Back in December, Colorado Parks & Wildlife (CPW) released five captive gray wolves on public land west of Denver. Many hunters and an array of conservation groups opposed to the widely publicized wolf release, which had been mandated by narrowly-passed a ballot initiative four years earlier. Now, Colorado’s voting public is on the cusp of considering yet another wildlife-related ballot measure that would introduce an outright ban on mountain lion and bobcat hunting in the Centennial State.
The ballot referendum that led to December’s wolf release, known as Proposition 14, was a shining example of what some conservation-minded hunters have called “ballot box biology.” It put a critical wildlife management decision—something that would typically be hashed out by professional biologists—into the hands of everyday voters. Predictably, the results of the referendum broke down along rural and urban lines. Voters in urban centers like Denver and Boulder supported it while throngs of rural Coloradans voted no.
One could see a similar outcome materializing with a new ballot initiative that’s been gaining momentum in Colorado since December of 2023. This measure would put an end to Colorado’s long-running mountain lion and bobcat hunting seasons, regardless of the fact that both species are thriving in Colorado. While supporters the latest propostion are still gathering signatures, it’s likely that their bid to ban cat hunting throughout Colorado will end up on the ballot come November 5.
Dan Gates is the Executive Director of a non-profit organization called Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management (CRWM). He’s been mounting an effort to defeat the proposed ab on big cat hunting since it was announced in the fall of 2023. “We’ve been the tip of the spear on this since the ballot initiative dropped in September,” Gates tells Field & Stream. “We’ve challenged it through every measure available to us. Right now, we’re circling the wagons and creating the necessary mechanisms we’ll need to defeat this ballot measure come November.”
According to Gates, Colorado’s mountain lion population is robust. “We’ve got somewhere between 4,400 and 5,000 mountain lions in the state of Colorado, and before they became a big game species, there were less than 200 on the landscape,” he says. “Back then they were considered a nuisance and conservation-minded sportsmen and women took them from that nuisance list and put them into a big game status.
Today, CPW holds a mountain lion season from Nov. 25 to March 31. There used to be a month-long season in April, but CPW nixed that season earlier this year. As Gates is quick to point out, the number of mountain lions in Colorado has increased by leaps and bounds since regulated hunting was introduced to the Centennial State in 1965. If it weren’t for mountain lion hunting, there might not be any mountain lions in Colorado today, he maintains.
His opponents see it differently. They use the use the politically and emotionally-charged phrase “trophy hunting” when they describe their contempt for Colorado’s big cat hunting seasons. They even inserted the term into the title of their ballot measure when they introduced it last fall. But CRWM filed a lawsuit that ultimately went before the state Supreme Court, and the phrase removed from the proposition’s title.
“Trophy hunting is a catch phrase and it’s totally subjective. There is not way to define it—either statutorily or regulatory,” Gates says. “This is not a trophy hunting ban. This is an all-out hunting ban—and the court sided with us on that.”
Gates believes that the general non-hunting public has a negative perception of “trophy hunting,” and it’s hard to argue with this assessment. Time and again, animal rights activists have used the subjective moniker as a means to drum up support for proposed bans and restrictions.
Removing the phrase from the ballot initiative’s title could make it easier to defeat in the fall, he hopes. “People think of ‘trophy hunting’ as mounting something on the wall and then leaving the meat in the field to rot, and that’s just a fantasy,” he says. “Big game and small game species have to be processed for consumption. As hunters, we utilize the meat. All the other stuff—wether it’s the feathers, the hide, or the antlers—that’s just a byproduct of that utilization.”
While “trophy hunting” is now gone from the initiative’s title, the phrase will still appear in the proposition’s description. And if it makes it to the ballot, it’ll also include a ban on lynx hunting—although no hunting season for the federally-protected cat species currently exists in Colorado.
“They say that they want to make sure that if lynx are ever de-listed here in Colorado, that no one will ever be able to harvest them,” Gates says. “But when they’re already talking about banning something before it’s even legally acceptable to hunt it, that shows that their intent doesn’t have anything to do with science. It doesn’t have anything to do with management. It has to do with emotion and subjective messaging.”
“Circling the Wagons”
Since September, Gates and CRWM have been focused on countering that message with a message of their own. They’ve produced a series of short videos that emphasize the pivotal role that hunting plays in the longterm conservation of iconic species, like elk and mountain lions. Gates himself has been featured on a slew of podcasts, and back in TK, CRWM’s plight was discussed on the world’s most popular podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience. Gates says it’s been a nationwide effort with the goal or reaching a target audience that extends well beyond the hunting community. “We’ve circled the wagons and created the necessary mechanism to stand up and defeat this,” he says.
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Wether or not this outreach will pay off remains to be seen. “November 5th is the deadline, but they have until July 5th to get the signatures together and then they have to be certified by August 5th to the Secretary of State,” Gates says. “They’ll probably get this hunting ban on the ballot. They didn’t go this far and spend this much money to fail, but neither did we.”
