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On a chilly October day in Denver, a crowd of Colorado sportsmen and -women gathered on the Capitol steps to rally against a proposed mountain lion and bobcat hunting ban. Amid the sea of camo, blue jeans, and blaze orange, I stood next to two lion hounds, Nose and Rosie, and their owners, who\u2019d driven there from Craig that morning. The two old dogs whined softly at my feet as a big, bearded trapper named Dan Gates addressed the crowd through the microphone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you lose it, ladies and gentlemen, you don\u2019t get it back,\u201d boomed Gates, the executive director of Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management<\/a>.<\/p>\n And if I wasn\u2019t paying attention, I would\u2019ve thought Gates was just talking about big cat hunting in Colorado, which was put on the chopping block this year through a citizen-led ballot initiative spearheaded by an animal rights group, Cats Aren\u2019t Trophies<\/a>. If it passes by a simple majority in November, the measure would ban all hunting and trapping of mountain lions and bobcats in Colorado. The ban\u2019s supporters say these activities are ugly, inhumane, and bad for wildlife. But because they were unable to convince state wildlife commissioners or the legislature of their opinions, they are now relying on the non-hunting general public to weigh in on predator hunting, which is one of the most nuanced facets of modern wildlife management.<\/p>\n The public should not be mistaken, however. It was those three words \u2014 modern wildlife management \u2014 that Gates was referring to when he mentioned losing it.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n Photo by Dac Collins<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Because on the other side of Rosie and Nose stood a German shorthaired pointer and a bird hunter, neither of whom had chased a cougar a day in their lives. Next to them was a fly shop owner, and the more I looked the more I saw: Ducks Unlimited caps, Public Land Owner hoodies, and a lone New Yorker who\u2019s never bought a Colorado hunting license and likely never will.\u00a0<\/p>\n All these disparate sportsmen and -women found themselves rubbing shoulders on Oct. 18 because when you get down to it, Proposition 127 is about much more than cougar hunting. It\u2019s an attempt to use big-cat hunting to turn public opinion against nearly 60 years of wildlife science and conservation success. The ballot measure does this through clever wordplay by creating a definition for \u201ctrophy hunting\u201d that is synonymous with hunting itself \u2014 a definition that could then be used, in Colorado and elsewhere, to eliminate any other type of regulated hunting.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you start defining that phrase, it sets a precedent \u2026 and then you get into a conundrum of interpretation. Is trophy hunting actually hunting? Because that\u2019s now statute, right?\u201d Gates says. \u201cThose are the things we\u2019re concerned about. And if anybody thinks their [CAT\u2019s] intent is to do anything other than to ban all <\/em>hunting, then they\u2019re not paying attention.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This creates a slippery slope, indeed. Since regulated hunting (or \u201ctrophy hunting\u201d as CAT\u2019s supporters would call it) is a core component of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation<\/a>. Although it flies in the face of most everything anti-hunters want to tell you, our ability to take a data-driven and science-based approach and manage our wildlife through selective harvest and consumptive use has actually allowed those species to flourish. Colorado\u2019s mountain lions are perhaps the best example.<\/p>\n \n