Policy & Legislation

Does a “right to food” supersede a ban on Sunday hunting? That’s the question at the heart of a novel lawsuit filed in Maine last month. The plaintiffs, a husband and wife with four children, claim the state’s prohibition against Sunday hunting violates their “natural, inherent and unalienable right...

Hunters in the Commonwealth of Virginia are celebrating after an antiquated ban on Sunday hunting was lifted once and for all. As anticipated by Sunday hunting advocates, Senate Bill 8 was signed into law by Gov. Glenn Youngkin on April 5, 2022. The passage of SB8 will allow hunting every Sunday on...

State lawmakers recently approved a bill that would legalize Sunday hunting on public lands in Virginia. The legislation is now on its way to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s desk for signature. Senate Bill 8 passed the Virginia Senate in January and advanced on to the Virginia House of Delegates, where it was...

In 2017, the Wyoming Legislature passed a bill that allowed licensed, private game farms to collect wild sage grouse eggs, hatch them in captivity, and use them to artificially propagate the imperiled species. Many conservationists pushed back on the bill then and are fighting it again now. The bill...

Standing outside the capitol, surrounded by an impressive fleet of skiffs and fishing royalty, I realized passerbys on the main drag must be pretty intrigued by the growing group of individuals I was standing amongst. Some were wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and suit jackets, while others had on the...

With a new year comes new legislative sessions, new rule-making procedures, and new threats to hunting traditions from all the usual suspects. The start of 2022 was no exception. State game agencies from Arizona to Washington are facing renewed challenges to their season-setting measures, and...

Big changes are on the horizon for trail camera use in the state of Utah, following similar, recent bans in Arizona and Nevada. In an early January decision that divided the state’s hunting community, the Utah Wildlife Board voted to prohibit the use of all trail cameras during fall big game seasons...

President Joe Biden launched his first salvo at curbing gun violence this month with a slate of six executive orders aimed at regulating gun ownership, addressing mass shootings, and installing new leadership in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. In a speech announcing the orders...

Most trapping on public lands in New Mexico will become illegal if the governor signs SB 32, the “Wildlife Conservation & Public Safety Act.” The bill passed by the legislature last week with a one-vote margin, and if signed it would prohibit leghold, body-gripping, and cage traps, as well as snares...

For the first time since 1869, public lands will be open to hunting on Sundays in North Carolina. The Tar Heel State had been one of four states with outright hunting bans on Sunday, but that ends on Aug. 1, 2021. One hundred forty years after the 1869 “blue law” banned hunting on the Sabbath, the...

Representative Mike Simpson, Republican of Idaho, released a massive infrastructure proposal on Feb. 6 that would fundamentally restructure Pacific Northwest shipping and energy with the goal of rehabilitating Idaho’s remaining wild salmon and steelhead runs. Realizing a decades-long dream of...