Meet The Man Fighting To Protect Your Right To Hunt And Fish

Travis Thompson, a key figure behind Florida’s Amendment 2, explains why states are moving to protect hunting and fishing rights from activist groups who want to ban them.

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When it comes to hunting and conservation, Travis Thompson is on the front lines.

The fifth-generation Floridian and executive director of All Florida was a key architect behind Florida's Amendment 2, the constitutional amendment that enshrines the right to hunt and fish in the state. 

And if you think that sounds unnecessary in a place like Florida — where fishing is a monster industry — Thompson would strongly disagree.

"I don't know how else to say it, other than you have to protect the things you care about," Thompson told OutKick Outdoors. "I lock my door every night because this is where the people that I care about, the things I care about, are. It’s not because I’m getting robbed. It's because I don't ever want to be robbed."

That proactive mindset is exactly what drove the push for Amendment 2, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Florida.

In our interview this week, Thompson walks through how the amendment came together, from being told "there's no way you can get this done" to ultimately building a grassroots coalition of hunters, anglers and outdoor advocates that pushed it across the finish line.

🎥: WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH TRAVIS THOMPSON ON YOUTUBE

Meet The Man Fighting To Protect Your Right To Hunt And Fish

(Photo Courtesy of Travis Thompson)

But the conversation goes well beyond Florida.

We also get into:

  • Oregon's controversial IP 28 ballot measure, which aims to make hunting, fishing and ranching illegal
  • The growing push from activist groups targeting things as basic as live bait
  • Why Thompson believes "food security is national security" and there's nothing more American than sourcing your own food
  • The push for lab grown meat
  • And how conservation (despite what you might see online) is a nonpartisan issue

"We know that anti-hunters are coming. We know that gun control people are coming," Thompson said. "So what we want is to ensure that when they get here, we've got a backstop."

The full interview dives deeper into all of that, including what the future of hunting, fishing and even food itself could look like in the next 50 to 100 years.

Got a suggestion for an OutKick Outdoors guest? Email me at Amber.Harding@outkick.com and let me know!