By Chris Dorsey
Modern politics has a gift for parodying itself, but even by Colorado standards, this one is hard to improve upon: the campaign warning voters against a constitutional right to hunt and fish has found itself with a hunter delivering the message. Enter Eric Washburn, president of the newly formed Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation, who has come forward to explain why hunters should be alarmed by the prospect of protecting hunting.
Washburn says he hunts big game, holds multiple Colorado licenses, and has hunted waterfowl. Fine. Nobody needs to inspect his freezer. The interesting question isn’t whether Eric Washburn hunts; it’s how a professional public-affairs consultant with a long record of advocating wildlife policies frequently at odds with traditional sporting constituencies became the man being presented as the voice of Colorado hunters. Calling him representative of the wider sporting community is a little like sending the tofu burger to address the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association: technically everyone is discussing dinner, but somebody may have wandered into the wrong banquet hall.
And therein lies the comedy. Washburn’s pitch is that constitutional protection for hunting could endanger hunting. In other words: fellow sportsmen, we must act now to protect hunting from the grave threat of being protected. Political satire usually has to exaggerate. This time it can simply take notes.
Washburn’s organization argues that the amendment could trigger litigation over existing hunting regulations, weaken public support for the sport and interfere with flexible wildlife management. There is certainly an argument to be made there, and people are free to make it. But the political theater is impossible to miss. Nothing says authentic representative of the sporting community quite like showing up to oppose constitutional protection for the activity that supposedly qualifies you to represent the sporting community in the first place.
The story gets more interesting when one looks beyond the camouflage. Washburn is a senior adviser to Pioneer Public Affairs, which describes him as a consultant who for the past 16 years has worked for private, nonprofit and philanthropic clients on energy and natural-resource issues. Before consulting, he worked in senior policy positions for Democratic Senate leaders Tom Daschle and Harry Reid. He also helped found the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, giving him genuine conservation credentials as well as a long résumé in professional public policy and advocacy.
None of that proves anything sinister, nor should it. Consultants are allowed to consult, and people who work in public affairs are allowed to hold opinions. But when an advocacy effort presents someone chiefly as a concerned hunter stepping out of elk camp to save wildlife management from dangerous constitutional meddling, it is reasonable to mention that his day job is, well, professional public affairs. That is not an accusation. It is context, and context has a funny way of making political branding look considerably less organic.
That distinction matters because Washburn’s published writings reveal a wildlife philosophy considerably more complicated than the generic image of the average Colorado deer or elk hunter.
In 2023, he defended Gov. Jared Polis’ appointments to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission against criticism from sportsmen, arguing that the traditional commission model was too narrowly focused and writing approvingly of commissioners bringing broader perspectives to wildlife policy amid concerns about climate change, habitat loss, and species extinction. That same year, he praised the creation of the Colorado Nature League and advocated greater attention and funding for non-game, threatened and endangered species. His writing also questioned Colorado’s treatment of species such as beavers and argued for a wider conception of wildlife management.
And then there are wolves. Washburn was an outspoken supporter of wolf restoration after Colorado voters approved reintroduction, and his previous writings urged the state to move forward while criticizing what he regarded as excessive alarm from opponents. Again, none of this disqualifies him from hunting. It does, however, make the image of Washburn as the spontaneously materialized Voice of Colorado Sportsmen considerably more amusing.
Perhaps somewhere in the Routt National Forest there is an enormous constituency of elk hunters who spend evenings around the campfire complaining that wildlife commissions have focused too much on game species, wondering whether wolves can be restored faster and talking about how best to increase funding for nongame programs. Perhaps they are out there in great numbers, silently cleaning rifles while debating beaver-management philosophy. Perhaps they simply keep very quiet.
Washburn’s organization also includes figures with histories that depart from what many sportsmen would regard as conventional hunting advocacy. Colorado Politics has reported that member Gary Skiba had previously been associated with Defenders of Wildlife and was described by that organization as the primary author of Colorado’s wolf conservation plan. Skiba’s appointment to represent sportspersons on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission ran into opposition in the Colorado Senate and was ultimately withdrawn. That doesn’t make these people secretly anti-hunting. It does make the branding somewhat spectacular.
The organization might more precisely have been named Colorado Hunters Who Agree With Many Organizations That Frequently Disagree With Colorado Hunters, although admittedly the logo would require a much larger trucker hat.
Then there is Wildlife for All, which has simultaneously urged journalists to investigate the political machinery behind the right-to-hunt amendment. Its public materials have encouraged scrutiny of the amendment’s architects, their motivations, and the larger national movement supporting constitutional hunting protections. Excellent. Journalists should investigate political campaigns. All of them.
If funding and affiliations matter when examining the amendment’s supporters, they matter just as much when reviewing its opponents. Who funds newly created opposition organizations? Who provides their communications strategy? What professional relationships exist among the people speaking publicly? Who recruited whom? Are consultants volunteering, billing clients, or simply participating as private citizens?
Those are not accusations. They are the sorts of questions reporters routinely ask when political advocacy arrives wearing the costume of spontaneous grassroots concern. Questions about Washburn’s professional background makes inquiries about funding, affiliations, and disclosure perfectly legitimate. An opposition movement that demands intense scrutiny of its adversaries can hardly clutch its pearls when somebody turns the flashlight around. Transparency, like science-based wildlife management, presumably works in both directions.
Meanwhile, the amendment itself is not quite the lawless wildlife-management apocalypse sometimes conjured by its critics. Colorado’s legislative analysis identifies the proposal as a constitutional right to hunt and fish, and its language preserves governmental authority to regulate wildlife when necessary for scientific conservation and management, public safety, or preservation of future hunting and fishing opportunities.
Legitimate legal questions surround terms such as “customary methods,” and detractors claim those words could invite litigation over existing restrictions. That debate belongs in the public square. What is harder to take seriously without at least a raised eyebrow is the suggestion that constitutional recognition of hunting somehow becomes self-evidently dangerous to hunters.
Which brings us back to Washburn and the strange little masterpiece of political branding surrounding him. Colorado is being asked to regard a professional natural-resources consultant, wolf-restoration advocate, and longtime champion of a wider reordering of traditional wildlife management as an especially authoritative spokesman for hunters concerned that hunting might become too constitutionally protected.
Maybe Washburn loves hunting. I have no reason to doubt that he does. But owning camouflage, drawing tags and occasionally carrying a rifle into the mountains no more makes someone representative of Colorado sportsmen than owning a pickup makes someone president of the ranchers’ association. The relevant question was never whether Washburn qualifies as a hunter. It is whether his political philosophy, work relationships, and public record qualify him to be marketed as the authentic voice of a sporting community whose traditional priorities he has repeatedly challenged.
That distinction matters, particularly when advocacy organizations are so keen to put “hunter” in large type while leaving the rest of the résumé in considerably smaller print. So by all means, let Eric Washburn speak. Let Wildlife for All speak. Let every organization on every side make its case, disclose its interests and explain who is paying the bills. But spare Colorado sportsmen the theatrical suggestion that opposing constitutional protection for hunting somehow becomes an expression of mainstream hunting culture simply because the person holding the microphone owns a hunting license.
Eric Washburn may be a hunter. But being the voice of Colorado hunters is another matter entirely.
One requires a tag. The other requires a constituency.
Chris Dorsey is a 30-year media veteran and founding partner of Dorsey Pictures.