Why I No Longer Buy Under Armour Products

This post is an opinion piece, done to express my disapointment in Under Armour as a company and make clear my intention to stop purchasing any of their products.

For those of you not familiar with the controversy, it began when on June 5, 2016, Josh Bowmar, posted a YouTube video, showing him successfully hunting a bear with nothing but a spear.

The hunt was conducted in Alberta Canada areound May 15, 2016. By all accounts, the hunt was perfectly legal, and all appropriate permits were obtained and applicable regulations followed.

The video has since been taken down due to death threats from “peace loving” animal rights activists, but it features the hunt, filmed by Josh Bowmar’s wife Sarah. The hunt took place in a forested area. A bait pile was used to lure the bear to the location. Bait piles are legal in some jurisdiciton, and not in others, both in Canada and the US. It was legal in the area of this hunt. Bowmar, who was standing on the groud, waited until the bear was approximately 20 to 30 feet away from him (my approxiamtion based on the video), and speared it with a spear which he threw at that distance. He registered a near perfect lung shot. Reportedly, the bear ran for about 60 to 70 yards before dying.

By all measures, the hunt was legally and ethically condiucted by a skilled and well trained and prepared hunter.

Almost imediately, the usual uproar rose up from anti-hunting groups and people. Numerous of false facts were manufactured, including allegations that the bear was trapped, that it was a cub, that it was left to suffer for an extended period of time, etc., and hilariously, that Josh Bowmar is somehow a “coward” for facing a bear with nothing but a spear.

Of course, none of that is accurate. The bear was legally hunted. It was not trapped. The animal died less than 70 yards from the area where it was speared. The bear was an adult, measuring 7.1 feet in length. For those not familiar with hunting, large game animals, particularly bear, rarely drop where they are shot, even when a high power rifle is used. The adrenaline rush typically propells them to run for a notable distance before collapsing. Under normal conditions, a hunter would not pursue immediately, but give the animal a chance to stop and die without being disturbed, only then beginning the tracking process. There is nothing in this hunt which would distinguish it in ethical terms from any other hunt, taking a bear with a bow or rifle, other than the mellon-sized balls required to get that close to a bear with nothing but a spear.

Anyway, all that was background for the actual reason for the post.

Not long after the video went viral, an anti-hunting activist from Illinois started a Change.org petition, seeking to have Under Armour pull their sponsorship for Sarah Bowmar, Josh’s wife, who is a hunter in her own right. The petitiner gathered 4,000 signatures.

Shockingly, Under Armour caved, and pulled their sponsorship, even openly condemning the hunt itself.

For those of you who do not hunt, Under Armour is a large producer of hunting gear. For that reason, their lack of loyalty to the hunting community and their speed in caving to anti-hunting lynch-mob mentality perpetrated by a small group of people who don’t know the first thing about hunting or conservation efforts, is alarming, dishartening, and deeply disapointing.

For a company to punish the wife of a hunter because he condicted a legal and ethical hunt, in a manner which our ancestors used for limmenia, is very upsetting to me. As such, I will no longer purchase any new Under Armour products. I encourage all people in the hunting community to do the same.