Last verified Jul. 2026

After the shot

The other four pages in the regulations section are rules you satisfy before you ever pull a trigger — what you may carry, what you must wear, when you may shoot, and where you may drive. This page is the other half, and it is the half that CPW's own enforcement data says people actually get wrong.

CPW publishes a ranked list of the most common hunting violations in Colorado. Read down it and the pattern is hard to miss: trespass, failing to track a wounded animal, failing to care for edible meat, not showing evidence of sex, and improperly signing or attaching a carcass tag. Five of the top ten are things that happen after the animal is hit. 2026 Big Game Brochure · Top 10 violations

The carcass tag

• Sign it, date it, detach it from your licence and attach it to the carcass immediately upon harvest.
• It is illegal to sign or tear the tag before you have harvested an animal. Pre-signing on the drive out is a violation in its own right, not a time-saver.
• It attaches to the carcass — not to a hide, horns or antlers being carried separately. If the animal is already in pieces, attach it to the piece carrying evidence of sex.
• It stays on until the meat is processed, and stays with the meat until it is eaten.
• Detaching any other part of the licence voids it, and you have to buy a duplicate before you keep hunting. The upper portion stays with whoever harvested the animal.

Lose or accidentally destroy a tag and you must buy a duplicate from a CPW office before hunting again, and show the loss was accidental.

Evidence of sex

It is illegal to have or transport a big-game carcass without evidence of sex naturally attached. Detached evidence travelling alongside the carcass does not satisfy the rule, and a head detached from the carcass is not adequate evidence of sex. What counts:

• Bull or buck — head with antlers or horns attached to the carcass, or a testicle, scrotum or penis attached to the carcass.
• Doe or cow — head, udder or vulva attached to the carcass.
• Black bear — male: testicles or penis; female: vulva.

Quartered or deboned, the evidence attaches to a quarter or another major part of the carcass, and all portions have to be transported together. If you shoot a young bull or buck whose antlers are under five inches — legally "antlerless" — leave the head and antlers naturally attached to a portion of the carcass so it can be shown to qualify.

The meat you are required to take

Colorado requires you to dress, care for and prepare the edible meat for human consumption, and CPW sets a floor on what "edible" means: at minimum the four quarters, both tenderloins and both backstraps. Internal organs do not count toward it.

This is not a guideline. Killing and abandoning big game is a felony in Colorado, and a felony wildlife conviction can carry a lifetime licence suspension. Taking only the hide or the head off a harvested animal is specifically called out as illegal.

If you wound an animal, you have to go after it

Failing to make a reasonable attempt to track and kill an animal you shot at or wounded is itself a violation — and it includes actually going to the spot where the animal was standing when you fired, rather than deciding from where you sat that you missed.

Transporting your animal

You can be cited for illegally transporting game even when someone else made the error, so it is worth knowing what has to travel with the meat:

• Carcasses must be properly tagged, and must meet evidence of sex and any antler-point requirements. Each hunter keeps their own licence.
• A carcass tag — or a donation certificate, for 20 pounds of meat or less — must accompany processed game meat.
• Shipping by commercial carrier means the licence, a photocopy of it, the carcass tag or a donation certificate travels with the carcass or meat.
• Through a national park or monument, federal rules apply — contact the National Park Service.
• Non-residents hauling deer, elk or moose home from a state known to have CWD should check their own state's rules on importing carcasses.

Evidence of sex is not required once the meat has been cut, wrapped and frozen, or is stored at a licensed home — or where a donation certificate accompanies less than 20 pounds of meat.