Colorado’s vote next month on whether to amend the state Constitution by codifying the right to hunt and fish has intensified debate among hunters, conservationists and legal experts over exactly who — and which parts of the state — should take the lead in its wildlife management policy.
Amendment 83, which is backed by a well-funded, out-of-state interest group, has highlighted longstanding divisions over hunting’s role in conservation and how much political sway hunters should have in a state where they are a minority.
In western Colorado, lifelong hunters are split over the proposal.
Grant Kleeves, a mountaineer and hunting guide who lives near Ridgway, regards hunters as an integral part of the state’s conservation policy, noting that the tag revenue they generate helps fund wildlife preservation. Amendment 83, he said, would safeguard that relationship by countering the influence of urban voters who might otherwise dictate wildlife management.
Others see the amendment as an attack on the general public’s role in the conversation. Gary Skiba, a retired wildlife biologist from Durango, thinks the measure will open the door to lawsuits from hunters who disagree with state policy, potentially opening the door to the return of controversial hunting practices, such as attracting black bears with bait.
“It’s about limiting everybody else’s ability to influence wildlife management,” Skiba said.
Hunters like Kleeves, however, want to check that urban influence.
“Colorado is swayed so heavily by the Front Range,” Kleeves said. “Where the Front Range goes, Colorado goes voting-wise, whether that reflects the on-the-ground reality of things or not.”
Six years ago, Denver-area voters helped push wolf reintroduction over the finish line, overcoming objections from much of rural Colorado, a decision that continues to color the debate around Amendment 83. The ballot measure would not only designate hunting and fishing as Colorado’s “preferred means” of wildlife management, but also establish Coloradans’ right to hunt and fish using “traditional methods” — language that opponents say is both controversial and undefined.
Proponents argue the amendment contains safeguards to ensure that hunting regulations are set by wildlife managers rather than the general public. But opponents, including Gov. Jared Polis, D, want everyday Coloradans to have a say. They also worry that the so-called “traditional methods” could include practices like bear baiting, which has been banned in Colorado for nearly a quarter century, and may greenlight a wave of litigation from hunters challenging unpopular regulations.
Taking away ‘the ball’
Wolves won’t be on the ballot this November. But on the west side of the Continental Divide, hunters routinely point to the 2020 vote approving reintroduction as the moment they felt the ground shifting beneath their feet.
The program has prompted outcry from ranchers ever since wildlife managers released the first wolves nearly three years ago. The state paid out over $750,000 for direct and indirect livestock losses to wolves between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, while only about 61% of the state’s wolf population survived during the same period. This month, Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced it would stop routinely killing wolves that kill livestock amid concerns that the state’s wolf population won’t grow this year.
Many Western Slope residents, who largely opposed reintroduction, feel that they’re bearing the burden of what they see as an ecological experiment largely backed by the Front Range. Adam Gall, an elk- and deer-hunting guide based near Montrose, argues that reintroduction’s record shows that pro-wolf voters were “hoodwinked.” Gall has come to believe that wildlife management decisions should no longer be left to the general public.
“It sounds bad, but there’s just too many uninformed people that get swept up in the ideology or the emotion of something,” Gall said.
Gabby Strausbaugh, a hunter, rancher and journalist in Gunnison, agreed, saying, “I feel pretty strongly that the general public should not have a say in wildlife management.”
The 2020 vote for wolf reintroduction is just one charged chapter in a long history of Colorado ballot measures on wildlife issues. In 1992, Coloradans used a ballot measure to ban bear baiting. Four years later, Colorado voted to ban most forms of traditional trapping. In 2024, however, a proposal to outlaw hunting mountain lions, bobcats and lynx failed in the November election.
“There’s no question that it’s part of Colorado’s history,” said Justin Marceau, a professor with the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law. “There’s a very long history of that practice, and reasonable people debate how great it is to have this done at the ballot box.”
Wildlife-related ballot measures have a mixed electoral record across the West. Montana, for example, declined to ban trapping in 2017. Voters in Wyoming, Idaho and Utah have enshrined the right to hunt and fish in their constitutions — but a similar measure failed in Arizona, where critics said there was no real threat to the practice.
Amendment 83 is the only “right to hunt” measure on the ballot in the West this fall. About 20 other states have passed similar constitutional amendments, many with the backing of the International Order of T. Roosevelt.
The Wisconsin-based conservative advocacy group — whose CEO, Luke Hilgemann, held the same position at another conservative group, Americans for Prosperity — has contributed over $1.5 million to the pro-Amendment 83 campaign, according to state campaign finance records. The group is attempting to establish a similar right to hunt in all 50 states and has thrown its weight behind successful campaigns in Florida, South Dakota and Ohio, among others.
In an August interview, Dan Gates, a longtime Colorado pro-hunting activist, described himself as part of the “infantry ground game” in the pro-83 push. The Order of T. Roosevelt, he said, is furnishing “the air support, and the sea support — and maybe the guerrilla warfare support.”
Gates frames Colorado’s electoral recent history on wildlife issues as a long string of defeats punctuated by occasional narrow escapes, as in the case of the proposed ban on hunting big cats. Amendment 83, he argues, would help prevent similar ballot initiatives and put hunters on the electoral offensive.
“You’ve got to take the ball away from them,” Gates said during an August podcast appearance, referring to the anti-hunting crowd. “We have now.”
Gates did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
A ‘litigation time bomb?’
Opponents worry that Amendment 83 will open the floodgates to future lawsuits claiming that wildlife management decisions abridge a constitutional right.
They have honed in on the language about “traditional methods” of hunting and fishing. The amendment doesn’t define that term, and the University of Denver’s Marceau, who specializes in animal rights law, says Colorado law offers almost no precedent that would help to do so.
“They’ve invoked this kind of historical origin story, but not with any frame of reference. Are they referring to the frontier days? To the days before Colorado was a state?” he said. “I have no idea.”
Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation, the opposition group, cites the potential for future litigation seeking to restore hunting practices like bear baiting. Skiba, who is helping lead the anti-amendment push, called the idea that hunting is under threat “ludicrous,” and rejected the idea of elevating it above a privilege.
“It isn’t a right. It shouldn’t be a right, any more than the right to paddleboarding should be a right,” said Skiba, a former member of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission. He argues the amendment would give hunters the ability to challenge unpopular policies.
“It shouldn’t be a right, any more than the right to paddleboarding should be a right.”
“Putting this as a right in the Constitution would give them the legal standing to challenge anything, and the litigation could go absolutely bonkers,” he said.
Marceau called the amendment a “litigation time bomb” that would move the debate over hunting regulation away “from the democratic process and into the courts.”
Even some hunters who favor it harbor reservations. Strausbaugh said the “vagueness” over the definition of “traditional methods” gives her pause, while the Colorado chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers said concerns about the language’s precise meaning “should not be dismissed.”
Other legal experts say the lack of clarity could have the opposite effect, stripping the amendment of any significant effect. Mike Pappas, an environmental law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that its language doesn’t give courts clear direction for future litigation.
“It’s not at all clear to me how, in five years’ time, if someone files a lawsuit trying to vindicate a right under this, how any hypothetical case comes out,” he said.
“The proposed language gives a vibe,” Pappas added, “but it doesn’t give clear guidance.”
This story was produced as part of the Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative, a partnership between the Ouray County Plaindealer, High Country News, Report for America and local news organizations across the West.
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