Today we’d like to introduce you to Brad Neathery.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Brad. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started my career in the agency space. Prior to starting Modern Huntsman, I had owned a creative agency called Right Brain Factory, so my professional experience revolved around helping brands position themselves in the market, crafting their brand story, and helping them identify and communicate with their audience with clarity & conviction.
Growing up in my family, I was not really exposed to hunting. We lived a very typical mainstream suburban lifestyle, foraging and harvesting our food from the thrilling terrain of the Tom Thumb grocery aisles. Hunting wasn’t really a topic in our home. We certainly weren’t against it, but we lived under the umbrella of modern conveniences that most of America can identify with.
To me, hunting was more a lifestyle preference. I didn’t like killing but was completely fine with a butcher chopping up steak for me. If I’m completely honest, I did judge hunters a bit. I can remember thinking, “There’s an abundance of meat in the grocery store, and it’s already dead. Why do you need to kill something else?” Much of my judgment also stemmed from how both the mainstream media and the hunting media had portrayed hunters to appear. I don’t think I need to go into detail; it’s the same image most non-hunters visualize – it’s not flattering. The mainstream media made hunters out to be the bully of wildlife, and frankly, hunting media wasn’t doing much to improve that perception.
It wasn’t until I was introduced to one of my clients, Elliott Hillock, now one of my partners in Modern Huntsman, who was building a hunting lifestyle retail store in Corsicana, TX called Freedom Shooting Sports, that I had to really ask myself where I stood on the topic of hunting. I began meeting hunters who would spend the whole conversation talking about ethics, wildlife conservation, public land, the responsibility we have to steward the progression of all species of animals, the amount of love and respect that these folks have for the land, wildlife, and their intentionality to protect the traditions that make this lifestyle so special. I was immediately convicted, and my whole perspective changed.
Knowing the way I had previously felt about hunters through misrepresentation from both camps of media, and now, after realizing the positive net impact that hunters have on the ecosystem and on conservation, I knew that I had to attempt to break the cycle of the distorted hunting narrative, and restore the balance to the public’s perception of hunters, as well as start to bridge the gap between hunters and non-hunters, so that the tradition of hunting, access to public land, and certain species of wildlife weren’t a topic future generations read about in history books.
From there, I started a channel on Instagram called Modern Huntsman and began curating content from creatives, ecologists, conservationists, and brands who were, what I believed, were accurately representing hunters and outdoorsmen. I found that so many of the creatives in the hunting industry simply didn’t have a collective platform for their voice to be heard, and for the first time, they could be heard by both the public. Thus, our channel began to explode. It wasn’t until two years later that I met our now Editor-in-Chief, Tyler Sharp, who shared a similar vision, and together, we would expand to what we are known for now – a print publication.
Has it been a smooth road?
Anyone who has worked to build a startup knows first-hand that the road certainly isn’t easy, but I tend to attribute the difference between entrepreneurship and employment to the difference between parenting and babysitting. Of course, the road is more difficult, more time-intensive, more stressful, but the rewards are far greater, the pride you feel is significant, the passion you have is immeasurable. Both the pain and the rewards are far more intense, which makes us feel alive.
One of our greatest challenges has stemmed from an intentional decision we made early on to internally maintain 100% of our equity and to be a debt-free company. This came with a set of obstacles that led us to launch the brand using Kickstarter, in order to raise $100,000 to fund the production of Volume One, and has ultimately forced us to be very frugal and intentional with how we spend money, ensuring we stay humble and crafty as we grow the brand.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Modern Huntsman story. Tell us more about the business.
Our mission is to restore the perception of hunting in our modern society and to bridge the gap between the hunting and non-hunting community. We want to introduce a hunting narrative that the majority of people aren’t familiar with, and to do it with respect, dignity, and creativity. We all forage—whether at the grocery store, on a hunt for an elk in backcountry Idaho, or in a tree stand in rural Kansas—and we should be held responsible for ensuring that what we harvest is sourced sustainably & humanely, and is properly utilized.
In light of that, we wanted to create a piece of media that was approachable to all, but by design could lean more heavily into the fold of philosophy, science and culture topics. In our digital age, most encouraged us to produce something that could be consumed through various digital platforms, but seeing as we were building a brand attempting to restore the roots and tradition of something as old as time, we decided to create a piece that could get people offline disrupt the digital monotony. We landed on producing an independent magazine, which, for those that aren’t familiar, is not your traditional glossy, ad-littered magazine.
An independent magazine is experiential by design. Modern Huntsman is printed with a thick matte stock cover, coated with a soft-touch, velvety finish, free of traditional advertising, and minimalist in design. Volume One is 204 pages, and Volume Two will be over 250 pages. Independent magazines blur the lines between luxury magazines and coffee table books. The price is $35 and is published and distributed directly by us, in order to keep the mission and content pure and unfiltered.
In the future, we have plans to expand our media strategy, moving into producing documentary films, growing our online presence, hosting ethics & training courses, etc., but for now, we are finding our groove and systematic approach to producing the publication and engaging people through our website and social media.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
For those who aren’t aware, one of the topics that are polarizing the outdoor culture is the issue of public land. While many of us in Dallas may not even know about the concept of public land, there are over 600 million acres of federal (or public) land throughout the United States – just over 1/4 of the country.
American citizens have equal ownership of this land. About one-sixth of the total has been given the highest form of conservation protection: inclusion by Congress in the National Wilderness Preservation System. As of late, many of these lands have been authorized to be sold to the highest bidder, depleting vast amounts of the natural resources and landscape that has been preserved for generations.
There are two camps of people who have the highest interest in public lands – hunters and recreational outdoors enthusiasts. These two communities have notoriously been in opposition to one another and have disagreed on how the land should be used and managed. As public land access and preservation has been under recent threat and decline, hunters and recreational outdoorsmen have begun to put their differences aside, recognizing that we share at least one thing in common – land.
Over the next decade, I believe we will see this alliance continue to strengthen, inviting more of the public into the conversation, instead of leaving it to the elite.
Pricing:
- Modern Huntsman Volume Two – $35
- Modern Huntsman Subscription – $35
Contact Info:
- Address: 1300 S Polk St, Ste 270 Dallas, TX 75224
- Website: http://modernhuntsman.com
- Phone: 214-729-5192
- Email: info@modernhuntsman.com
- Instagram: @modernhuntsman
- Facebook: facebook.com/Modernhuntsman
Image Credit:
Joel Caldwell, Byron Pace
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