by Mark Chesnut - Saturday, November 9, 2024
Hunters, along with hunting and conservation organizations, came out on top on Election Day on hunting-related ballot initiatives in Florida and Colorado.
“NRA members, gun owners, and sportsmen and women helped deliver victories up and down the ballot this election cycle,” said Randy Kozuch, Executive Director of NRA-ILA. “While the top story from Nov. 5 was the reelection of NRA-endorsed President Donald J. Trump, NRA members and like-minded voters also turned out to defend the right to hunt and protect science-based wildlife management policies via ballot initiatives. NRA members not only defended their Second Amendment freedoms at the ballot box, but also our country’s hunting and conservation traditions.”
In Florida, voters approved Amendment 2, a ballot question seeking to enshrine the right to hunt and fish (RTHF) in the state constitution, which passed by 67% to 33%. The passage of Amendment 2 is, in large part, a result of the ongoing efforts of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) over the past two decades to ensure that every state has an RTHF amendment in its constitution to protect America’s outdoor traditions into the future. Florida is now the 24th state to have a RTHF amendment.
Florida now will have a provision in the state constitution preserving “forever fishing and hunting, including by the use of traditional methods.” It notes that “the amendment does not limit the authority granted to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission” and that hunting and fishing are the “preferred means of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife.”
Supporters of the amendment apparently convinced voters of an all-too-present danger in the form of well-funded anti-hunting groups that seek to limit hunting opportunities across the country a small bite at a time—with the end goal of shutting down all hunting.
For more good news, across the country in Colorado, voters rejected Proposition 127, an anti-hunting, anti-wildlife science proposal attempting to ban the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats statewide. In an election split between urban and rural residents, 55% of Coloradans voted against the state question. As this website shared over the summer, this ballot initiative is an example of how opposition to legal, regulated hunting not only interferes with Americans’ right to hunt but prevents wildlife managers from carrying out the work entrusted to them.
Anti-hunters proposed the ban in spite of how Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s (CPW) professional wildlife managers report that the state’s mountain lion populations are increasing and that bobcat numbers in some areas are also on the rise. It also came amid increasing reports of mountain lions invading both urban and suburban areas of the state—a fact anti-hunters also chose to ignore.
The ballot initiative pitted those who believe wildlife management policies should be set by professional biologists and game managers using sound data against a segment of the population that prefers wildlife be managed by emotion. In this case, thankfully, “ballot box biology” failed to prevail.
Rejection of the state question was important not only because wildlife management should be left up to trained professionals but also because of the current state of the mountain lion-prey species relationship in some parts of Colorado. An eye-opening article on this NRA website from 2023 detailed how lions currently are putting increasing pressure on prey species such as deer. That report shared the results of a 2021 CPW collared-lion study documenting that mule deer make up a staggering 66% of lion kills, with half of the deer killed being fawns.
As shared by NRA-ILA, the ballot initiative came after anti-hunters were unable to get a ban on cat hunting—SB22-031—passed by the state legislature in 2022.
Editor’s Note: For more updates on the issues impacting hunters, hunting and wildlife conservation, please visit the NRA Hunters’ Leadership Forum and NRA-ILA websites.—KMP