Watering Hole Blog

FORLOH sees optimism and fresh energy in the hunting world

Most hunters have likely heard the truism that our pastime is in decline. There’s plenty of speculation as to why—urbanization, modern-day food security, youth disinterest, the loss of family traditions—but the bottom-line worry is that hunter numbers are precipitously shrinking. Much of the concern boils down to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. In 2016, the most recent study, the total number of hunters in the US had decreased by more than 16 percent over five years. That’s startling on the face of it. But a closer look at the statistics and trends reveals plenty of bright spots.

“Our industry faces challenges, no doubt, but at FORLOH we believe that hunting and fishing are more in flux than in crisis,” says FORLOH founder Andy Techmanski. “From hunters who have been chasing animals for decades to those just starting out, we see a collective passion that’s redefining what it means to be a hunter.”

For one thing, the numbers aren’t all bad. Since the now four-year-old USFWS study, applications for hunting tags have exploded in some Western states, including Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico, and this season Idaho’s non-resident over-the-counter elk and deer tags sold out at a record pace. “It would be really tough to put enough data to extrapolate for the entire US, but it certainly seems as though demand for hunts in the West have been on the rise in recent years,” says James Barnett, research manager at GoHunt.com. Across the country, hunting license numbers have also increased year over year in many states, according to the USFWS.

The picture is even rosier if you include angling, an activity in which numbers are growing outright. In 2016, 35.5 million Americans went fishing, a 16 percent increase in participation over 10 years and the highest number of anglers since 1985. That upward trend has continued according to a 2019 Outdoor Industry Association study, which showed angler numbers at a decade-long max and all-time high participation rates among minorities and women, and industry vets were expecting a banner year in 2020 before the pandemic hit. “It continues to grow because people ultimately find solace and healing on the water,” says Kurt Deeter, editor of the Angling Trade, which covers the fly fishing industry. “It’s a family activity. It’s free (or close). And it’s an antidote for people starved for adventure and outdoors.”

Women are also a major bright spot in hunting. The total number of female hunters surged by nearly 84 percent between 2001 and 2014, with even more staggering gains in specific disciplines, including 87 percent growth in those hunting with a firearm and 167 percent in bowhunting. Women now account for nearly 20 percent of all US hunters, which has led to the growth of education and training opportunities geared specifically to women such as She Hunts Skills Camps as well as female-specific advocacy groups that help promote hunting and conservation. “The moment we went live, it was like drinking from a firehose. Women from everywhere told us, ‘This is so needed,’” says Jessi Johnson, founder and advisory board member for one such organization, Artemis. She says that the role-modeling that her organization and others are doing is an illustration of how the industry can bring more hunters to the sport. “Women have always been here, but by acknowledging them and depicting them, it opens the door wide for more to come in.”

Archery is another flourishing segment of the market. According to a study commissioned by the Archery Trade Association (ATA), archery and bowhunting participation jumped over 20 percent between 2012 and 2015. The growth has since flattened, but total participation in 2017 was still 30 percent higher than a decade earlier. And Business Wire estimates that the market will continue to expand by 9 percent annually through 2022. “We're optimistic about new and renewed bowhunting participation due to the current climate,” says Matt, president and CEO of the ATA. “The challenge to find commercial meats on store shelves, the need to get outside as a means to stay healthy, and the longer-term transition toward sustainable and healthy harvest all make bowhunting incredibly attractive.”

Kormann’s comments hint at some of the cultural trends that are drawing in new sportsman. A growing awareness of quality food and sustainable agriculture is motivating many first timers into the field in pursuit of their own harvest. “The overall trend is down … but we actually see a lot of interest especially in the locavore movements, field-to-table, field-to-fork-type movements—people wanting to know where their food comes from,” says Brian Lynn, vice president of marketing and communications for the hunting advocacy group Sportsman’s Alliance. These culinary aspects of hunting have inspired everything from cookbooks, such as The Wild Chef by Jonathan Miles and A Mindful Carnivore by Tovar Cerulli, to outreach programs including the Quality Deer Management Association’s Field to Forks. Says Miles, “Those of us who hunt and fish can boast that we’ve been eating free-range organic and local since the very beginning.”

The convergence between traditional hunting and fishing and the broader outdoor markets of hiking, camping, skiing, and mountain biking is also helping to deepen the pool. From companies like Mystery Ranch, started by Dana Gleason, who is widely considered to be the father of modern-day backpacking, to Maven, founded by an alpinist and Brunton defector, mountain sports are increasingly crosspollinating  the hunting and fishing realms—and bringing new enthusiasts along with them. “As technology and gear has improved and hunting has taken on a more backcountry mindset, it’s pulling in people who are more oriented to athletics and endurance sports,” says Justin Diefenderfer, whose Bozeman, Montana-based MtnTough Fitness Lab specializes in conditioning for athletes.

