Tethrd: From a Saddle-Hunting Startup to an Industry Powerhouse

Earlier this year, country music superstar George Strait shocked the world when, at age 72, he drew a sold-out concert crowd of 110,905 people at Kyle Field, the vast football stadium on the Texas A&M University campus. That venue made for the largest ticketed concert crowd in U.S. history and for an amazingly powerful and influential gathering of people celebrating Strait’s chart-topping, acoustic guitar music, his blue jeans and cowboy hat persona and, of course, the cowboy culture his music exemplifies. In short, it was a night under the setting sun that truly displayed the power of community.

Greg Godfrey, one of Tethrd’s founders and co-owners, understands full well the power of such community, because even if he doesn’t croon to America’s saddle-hunting community, he certainly knows how to tap into it. Founded in 2018, Tethrd was born out of a community experience both online and around a campfire, and it has gone on to become an innovation driver in the saddle-hunting industry in the years since, discovering not only its roots in community, but also its future.

The Early Days

To understand Tethrd’s story and where the company is today, some backstory is necessary. That takes us back in time to when the company got its start, unofficially, in 2014 when Godfrey, Ernie Power and others met online as they sought to learn more about the saddle-hunting experience. Those initial meetings came on SaddleHunter.com, an online forum that was crucial in shaping where the company is today.

“All of the founding fathers…every single one of the eight met online and became friends on SaddleHunter.com starting in 2014, which I believe, was the year the forum was launched,” Godfrey said. “Those friendships continued and grew all the way up through the launch of Tethrd in 2018. Today, some online interactions can be quite negative in my experience — like your argument is wrong and mine is right — but it wasn’t like that with the eight of us in that forum. It was extremely collaborative, forward-thinking and community-oriented in terms of saddle hunting.”

The community Godfrey speaks of wasn’t only a part of the genesis of the Tethrd crew, it remains a bedrock principle and a significant part of the company’s DNA today.

“We were all a part of that community, helping ourselves and other hunters figure out saddle hunting and what that meant in terms of gear, hunting strategy and other things,” Godfrey said. “Of course, a lot of our discussion was gear focused, but it was also holistically centered upon hunting, with ultralight gear being a big part of that.”

Like the railroad moving west through America in the 1800s, forward progress isn’t always smooth and easy. Sometimes, there is friction. But Power, who is also a Tethrd founder and co-owner, recalls Tethrd’s founding fathers also had something going for them, being what he affectionately calls a bunch of “cowboys.”

“I don’t mean that from the perspective that we dealt with horses and cows as much as we were rogue individuals creating our own way of doing things,” Power said. “There wasn’t a commercially available solution for what we wanted to do. So, we had to create it ourselves. Saddle hunting was a niche hobby and we were the nerdy guys in the back of the classroom. We all had our own language, and we were really proud of the ideas and solutions we came up with.”

Like others who have found a niche they are excited about, Power noted that the Tethrd founders were passionate — to say the least.

“When we started Tethrd, we reached out to the handful of people we felt were the best of the best of the contributors on the SaddleHunter.com forum,” he said. “At the time, Greg and I were the number-two and number-three contributors on the forum. We were well-known personalities and it was easy to recruit the rest of the founding fathers. And the reality is that we had already developed an online relationship with these guys. So, getting them onboard was easy.”

Those eight founding fathers who ultimately came together to form Tethrd were Godfrey, Power, Carl Kossuth, Taylor Chamberlin, Jared Shaffer, Josh “Huck” Steerman, Shawn Chadwick and Garrett Prahl. In the online phase of the company’s genesis, the group soon found common ground.

“We discovered that we were all becoming leaders in that community,” Godfrey said. “It was not just us, because there were certainly others as well, but the eight of us got involved in a lot of discussions back then that were going back and forth with other community members.

“All eight of us had a good, helpful attitude towards deer hunting and saddle hunting,” he continued. “So, when I decided to try and make a business of it a few years later, those guys were no-brainers to be a part of that.”

Friendships Forged by the Fire

Before Tethrd officially formed, there was another step in the group’s growth in terms of friendship and business aspirations, a hunting camp shared together in Georgia’s pine forests. That event took place when Godfrey, a U.S. Army officer and hunter who’d lived in several states while fine-tuning his use of saddle-hunting gear for public-land hunting, decided to create a gathering near his base at Georgia’s Fort Stewart.

