One state is just 20,000 signatures away from a ballot measure that would ban hunting, fishing, trapping, and more

Oregon is edging toward a ballot fight that could turn into one of the loudest rural-versus-urban clashes the state has seen in years, because the proposal on the table doesn’t just tweak a season here or a tag limit there – it takes a hammer to the whole structure.

FOX 12 Oregon reported last week that animal-rights advocates are pushing Initiative Petition 28, a measure that would dramatically change how animals are treated under state law, with sweeping effects that supporters say are about protection from cruelty, and opponents say would rip the heart out of entire ways of life.

At the same time, Ricky, the host of the hunting and taxidermy YouTube channel Good Taxidermy, warned his audience that Oregon is now uncomfortably close to putting that idea in front of voters, calling it something every hunter, angler, and outdoorsman should be watching like a hawk.

The numbers are what make this feel real instead of theoretical. FOX 12 Oregon said organizers must submit 117,173 valid signatures by July 2 to qualify for the November ballot, and Ricky told viewers the signature count was already hovering around the high 90,000s, meaning they’re roughly one strong push away from crossing the line.

Whether it passes is another question, but the fact it could appear on a statewide ballot at all is the part that’s setting nerves on edge.

What Initiative Petition 28 Would Actually Do

FOX 12 Oregon laid it out clearly: Initiative Petition 28 would remove many long-standing exemptions in Oregon’s animal cruelty laws, and under the initiative, most activities that hurt or kill animals would become criminal offenses.

That’s the key detail that makes people’s eyes widen, because the proposal doesn’t read like a single-issue hunting bill or a narrow trapping restriction. It reads like a rewrite of what the state considers criminal harm to animals, and it expands protections far beyond household pets.

The station explained that if the measure makes the ballot and voters approve it in November, the protections that currently apply to pets like dogs and cats would extend to wild animals, livestock, and animals used in research, essentially changing the legal footing for huge parts of Oregon’s outdoor and agricultural economy.

Supporters call it the PEACE Act, which FOX 12 Oregon described as short for “People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions,” and that name is doing a lot of work, because it frames the entire proposal as a moral cleanup of loopholes rather than a direct attack on hunting or farming.

Under the initiative, FOX 12 Oregon reported, exemptions would remain for self-defense and veterinary care, which means the language isn’t pretending animals and humans are identical in every situation. Still, the big change is that the routine, legal exemptions that currently allow hunting, fishing, livestock practices, and research would be stripped down dramatically.

The easiest way to say it is this: instead of carving out special lanes where killing or harming animals is allowed under state law, the proposal flips the default, so the act of harming or killing animals becomes presumptively criminal unless it falls into a narrow exception.

And once you do that, you don’t just hit one activity – you hit everything.

Why Supporters Call It “Protection,” And Critics Call It A Shutdown

FOX 12 Oregon described the supporters’ argument as straightforward: they say the measure is intended to protect animals from abuse, neglect, and killing, and the whole point is to eliminate what they see as legal loopholes that let harmful practices continue.

On paper, that framing is powerful, because “cruelty exemptions” sounds like something no decent person should defend, especially if you picture the worst cases – abuse, neglect, deliberate suffering, the kind of things everyone agrees are wrong.

But opponents are saying the measure is built so broadly that it doesn’t just target abuse, it targets normal life in rural Oregon.

According to FOX 12 Oregon, the Oregon Hunters Association argues the initiative would effectively force Oregonians toward a vegan diet or push meat sourcing out of state, and they also warn it would destroy entire industries, including agriculture, fishing, hunting, scientific research, food production, pest control, and restaurants.

That’s an enormous claim, but it also makes sense as a fear response when the legal definition of criminal harm expands so widely. If activities that involve killing animals become criminal by default, then the ripple effects don’t stop at hunters in the woods; they run straight through farms, labs, fisheries, and even the supply chains that feed grocery stores.

This is where a lot of the public confusion can happen. A voter might hear “animal cruelty protections” and imagine it’s about cracking down on bad actors, while another voter hears “remove exemptions” and realizes the entire legal structure that currently makes hunting and fishing possible could be treated like a crime.

Both reactions come from the same language, and that’s why measures like this can gain traction quickly: people can sign the petition thinking they’re endorsing kindness, without fully understanding how wide the blast radius could be.

