Hunting: Honoring tradition, preserving heritage
Throughout history, hunting has served as a vital part of our nation’s heritage and culture. It embodies the rural community and lifestyle, with many hunters describing a deep connection to the land and reverence for wildlife. Each year, sportsmen invest significant time immersing themselves in nature to understand wildlife behavior, and actively participate in ongoing conservation efforts. Now this time-honored way of life is being threatened in Colorado by Proposition 127 — a proposed ban on hunting mountain lions, bobcats or lynx.
Colorado rancher and hunting activist Christine Koeppen is aiming to break stereotypes and raise awareness on the hunting and fur pelt ban being proposed on the ballots in November, and why it’s so much bigger than just the state of Colorado.
Hunting continues to be the most effective, cost-efficient, and socially acceptable method of population control. Because wildlife is a renewable resource with a surplus, hunters help control wildlife populations at a healthy balance for the habitat, while providing information from the field that wildlife managers need. Funding from hunting licenses has also helped many game and non-game species recover from dwindling populations. The surplus game animals that hunters harvest usually would have died from other causes.
The official description for Proposition 127 states, “The voters of Colorado find and declare that any trophy hunting of mountain lions, bobcats, or lynx is inhumane, serves no socially acceptable or ecologically beneficial purpose, and fails to further public safety. Trophy hunting is practiced primarily for the display of an animal’s head, fur, or other body parts, rather than for utilization of the meat. Moreover, it is almost always conducted by unsporting means, including, but not limited to, using packs of dogs with electronic devices to pursue and entrap affected animals in places from which they cannot escape in order to achieve the kill. Therefore, it is appropriate and necessary to ban trophy hunting of mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx in Colorado.”
“I think the biggest misconception is that hunters just like to kill for fun; that it’s just a sport to kill animals and that we don’t care about those animals’ well-being or the way that we take the animals,” said Koeppen. “To combat that, I always offer education — ask me questions, ask me about the process, ask me about why we do it. We hunt because we live off of the meat, first and foremost. Then we hunt because that manages the populations, and regulated hunting has never led to the threatening or endangering of any animal species. A lot of the narrative out there is that people do not eat mountain lions, and that is completely false. It’s illegal in Colorado to not prepare the meat for human consumption. Mountain lion is our family’s very favorite wild game. I would choose it over a deer any day, and lynx are already protected by both state and federal law and no hunting or trapping is allowed.”
“If you eat meat, or you have leather seats in your car, or any kind of an animal byproduct in your house, you have to be okay with the harvesting of animals,” she said, “You have to understand it. The animal didn’t just all of a sudden appear in the grocery store. People have to start getting back to the reality of that. Our youth has become sheltered from the actual process of harvesting animals and why it’s important and how it’s done.”
Each year, hunters have to submit applications for the chance to be “drawn” to participate in a certain animal hunting season. In 2023, Colorado Parks and Wildlife sold 2,599 mountain lion licenses, and 502 were harvested. The projected statewide population size of independent lions is around 3,800-4,400, a vast increase from around 200 in the 1960s. Lion hunting in Colorado is very highly regulated, and the harvest limits are determined annually to ensure that lion mortality objectives are not exceeded. CPW officials also require hunters to refrain voluntarily from harvesting females in units managed to maintain stable populations.
Colorado is also home to the largest elk population in North America, with an estimated 280,000 across the state. About 250,000 hunters pursue elk each year in Colorado, harvesting nearly 50,000. This population wasn’t always flourishing, however. The Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59 ushered in a period of intense exploitation that did not cease until the early 1900s when Colorado began enacting strict hunting regulations to conserve its remaining elk. They have since been successfully restored, but excessively large elk populations can result in overgrazing that threatens ecosystem stability.
“A lot of people like to say if you just let nature take its course, everything would balance out. Unfortunately, as much as we wish that would happen, it won’t because there’s not enough natural resources for all of the animals to survive and for all the predators to get the meals that they need,” Koeppen said. “There’s just not enough. They have to be managed because these predators won’t stop. That’s exactly why animals become endangered and they go extinct because there is no management.”
In states like California, where mountain lion hunting is illegal, lion vs. human conflict is growing at an alarming rate. “In March, a lion attacked two adult men, killing one of them in El Dorado County. This same county is on track to see 200-plus mountain lion attacks on domestic animals in 2024. On Sept. 3, a 5-year-old boy was attacked by a mountain lion while he was playing close to a group of adults at Malibu Creek State Park, near Los Angeles,” said Mike Costello, a conservation advocate in California.
“We need to respect the land. They’re not making any more of it, so we need to take care of it because it takes care of our wildlife, which then takes care of us. It’s a natural resource that we have to manage and that we have to keep for future generations,” Koeppen said. “Even if you have nothing to do with hunting, it is important that we protect these lands, that we put this money back into these lands through hunting programs, through fishing programs that the sportsmen really shoulder most of the money for.”
According to the Colorado Wildlife Council, “Hunters and anglers are an essential part of Colorado’s economy. Together, hunting and fishing bring over $3.25 billion to Colorado every year, impacting all 64 counties, and supporting more than 25,000 full-time jobs across the state, from small businesses to manufacturers to the tourism industry. License fees also support jobs in conservation and allow Colorado’s conservation programs to operate without reliance on tax funding. Without hunting and fishing, these programs might have to be funded by Colorado taxpayers.”
Koeppen is passionate about educating the next generation about the importance of preserving this way of life. “It teaches our children survival. It teaches them about connection with the land and respecting animals and something that is greater than themselves. Protecting the wetlands, grasslands, and forests are all part of hunting, and that’s what we’re teaching our children. But every resident should care because it’s about their wildlife. It’s about our wildlife populations and management. It doesn’t matter if you’re directly involved or not, it’s important if you like to see deer out your back window, if you like to go up to the mountains and go hiking or biking or enjoy any of our state parks or our open spaces.”
On top of the proposed hunting ban, the city and county of Denver are facing a proposed fur ban. This initiative aims to prohibit the manufacture, distribution, display, sale or trade of animal fur products in the city and county.
The proposed ban would prohibit many exhibitors from selling items at the National Western Stock Show, potentially jeopardizing the stock show’s financial ability to remain in Denver. In 2023, the NWSS supported $171 million in net economic activity across Colorado. It would also severely impact the Denver March Powwow and the Indian Market & Southwest Art Fest, limiting their ability to attract vendors and jeopardizing their financial sustainability. The Denver March Powwow, alone, features 1,500 dancers from nearly 100 tribes from 38 states and three Canadian provinces and hosts 170 vendors who sell a variety of Native American products. Small business hatmakers would also be affected by the fur ban, and the sale ban of many flies and fishing lures used by anglers would impact fishing shops, tackle stores and fishing guide operations, many of which are small businesses.
With these proposed bans hitting ballots in Colorado, Koeppen urges those in the western industry to stay vigilant. “I feel like this is just the beginning of the attack on the western lifestyle because, yes, it’s starting off with hunting and now it’s going to the fur ban, which is our cowboy hats. Who’s to say it won’t escalate into banning rodeo? It’s just going to be a really big snowball, and I hope that everybody in the western world can see that and recognize that.”
Koeppen feels immense pride to be able to preserve this traditional lifestyle. “It means everything to me. It means the future of our children, and if they don’t have the opportunity to be with these animals in the wild and see the places that they can see because of the national forest and the parks, it’d be devastating to our younger generations. It’s tradition. It’s history. It’s in our DNA. It’s part of all of us.”