Ironically, even the Covid-19 crisis, a negative in so many ways, looks as if it could bolster hunting and fishing participation. With grocery store shelves picked over, domestic meat processing plants closed or working at reduced capacity, and job losses crunching budgets, some families are considering hunting to supplement their food supply. Says Kormman, “Many people will now be looking at hunting’s range of benefits coupled with the need to feed their families in a more efficient way.” From New Mexico and Colorado to Indiana and Georgia, game and fish agencies have reported a spike in license sales and permit applications since the beginning of the pandemic. Meanwhile, The Today Show even aired a segment on the therapeutic benefits of fishing titled, “How Fishing Became the Pandemic’s Hottest Sport.”

“It’s clearly not the easiest time, both in our market and the broader scope of the world,” says FORLOH president Techmanski. “But we see so much optimism and fresh energy in hunting that it feels like the perfect salve for the times.”

How FORLOH is using leading game research and cutting-edge technology to make you invisible to prey

There’s a good chance that the camouflage apparel you’ve been wearing is undermining your hunts. From the photorealistic patterns of sticks, leaves, and bark to colorful outdoorsy palettes, much of the camo on the market is created with people in mind, not animals.

“The truth is, most camouflage isn’t designed to work in the field but instead to look good to the human eye,” says Andy Techmanski, founder of FORLOH. Case in point, University of Washington animal vision expert Dr. Jay Neitz was commissioned and discovered back in 1980 that blaze pink is the optimal safety color for hunting as it’s less detectable to ungulates and more visible to the human eye, yet due to male hunter preferences blaze orange was chosen and remains the standard today. Says Techmanski, “We don’t care what our apparel looks like under the bright fluorescent lights of a retail store. We are building gear to make you undetectable in the field.”

To accomplish that, FORLOH shrugged off conventional wisdom about blending into the landscape and enlisted some of the foremost experts in the science of animal vision to rethink how to make hunters as invisible as possible. “We threw out the notion of what looks good to the human eye and replaced it with the science of how and what ungulates and birds see,” says James Dodkin, who was instrumental in developing FORLOH’s Crypsis Technology™. Crypsis is the term for an animal’s ability to avoid detection in nature. The company also expanded its development to address all the senses, not just sight. “If an animal smells or hears you, it’s never going to get close enough to make the camouflage you’re wearing matter,” says Dodkin. “The other senses aren’t as sexy to talk about, but they are actually the most important, especially smell. We realized we had to address the system as a whole.”

The foundation of Crypsis is FORLOH’s hyper-breathable fabrics. Thanks to cutting-edge technologies, including micro-venting Pulse-Plasma waterproofing, all three of the system layers—base, insulation, and protection—allow dramatically more moisture transfer than anything on the market. Rather than dipping, painting, or spraying a waterproofing chemical (DWR) onto its textiles, the traditional method for keeping out the elements, FORLOH’s with Airadigm’s Pulse-Plasma technology is applied at the molecular level by running a charge through the yarn before it’s even woven into fabric. FORLOH is first-to-market with this exclusive technology. It’s a similar method to plating microchips, and, because it requires only 1 percent the volume of DWR compared to standard treatments, it produces fabrics that are both more waterproof and significantly more breathable than anything on the market. That’s important for comfort but even more so for scent control, as removing sweat means removing odor.

FORLOH’s apparel uses two additional technologies to reduce a hunter’s odor footprint. Polygiene Stays Fresh™ is a natural, silver salt antimicrobial applied into the garment threads to neutralize the bacteria created by sweat that causes body odor. Polygiene Odor Crunch™ is a treatment of silica, the same stuff in the stamp-size bags in new shoes, that’s applied at the yarn level to absorb and break down external odors such as campfire smoke and foods. FORLOH is the only brand in the industry to offer these odor-killing technologies in tandem. The combination of the two with Pulse-Plasma waterproofing technology ensures that your apparel remains odor-free for longer. This is critical, as one study has shown that a predator’s scent can make ungulates over half as likely to graze and double as vigilant for predators, i.e. a lot more difficult to find, stalk, and harvest. “Based on scent, an animal will avoid you by up to a half mile. You’re never even going to see them, which renders the visual camo useless.” says Dodkin. Stays Fresh™ and Odor Crunch™ are guaranteed for the life of a garment.

An added benefit of Pulse-Plasma technology is the soft, quiet fabrics that it produces. Compared to standard waterproof breathable shells, which are noisy and stiff like a starched shirt, FORLOH’s Pulse-Plasma treated layers are plush like silk or satin. 