The Signature Sprint And The “Do People Know What They’re Signing?” Question

Ricky’s video on Good Taxidermy leaned hard into the urgency. He told viewers Oregon may be “off limits” after the election season if this passes, and he described the measure as “absurd,” “extreme,” and “fringe,” mainly because, in his view, it makes hunting illegal “period,” with no distinction between residents, non-residents, or special draws.

He also said it would eliminate fishing and trapping, and then he pivoted into what he called the “weirdest” part – how the measure treats slaughtering animals, including backyard livestock and what many people would consider small-scale, personal food production.

In Ricky’s telling, raising backyard chickens and killing them to eat would be illegal, and he raised questions about what that would mean for hobby farmers and smallholders who aren’t running commercial operations but still rely on livestock as part of daily life.

He also claimed the measure would make it illegal in many cases to breed animals, pointing to dog breeders as another group that could get dragged into the legal net.

The point he kept returning to wasn’t “this will definitely pass,” but “this is way too close to the ballot for comfort,” and he argued that people collecting signatures may be presenting it as a simple effort to “stop animal abuse,” without being upfront about the hunting-and-fishing implications.

That’s a serious accusation, and it’s also a common dynamic with ballot measures: signature-gathering is about volume, and the pitch tends to be short, emotional, and simplified, because no one reads legal language on a clipboard in front of a grocery store.

FOX 12 Oregon didn’t make that specific claim about how canvassers are presenting it, but their reporting does reinforce the central reality Ricky is reacting to: the measure’s impact would be dramatic, and it would touch far more than a narrow slice of policy.

The Indigenous Hunting Angle Ricky Raises

One of the more sensitive points Ricky brought up is how, in his view, the measure could affect Indigenous hunting rights.

He claimed it would ban hunting privileges for Indigenous people unless hunting on tribal lands, and he argued that in Oregon many reservations lack the “better hunting grounds,” meaning Native hunters often rely on public lands, not just reservation land.

FOX 12 Oregon’s summary of the initiative did not highlight that Indigenous-rights angle, so the responsible way to handle it is to note that this is Ricky’s assertion and treat it as part of the public debate that would likely explode if the measure moves forward.

If his interpretation is accurate, that would become one of the most politically volatile pieces of the entire fight, because it isn’t just about sport or tradition – it becomes about sovereignty, access, and whether state law is colliding with longstanding rights and practices.

Even if it’s not accurate in the final legal effect, the mere perception that it might be could shape how the public argues about it, because people don’t wait for court memos before they form opinions.

Why This Fight Feels Bigger Than Oregon

Here’s the part that deserves blunt commentary: laws like this don’t land in the real world as neat moral victories or neat moral failures – they land as messy enforcement questions.

If the state expands cruelty protections to cover wild animals, livestock, and research animals the same way it covers pets, the next question becomes who gets charged, who gets investigated, and how prosecutors interpret “harm” in situations where killing animals is currently legal, regulated, and often tied to conservation.

Hunting and fishing aren’t just hobbies in Oregon; they’re also tools used in wildlife management, and they are tied to funding streams through licensing and excise taxes that support conservation and enforcement. When Ricky says this needs to be on every outdoorsman’s radar, he’s speaking to the fear that this doesn’t merely ban an activity – it collapses a system that pays for habitat work and wildlife oversight.

At the same time, it’s not hard to understand why “remove cruelty exemptions” can sound appealing to people who picture industrial abuse or neglect, or who simply don’t want animals harmed at all. Modern society has made it easy for many people to be far removed from where food comes from, and when you’re disconnected from that reality, legal language can feel abstract until it suddenly isn’t.

FOX 12 Oregon’s reporting also makes clear this isn’t on the ballot yet. The petition still has to clear the signature hurdle, and those signatures have to be valid, which is a real gatekeeper and not just a formality.

But it’s close enough now that the debate is already forming into camps: advocates framing it as overdue protection, and opponents framing it as a cultural and economic wrecking ball.

If this qualifies, it won’t just be a vote on hunting. It will be a vote on what Oregon thinks “cruelty” means in law, and whether the state is willing to criminalize a huge range of practices that, today, are normal, regulated, and widely embedded in rural life.

And once a question like that gets asked on a ballot, the shockwave rarely stays inside one state.