The Muck Boots Company waded deep into a quagmire this summer and emerged on the other side soiled, smeared, and worse for the wear. The outdoor footwear company announced via Facebook on August 1 that the Muck Team had raised more than $2,000 for the Humane Society of the United States. Its customer base of farmers, ranchers, and hunters went ballistic.
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One customer identified HSUS as “the sworn enemy of hunting and the outdoors lifestyle.” Scores more declared they would never again buy a Muck product. A #WhatTheMuck hashtag lit up Twitter. When the dust settled, it turned out the announcement was written in error—employees had intended to identify a local animal shelter—but the damage was done.
This incident made it clear that HSUS’s anti-hunting agenda is common knowledge within the outdoor community, and that sportsmen and women throughout the nation refuse to support HSUS.
Which raises the question: If we are so staunchly united against HSUS, why is this organization of antis creeping closer to shutting down hunting?
The answer lies in the virtually inexhaustible financial resources HSUS has at its disposal. After paying the bills, HSUS reported $195.4 million in net assets on its 2012 tax returns, which includes nearly $178 million of investments in publicly traded securities. That means HSUS is largely liquid—it can convert those investments into cash essentially whenever it wants.
Those public tax documents also reveal HSUS collected nearly $113 million in contributions and grants in 2012. That’s $7.8 million more than the previous year. HSUS capitalizes on its ability to suck up dollars from animal-lovers who think they are donating to local pet shelters, and it pours those donations into anti-hunting crusades.
The Humane Society of the United States reported $195.4 million in net assets on its public tax documents in 2012.
HSUS has a long list of victories against sportsmen and wildlife conservation in its ongoing battle to destroy hunting.
Today, HSUS continues to lead a multi-pronged attack against America’s hunters. The antis are deploying their political contacts and financial assets to strike at both state and federal levels. Current campaigns seek to overturn wolf hunting in Michigan; ban lead ammunition on public lands; and outlaw bear baiting, trapping, and hunting
with hounds in Maine. If successful, these unwarranted restrictions will cripple wildlife management and hunting as we know it.
It’s no easy feat to disable such a well-funded, well-connected, and well-oiled political machine. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
**Playing by the Rules in Michigan **
By Tony Hansen
Wayne Pacelle, president of HSUS, stood 10 feet from me, his tan glowing like Vegas neon. In a moment he would step to the lectern to declare war on Michigan hunters with another referendum aimed at overturning state wolf management.
After delivering his speech—which claimed the wolf population was too fragile for a “trophy hunt”—Pacelle adjusted his suit collar and strode away to catch a jet. He was off to advance HSUS’s ultimate mission to end hunting—species by species, state by state.
But as he delivered that 2013 speech in Lansing, Pacelle had no way of knowing his national “charity” would suffer defeat by local hunters rallying under their own nonprofit. HSUS reported $125.7 million in revenue in 2012. That same year, Michigan United Conservation Clubs—the state’s largest conservation group—brought in $1.2 million, or less than one percent of HSUS’s earnings.
At the time, I served as MUCC’s communications director, and Pacelle’s presence was no surprise. The group demanding the ban, Keep Michigan Wolves Protected, claimed to represent local citizens who cared about wolves. But KMWP’s leader, Jill Fritz, was a paid HSUS staffer.
Michigan’s wolf population, then estimated at 658 animals, had soared above endangered levels for more than a decade. Michigan’s wolf management plan defined a viable population as 200 wolves for five years in a row. HSUS lawsuits thwarted
