Oregon Is One Step From Criminalizing Hunting and Fishing — And It Could Happen to Your State Next

Dave Haller has guided deer and elk hunters in the Cascade foothills east of Eugene for 22 years. He built his guiding business the old-fashioned way — one client at a time, mostly word of mouth, a reputation for knowing the country and putting people on animals. He employs two part-time guides. He runs about 40 trips a season. It's not a fortune, but it's his livelihood and his life.

He found out about Initiative Petition 28 the same way a lot of Oregon hunters did — someone forwarded him a social media post. He read it twice, figured he must be misunderstanding something, and read it a third time.

He wasn't misunderstanding anything. If IP28 passes in November, what Dave does for a living becomes a criminal act under Oregon state law.

"I'm not a political guy," he told us. "I vote, I follow the rules, I teach my clients to be ethical in the field. And now some group in Portland wants to put me in handcuffs for taking somebody elk hunting. That's where we are."

That's exactly where we are. And if you think this is just an Oregon problem, you're not paying close enough attention.

What Oregon's IP28 actually says — in plain English, not activist language

Initiative Petition 28 goes by the name the PEACE Act — People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions. The name is a masterclass in making something radical sound reasonable. Strip away the branding and here's what it actually does.

Under current Oregon law, hunting, fishing, trapping, livestock farming, animal research, and pest control are explicitly exempted from the state's animal cruelty statutes. Those exemptions exist because the legislature recognized, reasonably, that a rancher raising cattle and a person beating a dog are not doing the same thing.

IP28 removes those exemptions. All of them.

That's it. That's the whole mechanism. No new law needed, no separate statute required. By erasing the exemptions, IP28 reclassifies every one of those activities as a potential criminal offense under Oregon's existing animal abuse code — ORS 167.315 through 167.333. Hunting a deer becomes legally indistinguishable from animal cruelty. Catching a salmon becomes grounds for criminal prosecution. Raising chickens for eggs becomes animal abuse.

The initiative also defines "animal" broadly enough to include fish, which closes the loophole some hoped would protect anglers. It carves out exactly two exceptions: self-defense and veterinary care. Your dog can still get neutered. That's about the extent of it.

The Oregon Hunters Association estimates that roughly one million Oregonians would be at risk of criminal liability under this law — the state's 330,000-plus licensed hunters, its 500,000-plus licensed anglers, its 37,000 farms and ranches, and the 80,000-plus workers they employ.

How 126,000 people signed something most didn't understand

The signature campaign behind IP28 has been running since early 2024. By May 20, 2026, the campaign submitted 120,735 signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State — exceeding the 117,173 valid signatures required to qualify for the November ballot. By the final submission log on May 29, that number had grown to 126,115.

Here's the part that should make your blood boil.

Multiple reports from hunters, anglers, and rural Oregonians describe signature gatherers who were actively misleading about what they were collecting signatures for. People were told they were signing a petition to stop animal cruelty. They were not told they were signing a petition to make hunting and fishing criminal acts.

Oregon Hunters Association Executive Director Todd Adkins flagged this in April, after OHA received $50,000 in donations to specifically combat what they called a "misleading" petition campaign. Local television station KOBI-TV covered the story. The signature-gathering tactics drew coverage from outlets across the state.

The PEACE Act's chief petitioner, David Michelson, told the Willamette Weekly in January that he's "under no illusion that IP28 will pass this year" — but that forcing a vote would "help people think differently" and "normalize the conversation." He compared his movement to the women's suffrage movement.

That framing tells you everything about the long game being played here. The goal isn't necessarily to win in November 2026. The goal is to get it on the ballot, make hunters defend their way of life in a statewide vote, and plant a seed that future campaigns can water. This is a strategy, not a single act.

What happens to Oregon hunters and anglers if this passes in November

Let's be specific, because the stakes deserve specificity.

