
PROTECT OUR CONSTITUTION • FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY • NO COSTLY AMENDMENTS • SAY NO TO SPECIAL INTERESTS •