Protect Colorado's Constitution
Implications of The Right to Hunt in Colorado
This Amendment 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 supersede the will of the voters. Stay informed and do not allow your voice in wildlife management to be permanently silenced.
Does the “Right to Hunt” belong alongside our fundamental freedoms?
No. Here’s why.
Colorado’s Constitution protects fundamental rights—including freedom of speech, religious freedom, due process, and the right to assemble. These protections belong to every Coloradans.
Amendment 83 would put hunting and fishing into the Constitution as a specific right—and declare them the “preferred means” of managing and controlling wildlife populations.
That changes the question from how Colorado should manage wildlife to what the Constitution requires wildlife managers to prioritize. It wouldn't be science. It would be hunting.
It is not a debate about whether hunting has value. It is about whether one form of wildlife management should receive constitutional priority over the broader public process. Over the greater population. Over the voice of voters.
Once written into the Constitution, this priority would be far harder to change through ordinary laws and regulations.
And when wildlife regulations are challenged under a constitutional provision, the courts—not wildlife biologists or voters acting through the ordinary legislative process—may ultimately determine whether those regulations can stand.
Wildlife management should remain science-based, adaptable, and accountable to the people of Colorado—not locked into the Constitution for one special interest.
Hunting isn't Management • Power Grab • Hunting isn't Science
The Financial Consequences
An international trophy-hunting club has put up $2 MILLION to push this Amendment through.
The Wisconsin group International Order of T Roosevelt, the trophy hunting group of Safari Club International of Washington D.C. and partnered with Turning Point USA is who put up the money for this Amendment in Colorado.
Read that again.
But who pays when against these big guys lawyers when wildlife management and Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists end up in court?
You do. The tax payers pay for CPW's defense.
Supporters portray Amendment 83 as a simple right to hunt and fish. The language does more. It would place hunting and fishing in the Constitution and establish them as the “preferred means” of managing and controlling wildlife populations.
Not science. Hunting.
That new constitutional language could invite challenges to wildlife regulations—and Colorado’s own fiscal analysis acknowledges that litigation costs could increase.
Those costs are ultimately paid by Colorado taxpayers.
Wisconsin’s experience shows that constitutional hunting rights can become part of litigation over wildlife-management decisions.
Do Coloradans want wildlife-management decisions settled in court—or guided by science, professional expertise, and public process?
Vote NO on Amendment 83
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.
These same out-of-state interlopers are leading the charge here in Colorado.
There’s no reason to believe their hands won’t continue to meddle in Colorado’s wildlife business.
Hunting is Already Legal • Voters Will Be Silenced •
The Most Inhumane Forms of Trapping Could Return
Colorado courts follow a long‑standing rule: when two constitutional amendments conflict, the newer one often takes priority.
Amendment 83 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"
Amendment 83, 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.
Vote NO on Amendment 83
Hunting isn't Management • Power Grab • Hunting isn't Science
The Legal and Financial Boondoggle
Who should decide how Colorado manages wildlife?
This amendment would change the legal framework under which Colorado manages wildlife. Today, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission has statutory authority to adjust seasons, limits, methods, and other regulations based on wildlife populations and ecological conditions.
Amendment 83 would place a constitutional right to hunt and fish—and a constitutional preference for those activities—above ordinary statutory law. That creates new grounds for legal challenges to wildlife regulations. Colorado’s own fiscal analysis acknowledges that if regulations are challenged under the new constitutional language, litigation costs could increase. Those costs are ultimately borne by Colorado taxpayers.
But here is the fundamental question:
Hunting and fishing are already legal and extensively regulated under Title 33 of the Colorado Revised Statutes. Why elevate them from statutory activities to constitutional rights?
The answer matters because constitutional provisions are harder to change than ordinary laws. A future legislature or ballot measure could change a statute; changing the Constitution requires a constitutional amendment.
That means future Coloradans would have less flexibility to change the legal framework governing wildlife management—even as wildlife populations, habitat, science, and public priorities change.
Wildlife belongs to all Coloradans. Decisions about its future should remain flexible, science-based, and accountable to the public—not permanently locked into the Constitution.
If this amendment 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.
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, Amendment 83 is a Trojan Horse that contains such deliberately vague and undefined language that it could actually endanger our way of life in Colorado.
Legal analysis in Colorado suggests this constitutional amendment 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.
Wildlife management should remain science-based, adaptable, and accountable to the people of Colorado—not locked into the Constitution with hunting as "preferred" over other management tools.
Heritage is Not Entitlement
Non-Resident Lobbyists Will Hold The Power
The Trojan Horse:
Constitutionalizing A Special Interest
An "International" hunting group in Wisconsin has put up $2 MILLION to push this amendment in Colorado. They don't live in Colorado.
That's not grassroots, that's big-money special interests.
It’s the national AND international groups, including Turning Point USA, Safari Club International and International Order of T. Roosevelt, 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 infringement" battle.
This isn't about "Heritage". The amendment does NOT say, "hunting & fishing will be preserved as a valued pastime for the people of Colorado into perpetuity.
It says, "Hunting will be the preferred means of wildlife management". That's a power grab, not a sentimental statement about the past.
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 Amendment 83:
Uphold integrity in sportsmanship
PROTECT OUR CONSTITUTION • FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY • NO COSTLY AMENDMENTS • SAY NO TO SPECIAL INTERESTS •