Newsom Lifts 1955 Firearm Ban on Archery Deer Hunters

CALIFORNIA — Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed Assembly Bill 1912, repealing a 1955 law that made deer the one big-game animal Californians could not hunt with a bow while carrying a firearm for protection. The measure, by Assemblywoman Heather Hadwick, a Republican from Alturas whose 1st Assembly District includes Sierra County, reached the governor’s desk without a single vote against it in either house. Newsom listed it among 35 bills he announced that day. The bill takes effect January 1, 2027.

The change is a deletion. Section 4370 of the Fish and Game Code created the archery deer season and then barred anyone hunting deer during it from carrying, or having under their immediate control, a firearm of any kind. Assembly Bill 1912 strikes the prohibition and leaves only the sentences that establish the season, and Department of Fish and Wildlife rules still limit the archery season to archery equipment, so a hunter who carries a handgun may not use it on a deer.

Every other archery hunt for big game in California already worked the other way. The Fish and Game Commission adopted regulations in 2016 allowing archers pursuing elk, pronghorn, bear, and bighorn sheep to carry a concealable firearm they may not use on the animal. Deer were left out because the ban sat in statute rather than in regulation, and only the Legislature could remove it.

The prohibition arrived in 1955 through Assembly Bill 1583, an urgency measure whose authors wrote that it had to take effect immediately “to protect other hunters and to insure enforcement of the present law” during that year’s archery season. Staff for the Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee found no other records in the State Archives explaining what prompted the change. A single exception was added in 2012, when Senate Bill 1367 allowed active and honorably retired peace officers to carry a concealed firearm while archery hunting deer.

Presenting the bill to the committee on March 24, Hadwick built her case on distance and isolation. “Deer hunters during the archery deer season often hike alone in remote backcountry far from roads, cell service, and immediate assistance,” she said at the hearing. She told members that international drug trafficking organizations had established thousands of illegal cannabis grows on rural public and private land over the past few decades, that the people guarding them are often armed, and that hunters sometimes walk in unaware. In a statement when she introduced the measure in February, she said hunters “heading deep into the backcountry should not have to leave their ability to defend themselves at the trailhead.”

The committee’s expert witness was David Bess, who spent 25 years as a California game warden and finished his career as the department’s deputy director and chief of law enforcement, overseeing about 500 officers. He testified that the 1955 rule was written to keep hunters from shooting deer during a bow-only season, and that the tools available to wildlife officers have since made the concern remote. “The risk to wildlife, specifically deer, being taken illegally during archery season with a handgun is extremely low in 2026,” he said, pointing to the department’s wildlife crime laboratory, DNA testing, and gunshot residue analysis. He added that the enforcement database showed no citations or arrests in the previous five years for an archery hunter taking a deer with a concealable firearm.

Questions from members focused less on whether archers should be armed than on how. Assemblymember Chris Rogers, a Democrat from Santa Rosa, asked why the measure dealt with concealment at all. “The person has a bow and arrow and is moving through the forest. They clearly have an identifiable weapon. So why are we talking about concealed carry versus open carry?” he said. Hadwick answered that she had weighed the question, would like to return with an open-carry measure later, and chose the narrower version for a first attempt.

No one testified against the bill, and the committee recorded no registered opposition. Bill Gaines, a lobbyist speaking for the cosponsoring California Bowmen Hunters and State Archery Association and the California Deer Association, listed support from the California chapter of the Wild Sheep Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and several other sportsmen’s groups. Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez, a Republican from Indio, said criminal activity on remote trails is a real and underreported danger and that he would back the measure. The bill cleared the committee 12 to 0 and passed the Assembly 68 to 0 in April, then moved through two Senate committees on the consent calendar and passed the Senate 39 to 0 on August 10. Senator Megan Dahle was the principal coauthor.

Hadwick said after the signing that Assembly Bill 1912 is the second measure expanding gun rights she has had signed into law, following Assembly Bill 584 in 2025, which gave licensed firearms dealers more options for meeting secure-storage requirements. Her office has described the two as the only pro-Second Amendment bills signed in California in more than 20 years.

Most of Sierra County lies in deer Zone D-3, where the archery season opened August 15 and runs through September 6 under the old rule. Because the bill carries no urgency clause, the repeal does not reach hunters until January 1, 2027, in time for next year’s season.

One piece of the rulebook has not caught up. The Fish and Game Commission’s archery regulation, Title 14, section 354, still permits a concealed firearm only when hunting big game other than deer, and the current mammal hunting regulations list possessing a firearm during archery season as unlawful. The committee analysis noted that the Commission, not the Legislature, prescribes the manner and means of hunting, and that taking an animal in a way inconsistent with its regulations is against the law.