Myth: Amendment 83 will bring back steel-jaw traps and other methods Colorado voters already banned.

Fact: No. The trap ban stays. In 1996, Colorado voters wrote it into the Constitution. Amendment 83 does not amend or repeal that ban. The two provisions would sit side by side, and courts read related constitutional provisions together so that each one still applies. Seasons stay. Licenses stay. The rules on the books stay. Science stays in charge.

Initiative 302 does not amend or repeal this existing ban — so the Measure cannot and does not change existing law. If adopted, Initiative 302’s constitutional provisions would sit alongside the existing bans on certain hunting practices. … The constitution would continue to prohibit the use of trapping devices banned by voters in 1996.

The 1996 amendment already says what a traditional method is: hunting with firearms, archery, fishing equipment, and hand-held implements. It says leghold traps, poisons, and snares are not among them. Amendment 83 does not change that definition.

Myth: Putting “traditional methods” in the Constitution will set off lawsuits and undo wildlife law.

Fact: Other states have already adopted this language. Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas protect hunting and fishing by traditional methods in their constitutions. Voters passed those amendments by wide margins. None of them has produced the court calamity opponents describe, and none has been used to revive a trap ban the voters already passed. Colorado’s measure goes further than most of those states: it keeps the state’s power to regulate for science, public safety, and the future of hunting and fishing.

Myth: This is the only way to stop cruel practices.

Fact: Those practices are already illegal. The texts saying otherwise come from Humane World, the Washington group that spent millions trying to ban cat hunting in Colorado in 2024 and lost. Amendment 83 protects hunting and fishing as they are today.