Combined with the most silent zippers available, this creates garments that are virtually silent, another often-overlooked component of concealment.

With a hunter’s scent and sound eliminated, animals are more likely to approach within sight range. That’s when FORLOH’s Crypsis patterns are essential. We started from the understanding that ungulates see differently than people. Not only are they limited to colors on the blue and yellow spectrums (not reds, like humans), ungulates’ side-of-the-head eyes aren’t as attuned to detail as they are motion. “It’s like the resolution of a digital picture in megapixels,” Dr. Neitz explains in a paper written for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. “Deer are analyzing more visual area at fewer megapixels.”

Though camouflage attempted, until a decade ago, to mimic a hunter’s surroundings—leaves and branches for thick cover, brush and grasses for open country, bright whites for snow—the latest research shows that irregular, non-representative patterning is more effective in removing an animal’s ability to determine shape and movement. Two approaches are most common. Disruptive Coloration takes advantage of large, high-contrast swathes to break up the outline of a figure, normally at closer range. This is similar to how the stripes of a tiger or patches of an African wild dog obscures the animals’ form. Spatial Orientation, which relies on the smaller, squared patterns known as “texture match” in the military, basically allows a form to fade into the landscape at distance. Crypsis uses the two approaches in tandem. “We’ve taken the best of both approaches by blending the two: high-contrast blotches to break up your outline, and digital camo to basically make you look like nothing,” says Dodkin.

FORLOH offers three primary designs. With its larger, higher-contrast swatches of color, Deep Cover’s darker hues are intended for use in heavy canopy and should absolutely disappear at 40 yards or less. This is the choice for bowhunters and early-season rifle, where you must go undetected at proximity. Exposed, which is lighter in tones with a smaller pattern and less contrast, is best for open country and grasslands. It is virtually invisible at 75 yards or more, blurring forms into the landscape at distance, which is why it’s also optimal for bird hunters. And while most people believe that snow is bright white, Snowfall matches true winter landscapes with light gray hues and faint brushes of contrast. This will allow hunters to disappear into the landscape above tree line and pursue animals from where the creatures wouldn’t normally suspect.

According to research out of the University of Oxford, it takes deer and elk less than three seconds once they’ve sensed you to decide whether to flee. It’s those few instants when the right camouflage means the difference between a successful hunt or not. If an animal perceives a hunter as a risk, it’s game over. But if it can’t smell, hear, or see the risk clearly, as is the case for a hunter in FORLOH Crypsis, the creature is more likely to calm down and stay put, offering more opportunities for a shot. “We don’t just want to help people blend in with the environment. We want to make them completely undetectable,” says Techmanski. “We believe that making hunters undetectable in the backcountry is the foundation of every successful hunt.”

‘Made in America’ is a catch-phrase of sorts. Brands that manufacture in the U.S. often fly the flag that it’s about creating American jobs. And that’s true. 

But as much as it’s about providing jobs in the U.S., it’s also about changing the overall manufacturing process for a larger positive gain. Done right, manufacturing in the U.S. can lead to better innovation and it can help shorten the standard timelines for building products so that they can get to market faster. Ultimately, that means more jobs in America as well as consumers getting more up-to-date technologies more quickly. When building a hunting, fishing, and outdoor apparel brand from the ground up, made in America was one aspect that FORLOH was not willing to cut corners on.

One might ask: “if that’s true, then why aren’t most U.S. brands aren’t doing it?” Let’s be clear – manufacturing specialized products like high-end technical apparel in the U.S. is not without its challenges. The supply chain has evolved over the last several decades in a certain way, with most outdoor apparel products today made overseas. Getting away from “the way things are done” often presents roadblocks to doing them in a different way.  

FORLOH, however, is committed to doing them differently – and to creating a greater role for U.S. manufacturing of technical apparel in the process. 

“We got fed up with how things were done, so we’re using FORLOH to help create the change that we want to see,” said Robert Yturri, who heads the company’s product development efforts. “Don’t think of us as just a hunting apparel company. We want to offer a premium product made in the USA that really does come from the heart of systematic change.” 

Yturri has seen a lot in his 30-plus years in the outdoor and hunting apparel industries. He’s worked with brands as varied as The North Face, Black Diamond, KUIU, Spyder, and Obermeyer, creating cutting-edge products for all manner of outdoor activities – skiing to hunting, hiking to climbing. 

