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Friday, Oct. 31, 2025

Is it illegal to hunt a mountain lion in Colorado and not harvest the meat?

Cassis Tingley, The Colorado Sun
yes

When hunters kill mountain lions, state law mandates that “all edible parts of lions must be properly prepared for human consumption.”

It is illegal to kill and abandon a mountain lion, remove only the lion’s pelt or buy or sell mountain lions. The rules are meant to prevent wanton killing and discourage people from wasting meat from animals they killed.

To hunt mountain lions in Colorado, residents must obtain a hunting license from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, pass a mountain lion-specific exam and buy a special permit from CPW. Permits allow hunters to kill one mountain lion per year. 

Between 3,800 and 4,400 mountain lions live in Colorado, making them a species “of least concern” to state wildlife officers, along with bears, elk, moose, coyotes and other species too abundant to be considered threatened. 

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The Colorado Sun is a journalist-founded, award-winning and nonprofit news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state — our community — can better understand itself. In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado. We are committed to fact-based, in-depth and nonpartisan journalism. We cover everything from politics and culture to the outdoor industry and education. Our goal is to produce the best possible journalism. We do that with the help of you, our readers, and community backers. We launched on Sept. 10, 2018.

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