Kentucky attorney general pauses effort to unseat fish and wildlife chairman

Austin R. Ramsey, Lexington Herald-Leader on Jan 9, 2026

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Kentucky attorney’s general office has withdrawn its demand the chair of a board overseeing the state’s fish and wildlife management agency resign, pending a new legal probe of the state’s exemption for landowners hunting and fishing on their own property.

Attorney General Russell Coleman won’t immediately pursue legal action against Fish and Wildlife Commission Chair Chuck Meade, despite his office’s earlier insistence Meade is ineligible to serve.

“Everything is on ice in that process while we look at this opinion,” a spokesperson for the Coleman’s office told the Herald-Leader Friday morning.

Meade did not hold the required state fishing or hunting license for the five consecutive years prior to being appointed to the commission in 2024. Instead, he relied on Kentucky’s farmland exemption for two of those years.

The exemption allows “the resident owner of farmlands” and their family members to hunt and fish on their property license-free. An attorney in Coleman’s Office of Civil and Environmental Law interpreted that to mean Meade would have had to be living on that property, rather than just owning it, in order to legally use the exemption.

But the legal implications of that interpretation are far-reaching and could embroil Kentucky sportsmen and women who have believed they could hunt or fish without a license on land they own.

Meade told the Herald-Leader last month he would fight the attorney general’s office in court on behalf of those Kentuckians.

Now, however, the legal drama over license-free hunting and fishing is paused until Coleman’s office issues a formal opinion on its interpretation of the legal exemption. That opinion came at the request of Sen. Gary Boswell, R-Owensboro, according a Jan. 8 letter the attorney general’s office sent Meade.

The Herald-Leader has reached out to Meade and Boswell for comment.

The commission oversees the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources commissioner and the agency’s roughly $100 million budget. The agency is funded primarily by sporting licenses and boating registrations.

Meade was nominated in 2023, appointed by Gov. Andy Beshear in January 2024 and confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate later that year.