REGISTERED TO HUNT, NOT TO VOTE.

The Silent Majority

Ask Adam Weldon what worries him most about Colorado wildlife policy, and he won't point at a bill. He points at a number. Somewhere between thirty and forty thousand residents carry a hunting or fishing license — and have never registered to vote. They fund conservation with every tag they buy, then sit out every decision made about it.

The Division

The opposition is counting on that silence — and on one more thing: that we'll keep fighting each other. You bow hunt. I rifle hunt. Somebody else runs a muzzleloader. Pick that fight on social media and you've done their work for them.

Other states look at Colorado and see the front line. We don't have the time, or the resources, to be divided on the small stuff. Bow, rifle, muzzleloader — it has to be one force, or it's no force at all.

The Shell Game

Here's why those missing votes matter. When the people actually get a say, hunters win. Prop 127 went down. The Denver slaughterhouse measure went down by more. So the fight moved somewhere the people don't get a vote — citizens' petitions, the governor's office, and commissioners overruling their own biologists. Stand outside a grocery store with a paycheck and you can buy a whole lot of signatures.

// Margins approximate, in points. The ballot box keeps saying yes to hunting — so they stopped using the ballot box.

The Line That Has to Hold

It rarely arrives as a ban. It arrives as a verb — "shall" quietly swapped for "may," handcuffs on CPW one word at a time. Initiative 302 won't stop the attacks, but it makes them a great deal harder to pass.

It could have been done years ago. Now it takes signatures. Now it takes voters. Now it takes you.

Four Things — Do Them