Are Trail Cameras Legal in Colorado?

Colorado Hunting · Regulations

Elk River Sports · Steamboat Springs, Colorado · Verified against CPW Chapter W-2, September 2026

Yes. Standard trail cameras are legal in Colorado, and there’s no seasonal ban on running them.

The restriction is narrower than most people think. It applies to live-action cameras, and only to acting on what they show you to hunt the same day or the next day.

We get asked this constantly, and we think a lot of people are being scared off a perfectly legal piece of gear. Some of what’s written online about Colorado appears to describe other states’ rules — there are claims of an August-to-February ban that we can’t find any basis for in Colorado regulation. So here’s the actual text.

The regulation, word for word

“No person shall use a live-action camera to locate, surveil, or aid or assist in any attempt to locate or surveil any game wildlife for the purpose of taking or attempting to take said wildlife during the same day or following day.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Chapter W-2 Big Game Regulations, Regulation #004(E)

Read it slowly, because every clause is doing work.

• “live-action camera” — the rule is aimed at cameras that send you imagery in real time, not at a camera storing pictures to a card you collect weeks later.
• “for the purpose of taking or attempting to take” — the prohibited thing is hunting off the information, not owning or running the camera.
• “during the same day or following day” — that’s a freshness window, not a season. Imagery older than that isn’t what the rule is about.

There’s no date range in it. There’s no ban on standard cameras. There’s no limit on how many you run or where you put them on public land.

Legal

• Standard SD-card trail cameras, year round
• Running cameras through the summer to pattern animals
• Pulling cards and hunting that country later
• Owning a cellular camera
• Using cellular imagery for scouting outside the same-day/next-day window

Not legal

• Getting a live image and going to hunt that animal today or tomorrow
• Using a drone to look for, scout or detect wildlife as an aid to hunting
• Any real-time surveillance used to take game inside that window

Drones are a separate and much harder rule

“It shall be unlawful to use a drone to look for, scout, or detect wildlife as an aid in the hunting or taking of wildlife.”
Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Chapter W-2, Regulation #004(C)

Note the difference in construction. The trail camera rule has a time window. The drone rule has none — scouting wildlife by drone as an aid to hunting is simply out, whenever you do it. People conflate the two and end up assuming trail cameras are treated the same way. They’re not.

Land rules are a separate question from state regulation. Legal under CPW doesn’t mean permitted everywhere. Wilderness areas, some federal land managers and private landowners all have their own positions on cameras and on leaving property unattended. Check the ground you’re actually on. In our area that means Routt National Forest and the Flat Tops.

What we tell people who come in

• A standard card camera is the uncomplicated choice. It sits entirely outside the live-action language, and it’s cheaper.
• If you run cellular, be deliberate about the window. Treat the imagery as scouting information, not as a live feed you act on that afternoon.
• Put them out early. The value is in patterns over weeks, which is also the use furthest from anything the regulation restricts.
• Label them. Cameras go missing. Contact details on the housing get more of them back than you’d expect.

Cameras we carry

Standard and cellular, plus the cards, straps, locks and batteries that people forget until the camera is already hanging on the tree.

Shop game cameras →

Season reminders from a shop that hunts here

A note before each rifle season opens, and the dates when CPW confirms them. Nothing else.

Related

• Colorado’s blaze orange rule — what the 500 square inches actually means
• 2026 Colorado big game season dates
• 2027 Colorado big game season dates

Sources. Regulations #004(E) and #004(C) quoted from Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Chapter W-2 Big Game Regulations. We quote the regulation rather than summarize it, because the summaries circulating online are where the confusion starts.

Regulations change. Confirm against the current Chapter W-2 before you rely on this. If we have something wrong, tell us and we’ll fix it the same day.