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.