He had a front-row seat through the late 1980's and 1990's as the vast majority of the technical apparel industry in the U.S. shifted production from American factories to overseas production. At the time it was largely for cost reasons, namely the availability of less-expensive labor in other parts of the world. But that shift also led to overseas manufacturers being the ones leading the way in offering leading-edge apparel technologies and manufacturing processes. As they became the de facto places where brands made products, they naturally were the ones coming up with the most up-to-date product advancements. 

But overseas production comes with some downsides. Those include lower environmental standards for pollution as well as lower labor standards for workers in other countries. And, when shipping products from other parts of the world, tariffs add costs, so brands then have to pay much more attention to the ever-shifting dynamics of international politics. Many are caught in that quagmire today. Overseas production also means longer timelines for products to get to market. 

Because most brands manufacture in places that are far from the U.S., it takes a long time for prototypes to make their way back and forth, for finished products to be shipped to market, and to secure manufacturing capacity in the same production facilities where many of your competitors’ products are also being made. The standard production cycle for new products is 18 months or more from conception to being available for consumers to purchase. 

That means by the time consumers get new products, they are 18 months behind the most current technology. Moreover, brands working on these long production cycles have to take their best guess at the amount of products they need to have available to meet demand. They place an order long before they know actual demand, and then ship that product to a warehouse to store it, hoping the demand will be there. If demand is less than the amount of product they made - common in all aspects of the apparel business – that creates waste. 

FORLOH founder Andy Techmanski doesn’t have Yturri’s background with apparel supply chains, but he shares the belief that – given all the downsides to making products overseas  – bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. offers a better path forward. 

“When we started, Andy said to me, I want to be 100 percent made in the USA – no shortcuts,” said Yturri. “He’s from the mentality that if it’s easy, it’s probably not worth doing. He’s a great partner in that he’s uncompromising. He pushes us to do better. Andy likes to say ‘we’re not a hunting company, we are a technology company that makes hunting products.’ And that is true.” 

Along with the manufacturing itself, a lot of the fabrics and technology manufacturers for technical apparel are also in other parts of the world. Yturri said apparel brands often come to those manufacturers and tell them what they are looking to achieve in a particular product. They are then presented a range of options they can choose from. 

Because so much of technical apparel manufacturing has moved offshore one of the challenges was that the “off-the-shelf” technology options for FORLOH within the U.S. were limited. So the team had to pivot and look outside of the apparel manufacturing world. Instead, through Yturri and other FORLOH product managers’ deep rolodex of supply chain contacts, FORLOH looked to bring in technologies from other companies located in the U.S. that had the innovation capabilities, but didn’t operate in the apparel industry. 

Those included companies that knew how to work with things like waterproof membranes or fabric, but instead worked with such materials for industrial uses or other applications. It also sourced technologies from the automotive and aerospace sectors. In some cases, FORLOH found unique options that left the team scratching their heads and asking, why isn’t anyone already using this? 

The case of the waterproof membrane is an interesting one, according to Yturri, because it was a co-development process that led to an entirely new way to apply water-repellent treatments to waterproof fabric packages in incredibly small amounts – a technology not on the market until now. Similar to a process called Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), the technology uses a dry vacuum chamber with an electrical charge to bond DWR to the fabric, resulting in a higher-performing waterproof fabric. The benefit is that FORLOH is able to achieve a very high waterproof measurement paired with top-level breathability and air permeability ratings – things that have previously been mutually exclusive in outdoor apparel. 

“These kinds of collaborative partnerships, you don’t get them offshore,” Yturri said. “In this case, we co-invented this technology for apparel working with our manufacturing partner. So in situations like this, we can make what we want to make, versus having to choose from off-the-shelf options, and also not knowing what other contracts they may have in place and thus who else might be using that technology. I feel like we’ve unearthed this Pandora’s box.” 

FORLOH’s unique manufacturing structure in the U.S. also means less of the red tape associated with working overseas. FORLOH can purchase the raw materials it needs for its products, store them, and produce closer to home as demand warrants, versus having to produce and sit on a large stock of pre-made inventory. 

That means that FORLOH is able to be more nimble, turning around new products in the span of a couple months versus the typical year-and-a-half development cycle. So it can respond to feedback and demands from consumers for new kinds of products, as well as new technologies that are available, much more quickly. This also means they produce less waste by creating a surplus of product that is not needed.

As FORLOH grows, Yturri envisions working with the technology providers and manufacturers in the U.S. to continue to push the level of innovation, and grow the overall amount of technology available through the U.S. supply chain. To him, that will be a win for both the brand and for America. 

“Made in the USA is just the beginning,” he says. “I’ve seen more in this past year than I’ve seen in a long career. We’ve made the most of what is here in the U.S. today, and we’re going to improve on it. This is really about reinventing made in the USA. This is the next step beyond made in the USA.”