The squeaky wheel gets the grease and animal rights activists in Colorado have been making a ton of noise with hopes of being lubricated in the near future.
Attacking an under-represented cohort of the hunting community, anti-hunting advocates have filed a ballot proposal that could see the end of mountain lion and bobcat hunting in the Centennial State.
Filed under the brave and awe-inspiring “Prohibit Trophy Hunting” moniker, the draft was accepted by the state on Friday afternoon. The language used in the draft goes on to assert the belief that “any trophy hunting of mountain lions, bobcats, or lynx is inhumane, serves no socially acceptable or ecologically beneficial purpose, and fails to further public safety.”
It went on to state that “trophy hunting is practiced primarily for the display of an animal’s head, fur, or other body parts, rather than the utilization of the meat.”
While their definition of trophy hunting is true, there are important facts that have been left out.
In the state of Colorado it is unlawful for mountain lion hunters to not utilize the meat from their kill, thus rendering the basis of their argument useless. If there are folks out there blasting lions for only a photo opp and a cape, they are already in violation of the law. And if we know anything about these types of laws (read: gun laws), adding additional layers seldom does anything to slow down those hellbent on breaking the law in the first place.
Despite the verbiage used in the proposal, a deeper look exposes that this is not an attack on trophy hunting practices, but rather an aggressive overreach and attempt at removing legal and ethical hunting from the landscape. With the appointment of three “animal welfare” advocates to Colorado’s Wildlife and Parks Commission, the proposal should come at no surprise to those of us in the hunting community.
Slashing at our way of life from the inside out, the sentiment from one hunting advocate sums it up perfectly.
“I think what we’re seeing is the proverbial death by a thousand cuts,” said one Colorado hunter. “Mountain lion hunting is an easy target. There aren’t that many lion hunters, relatively speaking, and it’s easy to dismiss the activity as somehow out of the mainstream. But it’s an activity that’s heavily regulated. Quotas are conservatively managed, and we have a long history of successfully managing the species. I think opponents have to explain how a ban might affect depredating lions, especially in human communities.”
They’ll need nearly 125,000 signatures to get the proposal on the ballot following the Secretary of State’s approval.
