Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire MEATEATER Inc, BHA and Democrat Operatives

MeatEater, a popular hunter-focused entertainment company started by outdoorsman and writer Steven Rinella, was purchased by a rabidly anti-gun Democrat financier late last year in a move that has raised alarms among hunters and gun-rights activists. The Chernin Group, a California-based investment fund run by wealthy Democratic activist and Hollywood producer Peter Chernin, purchased a controlling stake in Rinella’s MeatEater in 2018.

The left-wing, anti-gun political activism of MeatEater’s largest investor, as well as political commentary and activity from some of its key partners and sponsors, complicates the company’s expansion plans given that such a large percentage of hunters in the United States — who comprise MeatEater’s core audience — staunchly support both gun rights and Republican political candidates. Chernin’s company announced the investment in MeatEater and its hiring of a new CEO for the company via a press release last October.

Chernin, who has donated nearly $500,000 to Democratic candidates and causes since 2015, has repeatedly attacked gun rights and Second Amendment activists over the last year. He retweeted comedian Michael Ian Black’s attack on the National Rifle Association as a “terrorist organization” and a separate Hollywood personality’s attempt to force FedEx and Visa to sever their ties with the NRA.

In addition to endorsing calls for a ban on so-called “trophy hunting,” Chernin also signed a petition backed by a Michael Bloomberg-funded gun control group demanding a federal ban on semi-automatic weapons.

His detractors, however, may have had a point, given O’Brien’s close connections to long-time Tester political operatives. That’s because O’Brien also serves on the board of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA), a non-profit run by Land Tawney, a Montana Democratic operative and former Obama presidential campaign surrogate. In 2012, Tawney ran the Montana Hunters and Anglers PAC, which spent seven figures to defeat Tester’s Republican challenger at the time.

According to Federal Election Commission Records, 100 percent of the expenditures from Tawney’s PAC–nearly $1.2 million–were used to oppose Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg, Tester’s opponent. The BHA chairman, Ryan Busse, served as a formal Tester campaign surrogate during the Democratic incumbent’s 2018 re-election campaign. Critics of BHA derisively refer to it as a “green decoy,” an organization that presents as pro-hunter but actually exists to push conventional left-wing environmental policies.

“Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA) represents itself as good-ole-boy outdoorsmen who simply want to hunt and fish and be left alone,” the Environmental Policy Alliance (EPA) writes on the website GreenDecoys.com. “But don’t be fooled. As evidenced by both its sources of funding and current leadership, BHA is nothing more than a big green activist organization pushing a radical environmentalist agenda.”