After unsettling some Minnesota State University students by putting an anti-Hmong bumper sticker — "Save a hunter, Shoot a Mung" — on sales racks, the owner of a Mankato store has removed the sticker, calling it a "mistake."

Michael Baumann, owner of Custom Zone, a decal and sticker store, said he had the sticker yanked Monday after inquiries from students and local news media. The sticker was one of several left over from a custom job, Baumann said, and was not for display. News of the sticker made its way through several hundred MSU students, and the university's Hmong Student Association was planning to meet Wednesday to figure out how to respond.

Baumann says the sticker was just business.

"I'm not saying that what we did making it for this guy was right, but it's our job," he said. "If I'd known that would have turned into a racial slur, I would never have taken the order."

The sticker — despite the supposed intentional misspelling of "Hmong" — is an especially sensitive subject in the Hmong community. It comes about three weeks after Chai Soua Vang, a Hmong-American from St. Paul, allegedly killed six white hunters in Wisconsin after a confrontation over a deer stand. Although the Hmong community has condemned the shootings, many feel the entire people is being held responsible. Since the Nov. 21 shootings, isolated reports of graffiti and harassment have caused some Hmong to fear a backlash.

The first to report the bumper sticker was Jessica Flatequal, a 32-year-old program coordinator for the university's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center. She spotted it Saturday while shopping at River Hills Mall in Mankato.

She said she found the bumper sticker in the back of the store hanging on a wall surrounded by others. It had a purple background with yellow block lettering and was selling for $4.99.

It read: "Save a hunter, Shoot a Mung," and Flatequal said it was hanging above a stack of about 100.

Taken aback, Flatequal said, she grabbed one and confronted store employees.

"I understand the politics of bumper stickers," she recalled telling the employees. "But this has crossed the line into hate speech."

A man who appeared to be the store manger, she said, argued with her and told her to leave. She notified local media and MSU students Monday morning.

Word of the slogan spread quickly among several hundred students. The southern Minnesota campus of 14,000 has more than 200 Asian-American students, not including foreign students. Of those 200, about 70 are of Hmong descent.

Mankato, with a population of more than 32,000, has only a few dozen Hmong residents, city officials say. And they haven't reported any retaliation.

Still, some students "are very outraged about it," said Penh Lo, assistant director of Asian-American affairs. Pheng Thao, 21, president of the Hmong Student Association, said he and others will meet Wednesday to discuss how to show their opposition to the bumper sticker.

"It's finals week," he said, "but we should do something to say we don't tolerate such a thing."

But Baumann said students have blown the situation out of proportion.

"Tell them to study," he said.

Baumann said he told the customer that "MUNG" is a misspelling of "Hmong," but the customer answered that it stood for "Minuscule Unseen Naughty Gnat, or something like that, so he couldn't be in any trouble."

Baumann said the customer, whom he would not name, wanted only one sticker. But the minimum order is seven, he said, so the other six were lying around. Baumann said he has since thrown out three, and isn't sure what happened to the rest.

He said Flatequal's statements about the sticker's quantity were wrong, and said the sticker wasn't actually for sale.

"Our store is not a racist store," he said. "Half of our store is minority."