Grand Slam Wildlife Hunting Raffle Senate Bill SB18-0137

Colorado Voters for Animals Opposes This Bill

Senator Ray Scott, District 7, Mesa County, has introduced a bill to create a raffle where, for $50, any hunter can have the chance to win one of ten licenses to kill an iconic Colorado animal of their choosing, such as a Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep. Under his proposal raffle tickets would be sold for $50 each, with a per-hunter limit of 25 tickets.

"The Grand Slam Wildlife Hunting Raffle," is unnecessary. Its purpose has nothing to do with predator control or culling over abundant populations. Instead, it appears Scott wants to entice trophy hunters to join in a game where winners can check off their kills on a scorecard, much like checking off items on a shopping list. The raffle would also entice out of state hunters whose home state either bans killing these species or lacks a native population of the desired trophy animal.

Scott believes the raffle will generate $277,000 of revenue in the first year, although it’s not entirely clear where this money would go. According to Colorado Parks& Wildlife (which does not benefit directly from the raffle), last year visitors and wildlife viewers generated $3.3 Billion dollars in revenues, versus hunting fees of $919 million. Obviously, more people prefer viewing Colorado’s wildlife over killing it.

Contact your elected lawmakers and tell them you oppose SB18-0137, the Grand Slam Wildlife Raffle. If you don’t know who your elected officials are you can go to https://leg.colorado.gov/find-my-legislator to look them up.

Colorado Voters for Animals has been busy in 2016.  We hosted 4 sessions of the Colorado Legislative Animal Welfare (CLAW) caucus; took positions on five pieces of state legislation and three pieces of federal legislation; scored and surveyed lawmakers to hold them accountable; endorsed dozens of candidates; and beat our own record raising funds to support humane campaigns.

As the only group in the state organized to help get humane candidates elected and show inhumane ones the door we feel an obligation to you, our animal-loving constituency, to work hard and grow our influence.  We're thrilled that 94% of our endorsed candidates won in Colorado but we recognize there is so much more to do.

For wildlife in Colorado, the news is both good and bad.

Let's Elect Wildlife Protectors!

The good news has come largely from Colorado voters demanding protections for wildlife.  Some meaningful wildlife problems have been solved here by ballot initiative, where an issue is placed on the ballot for voters to decide the outcome.  Through this process we have banned snares and leghold traps, which are incredibly cruel; hounding and baiting black bears (think dogs chasing bears up trees, and food or scents being used to lure them in); and hunting bears by any means in the spring and summer when cubs could be orphaned by a hunter taking a sow.  Colorado also has banned the ridiculous practice of owning dangerous wild animals as pets, like big cats, bears, wolves and primates.

I adopted my pit bull, G, from a rescue. She was in an overwhelmed shelter in a remote area of Illinois, where there were/are a plethora of pit bulls being bred, and not enough homes for them to occupy. The euthanasia rate is unbearable, and yet the dogs just keep on coming. Unfortunately this story isn’t one of a kind, it happens around the country. To make matters more challenging, there are areas where BSL (breed specific legislation) exist, which only makes finding a home for these dogs even harder.

"Ag-Gag" is Bait and We're Not Falling For It