Oregon To Outlaw Hunting? Why Your Right To Hunt Matters!

If you haven’t heard about the radical Initiative Petition IP13 in Oregon gathering steam to make a ballot appearance in 2022 then it’s time to sit up and pay attention. The signatures to get this initiative on the ballot are stacking up as we speak! (Colorado had a brush with this recently too but their Supreme Court shot it down.)

In a nutshell IP13 is aimed at making hunting, trapping, fishing, and select animal husbandry practices illegal and goes so far as to recommend that people engaged in the above activities or teaching them should become felons and sex offenders.  

Now, that’s an incredibly broad stroke and when I first heard about this back in the spring I Googled it and was shocked and appalled at what I found. A simple Google search and 30 minutes of reading will reveal all you’ll need to know about IP13 including the whacko faction in support of this lunacy. 

Although not much surprises me anymore I found myself wondering, how on earth did this happen? How are hunting, fishing and trapping criminal acts and how is artificially inseminating livestock a sex offense? 

Then it hit me… I remembered wondering why a spate of states, beginning with Vermont in 1777 and most recently Utah in 2020, proposed and subsequently passed “Right to hunt and fish constitutional amendments”. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it and still do but I did not understand why they were necessary. I think I get it now. 

Map of Right to Hunt States: 

https://ballotpedia.org/Right_to_hunt_and_fish_constitutional_amendments

Looking at the map of “Right to Hunt” states there is zero coincidence that the two states where these radical petitions are rearing their ugly heads have no constitutional protections for hunting, fishing or trapping. Hmmmm, seems like legislators in Right to Hunt states saw the writing on the wall. In fact, when I dug a bit deeper that’s exactly what I unearthed… 

“[The constitutional amendment] is a pre-emptive strike, so to speak, making it more difficult for any nutty animal rights activist or anti-hunting organization to target Oklahoma.

If the measure is approved, any attempt to ban the hunting of any traditional or non-threatened species in Oklahoma would require amending the constitution.

So if state lawmakers were to go insane and wanted to eliminate deer hunting, for example, it couldn’t be done without a vote of the people.”

—Ed Godfrey

Now, a petition is not a law and once Americans understand that this whacked out ideology would basically make cheeseburgers illegal I seriously doubt any real world impact will be seen from petitions like IP13. However, the folks behind this aren’t morons and they fully understand that by giving their petition a slick name like “The Abuse, Neglect, and Assault Exemption Modification and Improvement Act” and marketing it to the low hanging fruit of places like Portland they will easily get the signatures needed to put IP13 on the ballot and like Colorado learned with its precious wolves, once it’s on the ballot, anything goes! 

Thank God I live in a Right to Hunt state but if you happen to live in a state that does not have this valuable constitutional amendment such as, South Dakota, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada (yup, the list is long and alarming) you may want to seriously consider starting a push to get it on the ballot for 2022, afterall, two can play that game. 

Source Links

https://www.rmef.org/elk-network/radical-oregon-initiative-attacks-hunting-agriculture-and-meat/

https://ballotpedia.org/Right_to_hunt_and_fish_constitutional_amendments#cite_note-6]

https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1561&context=wmborj

https://www.yesonip13.org/about

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