If IP28 qualifies and Oregon voters approve it, here is what happens the next morning:

Every licensed hunter in Oregon wakes up in a state where hunting is classified as animal abuse under state law. The same statutes that prosecute people for starving dogs or staging cockfights would now apply to pulling the trigger on a legal elk tag.

Every angler drops a line in a river or a lake knowing that act is now a criminal offense. Not a ticket. A criminal offense.

Oregon's guide industry — businesses like Dave Haller's, built over decades — becomes instantly illegal. Outfitters, hunting lodges, fishing charters operating on Oregon waters, bait shops, taxidermists serving hunters, processors handling wild game — all of it becomes legally precarious at minimum, criminally liable at worst.

Oregon's nine federally recognized Tribes, who hold treaty-protected hunting and fishing rights that predate Oregon's statehood, are not exempted from IP28. The initiative's proponents have not addressed this. The legal collision between a state ballot initiative and federally protected treaty rights would be immediate and ugly.

And then there is the conservation funding collapse that nobody in the mainstream press is talking about. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife operates on a budget of more than $180 million annually. The overwhelming majority of that budget comes from hunting and fishing license fees, tag sales, and federal excise taxes collected under the Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Acts — both of which are funded by hunters and anglers buying gear. Eliminate hunting and fishing, and you eliminate ODFW's funding. Eliminate ODFW's funding, and you eliminate the habitat restoration, hatchery programs, species recovery work, and public land access that benefit every Oregonian — including the people who never pick up a rod or a rifle.

Hunting and fishing don't just feed families. They fund the wildlife that everyone else enjoys from a distance. That is not an opinion. It is how the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation has worked for over a century.

Why Democrats and Republicans both oppose it — and why that might not matter

Opposition to IP28 is genuinely bipartisan, which is rare enough in 2026 that it deserves acknowledgment.

Oregon's Legislative Sportsmen's Caucus issued a joint statement of opposition co-signed by Senator David Brock Smith, a Republican from Port Orford, and Senator Anthony Broadman, a Democrat from Bend. Republican gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan called it an attack on Oregon's economy and food supply. Democratic Governor Tina Kotek, who is not known for her pro-hunting positions, also opposes the initiative.

The organizational opposition is extensive. The Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Cattlemen's Association, Oregon Dairy Farmers Association, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Ducks Unlimited Oregon, Safari Club International, the Coastal Conservation Association, the National Wild Turkey Federation, and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership have all come out against IP28.

On paper, this looks like a measure that can't win. It's opposed by both parties' gubernatorial candidates, by the sitting governor, by the legislature's bipartisan sportsmen's caucus, and by every major conservation and agricultural organization in the state.

But here's what hunters need to understand: ballot initiatives in Oregon don't require bipartisan opposition to fail. They require votes. And in a state where the population is heavily concentrated in the Portland metro area — where most residents have no connection to hunting, fishing, or agriculture — you cannot assume that political opposition from Salem translates into a November loss.

Oregon's electorate skews urban. A plurality of Oregon voters have never bought a hunting or fishing license. They have not lived a life where their food came from a field or a river. And when animal rights groups spend the summer and fall running emotional advertising featuring images of animals being killed, framed as a cruelty issue rather than a hunting issue, some of those voters will nod along without knowing what they're actually voting for.

This is winnable for the anti-hunting side. Not likely. But winnable. Anyone telling you this is a sure loss isn't paying attention to the modern ballot initiative playbook.

This is the third version of this initiative. Here's the playbook

IP28 did not appear out of nowhere. It is the third iteration of the same campaign, refined over six years.

The first version, Initiative Petition 13, was filed in 2020. It failed to qualify for the ballot. The campaign learned, regrouped, and refiled as Initiative Petition 3 for the 2024 ballot. IP3 also fell short of signatures — and within weeks, the same group refiled as IP28 for 2026, with a more organized signature-gathering operation and better-funded infrastructure.

Each cycle, they've gotten closer. IP13 failed cleanly. IP3 came closer. IP28 has now exceeded the signature threshold. The trajectory is not random.

The Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation put it plainly in their statement opposing IP28: beyond the immediate threat to Oregon, this kind of initiative poses a direct threat to the North American Model of Wildlife Management — the funding and conservation framework that has guided successful wildlife recovery in the United States for over a century. If IP28 establishes a precedent in Oregon, similar campaigns in California, Washington, Colorado, and other states with large urban populations become more viable, not less.

This is a playbook. Oregon is the test run. Hunters in Idaho, Montana, Washington, California, and every other state with a ballot initiative process need to understand that what happens in Oregon in November doesn't stay in Oregon.

What Oregon hunters and anglers — and everyone else — can do right now before July 2

The immediate deadline is July 2, 2026. That's when Oregon's Secretary of State finishes verifying signatures and IP28 either qualifies for the November ballot or it doesn't. Between now and then, here's what matters.

Register to vote in Oregon if you haven't. This sounds basic. Do it anyway. Make sure your registration is current. Oregon uses automatic voter registration, but verify your status at sos.oregon.gov before the deadline.

Support the Oregon Hunters Association. OHA is the tip of the spear on this fight. Their Hunter Victory Fund is specifically dedicated to combating IP28. Every dollar goes toward voter education, advertising, and the legal and political infrastructure needed to defeat this at the ballot box. Visit oregonhunters.org to donate or become a member.

Talk to your non-hunting friends and family now — before November. This is the most underrated action you can take. Most non-hunters who would vote against IP28 don't know it exists yet. When they find out that voting yes would make it a crime to take their kid fishing, most of them will vote no. But they have to know first. The conversation you have at the dinner table or in the break room this summer may be more valuable than any organizational campaign.

If you're not in Oregon, watch this closely. Contact your state's hunting advocacy organizations and ask whether similar initiatives are being filed in your state. The answer, in several states, is that groundwork is already being laid. Arizona, California, Washington, and Colorado have all been targeted by similar campaigns in recent years. The national animal rights infrastructure that funds these efforts does not see state borders as obstacles.

Make noise. Write your Oregon state legislators. Contact your representatives at the federal level about protecting the Pittman-Robertson Act and the Dingell-Johnson Act from state-level interference. Share accurate information — not outrage posts, but factual explainers — with people in your network who don't hunt or fish but would oppose criminalizing it if they understood what was actually being proposed.

The July 2 deadline is close. The November vote is closer than it feels.

The bigger picture

Dave Haller, the guide east of Eugene, has been hunting these ridges since he was 14 years old. His father taught him. He's spent the last two decades teaching others. The relationship between a hunter and the land they hunt — the seasons, the animals, the ethics, the discipline — is not a hobby. It's a culture. It's a conservation system. It's a way of passing something real down to the next generation.

No activist group in Portland built that. No ballot initiative can replace it once it's gone.

The fight against IP28 is not just about Oregon. It's about whether the urban majority in any state can vote away a tradition that predates the state itself — a tradition that funds the wildlife management systems keeping those same ecosystems alive.

That question is going to get answered in Oregon in November. The answer matters everywhere.

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Sources

1. Oregon Hunters Association. Campaign and opposition materials. oregonhunters.org.
2. GearJunkie. Coverage of Oregon IP28 / PEACE Act. gearjunkie.com.
3. MeatEater Conservation News. IP28 reporting and analysis. themeateater.com.
4. Ballotpedia. Oregon Initiative Petition 28 overview. ballotpedia.org.
5. Oregon Capital Chronicle. Legislative and political coverage. oregoncapitalchronicle.com.
6. Oregon Elections Division / Secretary of State. Signature verification and ballot qualification. sos.oregon.gov.
7. Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation. Statement opposing IP28. congressionalsportsmen.org.
8. KATU News. Oregon ballot initiative coverage. katu.com.
9. KOBI-TV. Signature-gathering and OHA opposition reporting. kobi5.com.
10. Willamette Weekly. David Michelson / PEACE Act petitioner interview. wweek.com.

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