The Gazette reports that a bill setting up a raffle for hunting licenses for Colorado big game is scheduled for Tuesday in the state Senate, but it has conservation and animal rights groups lining up to oppose it. When aren’t animal rights groups opposing hunting progress?

Senate Bill 137 would direct the state Parks and Wildlife department to set up a raffle for hunting licenses for ten species in Colorado: Shiras moose, Rocky Mountain elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, desert bighorn sheep, Rocky Mountain goats, Pronghorn antelope, black bears and mountain lions. Republican Sen. Ray Scott of Grand Junction is the measure’s sponsor.

Fifty bucks seems like a good deal, what exactly does that include though?

The raffle tickets are $50 each and a person can buy up to 25 tickets; each ticket enters the purchaser into a raffle for each species hunting license.

The bill dictates that some of the money from the raffle will go to administer the drawing, while half would go to wildlife habitat conservation or restoration, recruitment of new hunters or protecting the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The model has seven basic principles, including that “individuals may legally kill certain wild animals under strict guidelines for food and fur, self-defense and property protection. Laws restrict against the casual killing of wildlife merely for antlers, horns or feathers.”

Animal rights groups are already labeling the bill as permission to trophy hunt.

Non-hunters don’t line up to donate money to save wildlife. It will only take a few hunters to accomplish the goal vs. the vast amounts of wine and veggie trays at parties designed for liberals to mingle while claiming to save the planet.

Colorado Voters for Animals and Conservation Colorado are both opposed, as is Maxine Mager of Creative Acres, a no-kill animal sanctuary in Brighton. She told Colorado Politics that the idea sends a bad message about Colorado “and it’s narrow thinking, if the goal is to raise money for wildlife programs. I think you’d make more money, if that’s really the goal, if you open it up to more people and not just hunters,” she said.

Mager plans to testify at Tuesday’s hearing and will suggest other things that could be raffled off instead of killing animals. She wouldn’t say what those other things might be, but added that conservationists, hunters and animal-rights advocates could agree on them.

Mager called the bill “a symbol we’re sending” about killing iconic animals. “It’s about how we want Colorado to be represented.”

Scott is expected to offer amendments to the bill when it goes through the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday, although how those amendments will change the bill is unknown.

The bill’s fiscal analysis points out that the raffle is expected to bring in about $277,635, but the analysis also said the bill will cost the state slightly more than that to administer the raffle and the other programs tied to it.

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17 COMMENTS

  1. Hey Maxine, I got a creative idea for you: Get all your buds together and buy raffle tickets. Lots of raffle tickets. I’m betting that there’s no law that says you have to USE a license you win.

    You’ll be putting your money into conservation and simultaneously saving critters from our bloodthirsty clutches. Isn’t that a win-win?

    Of course, you’d have to be willing to put your money where your mouth is at…

    • (Shakes head slowly)
      Tsk, tsk, tsk… Mr. Beeblebrox, you poor, silly man… do you not understand yet that spending their OWN money is not how they will save the Earth… they’ll use the force of law to make you pay for it – but without the fresh meat in the freezer in return.
      🤠

  2. I’ve eaten about half of the critters on that list.

    Elk – Mmm…*elk meat*

    Deer – also good, though I’m not such a fan of the ground deer burgers.

    Black Bear – Er. Mah. Gawd! Slow stewed bear meat is about the best eatin’ there is.

    Bighorn sheep – I don’t like lamb of any sort. Didn’t care for this at all.

    Mountain goat – great flavor, but very chewy when I had it.

    Would like to try moose and antelope. Can’t bring myself to eat any sort of big cat, so no mountain lion.

  3. I don’t believe that it would cost a quarter million to administer this raffle, what “other” stuff tied to it that would cost so much?

  5. Instead of getting actual gun bills through, they worry about this. The current tag and point system works just fine.

    • When’s the last time you pulled a buck tag?? Trust me, it doesn’t work well… most end up waiting 4 years or more for a tag..

  6. Interesting. Oregon just started a raffle this year. I’m buying several.
    Ours are only 4.50 for deer, and 11.50 for elk, goat, bighorn, etc.
    that’s for single ticket sales. Prices get cheaper when you buy packs of 20 or 40.

    • Are the tags only for the person who buys them, or could you buy a mess and hand ’em out to your hunting buddies?

      • Well, the form requires my hunting license number, so my guess is they are for the person buying the tickets.
        But, if I knew my buddies license number, I could buy for him.

    • THIS!!! SOOOOO THIS!!!!!

      Last year I went up with a bull tag, and literally walked up to at least 1/2 a dozen 5+ point bucks.. I could have hit them with a big stick I was so close…

      And this was in Gunnison….

      And no, no bull for me !!!

    • I started hunting in general in norther Colorado when I was 18. My first ever tag was for Mule, but only doe. I could understand a draw system if there was a scientific reason to limit that year’s tags (i.e. herds were close to the equilibrium to maintain ecosystem), but with the herds being massive it makes no sense. One only has to look up what they decided to do to thin the Elk hers in Estes Park to realize that DPW and Colorado Politicians don’t get it.

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