The line we won’t cross....

     It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since we start­ed Day Six. In that time we’ve ex­pe­ri­enced many highs and lows not un­com­mon with new com­pa­nies and through it all we’ve been grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to live out our dream. We’ve formed in­cred­i­ble friend­ships with first class hu­mans that oth­er­wise would nev­er be a part of lives with­out this lit­tle com­pa­ny. We’ve also dealt with some world class peck­er heads that make you ap­pre­ci­ate the good guys that much more. In the end it’s all part of the process and we are still ex­cit­ed to go to work every day.

     Pri­or to Day Six I was some­what obliv­i­ous to the in­ner work­ings of the hunt­ing indus­try, es­pe­cial­ly as it per­tains to so­cial me­dia. I had an idea that prod­uct pro­mo­tion through in­flu­encers was a big com­po­nent of most mar­ket­ing strate­gies and was fine with it for the most part. What I did take is­sue with was how hunt­ing was por­trayed pub­licly and as a whole viewed it as dis­re­spect­ful and de­struc­tive to this thing that I love so much.

     Fast for­ward five years now and my orig­i­nal opin­ion on most every­thing perceived as dam­ag­ing has been con­firmed. What has changed 180 de­grees though is the who.....as in who is the en­e­my.

     It has al­ways been my con­tention that the hunt­ing in­dus­try and its mar­ket­ing campaigns would ac­tu­al­ly pro­vide anti-hunt­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions with the am­mu­ni­tion they need to take away our god giv­en right to hunt by way of our own “con­tent” post­ed pub­licly. It’s be­com­ing very clear that I’ve been par­tial­ly wrong..... the num­ber one threat fac­ing the fu­ture of hunt­ing is the en­e­my with­in, the mod­ern hunter and the hunt­ing in­dus­try.

     With the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia, the bar­ri­er to en­try of be­com­ing a out­door indus­try pro­mot­er is all but nonex­is­tent. With the new flood of “in­flu­encers” and those hope­ful to be­come in­flu­encers also comes the noose by which we will hang our selves and sub­se­quent­ly the fu­ture of hunt­ing. That noose is the sin­gu­lar tool of our demise.....CON­TENT.

     As a side­bar, for those who dream of be­ing on brand X “pro-staff”, “pro” is not short for pro­fes­sion­al it’s an ab­bre­vi­a­tion for pro­mo­tion­al....sor­ry to burst your bub­ble.

     The quest, de­mand, need for con­tent by so many is be­yond a sus­tain­able lev­el. Not sus­tain­able by what you ask.... na­ture, that’s what. The re­source is what will ul­timate­ly fail long be­fore the anti-hunt­ing or­ga­ni­za­tions gain enough trac­tion to make a dif­fer­ence.

     At the end of the day, the one thing you can’t cheat or BS your way through is
hunt­ing. So at the end of each sea­son there’s al­ways the same ten per­cent of hunters that are suc­cess­ful and the nine­ty per­cent that are un­suc­cess­ful. This ra­tio is prob­a­bly more like 5% or 95% when it comes to in­flu­encers if I’m be­ing hon­est.

     To that end, there is a de­fi­cien­cy of “con­tent” for many so en­ter the “par­tic­i­pa­tion tro­phies”....ie shed antlers, turkeys, etc. by which mas­sive amounts of con­tent is cre­ated to fill the void from un­suc­cess­ful fall sea­sons. The prob­lem with some of these eas­ier en­deav­ors is that the im­pact on the re­source is just not sus­tain­able and the byproduct will be wildlife pop­u­la­tions be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed and sub­se­quent­ly less op­portu­ni­ty for all in the fu­ture.

     In many ar­eas tur­key pop­u­la­tions are on the de­cline and it’s dif­fi­cult for game and fish agen­cies to re­act quick­ly enough to change reg­u­la­tions. When hunter (I use that term loose­ly) suc­cess goes up ex­po­nen­tial­ly through un­con­ven­tion­al means like reaping or fan­ning, the re­sults will be dev­as­tat­ing to the long term tur­key pop­u­la­tions and ul­ti­mate­ly reducing op­por­tu­ni­ty.

     With re­gards to shed antler hunt­ing, the time­frame of this ac­tiv­i­ty co­in­cides with the crit­i­cal time of year when big game an­i­mals are at their weak­est and most vulner­able. So while game and fish agen­cies are fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to de­ter­mine win­ter kill and the over­all health of herds com­ing out of win­ter, shed antler hunters are comb­ing the moun­tains adding more stress to al­ready ex­haust­ed an­i­mals. I’m cer­tain­ly not ad­vo­cating for a ban on shed hunt­ing, but I strong­ly feel that con­tent cre­ators have gen­er­at­ed such a buzz over the ac­tiv­i­ty that the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants is be­yond sus­tain­able to wildlife health and some strong mea­sures need to be adopt­ed soon.

     So it all boils down to the theme of con­tent and pro­mo­tion above all else including the wildlife re­source, habi­tat and ul­ti­mate­ly the fu­ture of hunt­ing. When a cir­cus en­vi­ron­ment is cre­at­ed around wildlife, it is the wildlife it­self that will ul­ti­mate­ly pay the price of ex­ploita­tion.

Here’s the line we won’t cross.....

•We will not put our busi­ness needs over wildlife and the fu­ture of hunt­ing, pe­ri­od.

•We will not post bloody wound chan­nel videos or pic­tures on so­cial me­dia just to
sell prod­uct.

•We will not sup­port any­one who puts the quest for con­tent and fame above all
else re­gard­less of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences suf­fered by wildlife and the fu­ture of
hunt­ing.

•We will not sup­port any­one who pro­motes what we feel is un­eth­i­cal or dan­ger­ous
hunt­ing prac­tices re­gard­less of its le­gal­i­ty. Just be­cause it’s le­gal doesn’t make it right.

     Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the rip­ple ef­fect we have in the hunt­ing in­dus­try cesspool is min­imal so the real in­flu­ence for change has to come from you the con­sumer by vot­ing with your wal­let. The only way to en­act change in any in­dus­try is by way of their bottom line as it’s a di­rect line to the de­ci­sion mak­ers ears.

     So if you love the pur­suit of wildlife as we do and want to pre­serve it for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, make your voice heard in any way you can. Hold these com­pa­nies (includ­ing us if we lose per­spec­tive) and their in­flu­encers ac­count­able for their ac­tions. If there’s some­one shoot­ing holes in the bot­tom of your boat, ig­nor­ing it is the equiv­alent of hand­ing them more bul­lets.

As al­ways, thank you all for your sup­port over the last five years and we look for-
ward to the years ahead.

Bryan Broderick - Day Six Gear