Oregon Hunting and Fishing Ban Petition Fails First Signature Review

Oregon sportsmen got a little breathing room, but nobody should mistake it for a finished fight. Initiative Petition 28, the ballot push aimed at gutting hunting, fishing, and animal agriculture in the state, failed its first state signature verification check.

The campaign submitted 142,784 signatures on July 2. To qualify for the November ballot, it needs 117,173 verified valid signatures, which means it needs roughly an 82% validity rate. In the first random sample, only 804 of 1,000 signatures were found valid, or 80.4%. That is short of the mark.

The petition is not dead yet. Oregon election rules allow a second, larger sample after the first review fails, and state officials are still checking that batch. If it misses the required threshold again, IP 28 stays off the ballot. If it survives, hunters, anglers, farmers, ranchers, and every Oregon voter who understands real food and real conservation will have a serious fight on their hands.

The proposal is not some harmless animal welfare cleanup. It is written to remove exemptions that allow legal hunting, fishing, trapping, livestock practices, and commercial animal agriculture to function. Dress it up however they want, the practical result is an attack on lawful harvest and the people who put food on the table without outsourcing the hard parts.

This is why sportsmen cannot sleep through ballot language. Wildlife management is not built by slogans from anti-hunting groups. It is built by seasons, limits, habitat dollars, license buyers, working farms, and people willing to get their hands dirty. Oregon may have dodged the first punch, but the bell has not rung yet.