“I decided to start a gathering for our saddle-hunting community and ended up hosting a hunt,” he said. “It was a ‘Saddlepalooza’ kind of event and I think we called the first one ‘Pigmageddon’ or ‘Hogmageddon’ or something like that, because we were hunting feral hogs. The first one was in 2017 if I recall, followed by another one the next year, and they provided an opportunity for people to come in from all over the country to hunt for wild hogs near Fort Stewart.”

The focus of the event was camping out, eating good food, hunting pigs and learning more about saddle hunting for whitetails. With the money generated from the outing going to pay the bills, the goals were to build the community and further everyone’s education in the world of saddle hunting. As it turned out, the event was also the perfect next step for a group of passionate saddle hunters to move from an online friendship to sharing stories and hunting strategies around the campfire.

“This was all focused on saddle hunting, and that’s how I met all of the people involved in Tethrd now, as well as lots of others who were on the forum,” Godfrey said. “My partner Ernie, that’s where I first met him, along with Carl, Jared and the others who attended that hunt.”

Godfrey noted one of the interesting things is that a lot of people at the event didn’t even hunt much while there.

“There are plenty of wild hogs in Georgia, so some of the people who came hunted the hogs, of course,” he said. “But plenty of others just hung out at camp and around the campfire and talked about saddle hunting. It was a real camaraderie- focused event for sure.”

One of the outcomes of the gathering, which was held over a long weekend in February, was some serious discussion about equipment and the gear needs in the saddle-hunting industry. With Saturday being reserved as a “gear day” where gear was taken out, tried on, used and discussed in terms of pluses and minuses, the gear focus ended up being one of the highlights of that and future gatherings.

“When we would gather and take out gear, that was quickly followed by questions such as how you use that gear, what hunting techniques do you use with that, how did you make that and how do you climb up with your bow using that,” Godfrey said.

The gear-focused discussions quickly turned the spotlight to why better ultralight saddle-hunting gear was so difficult to find.

“There weren’t enough options available back then, so if you wanted to take it seriously and you were a DIY kind of a guy, you had to do things like go on Craigslist, buy a treestand, cut it up, learn how to sew and piece everything together for your saddle-hunting setup and then figure out how to go use it,” Godfrey said. “It was too difficult for many to get involved and it was difficult to try. As that became apparent, I wanted to tear that barrier down and give hunters good quality, well-made, well-thought-out gear that could help them become more efficient saddle hunters.”

That led to the third stage of Tethrd’s evolution, moving from the DNA of online friendships and the in-person camaraderie of sitting around a campfire to taking a bunch of great ideas and launching a business. And that’s exactly what Godfrey, Power and the others did. In 2018, the idea that had been gathering steam led to some discussions about the business possibilities that might be ahead.

“After those loose discussions, we came to a point where we kind of decided at that time to go all in and make it happen, to build a saddle-hunting business and brand,” Godfrey said. “Within about six months, we launched our website and the business in June of 2018. That was the website, the brand, the concept, everything.”

Setting Up Shop

Although Godfrey, Power and the others thought they knew what might happen when they launched Tethrd — especially given their various talents and investments of time, energy and passion — what took place next went beyond their wildest dreams.

“When we opened our website in 2018, we really didn’t know if it was going to work,” Power recalled. “We were hopeful that by the end of the year, we could sell enough items to break even. We had a pie-in-the-sky goal of earning enough money to go on a guided elk hunt. Instantly, we were in a situation where we couldn’t make enough pieces to keep up with demand. We had to learn quickly how to make more product and make it efficiently.”

The initial success understandably led to growing pains for the new company.

“We found ourselves backordered 12 weeks within three months,” Power said. “The great thing about Tethrd is that we have an amazing team that figured out a way to be caught up by Christmas and we have been able to keep up since.”

It should be noted that the ability to meet the rapidly growing demand didn’t come without a deeper commitment to the fledging company and a few major life changes.

“In December of 2018, we were at a major turning point,” Power said. “The amount of work that Tethrd was starting to require was more than could be accomplished part-time. My wife, Val, was instrumental in keeping us going and getting things done, but it was obvious it was not enough. We sat down on a Friday night with a good steak and bottle of wine and came to the conclusion that I needed to be the one to quit my job.”

With a long career in the telecommunications industry, jumping into the unknown was a difficult idea for Power. For Godfrey, his military commitment provided even more difficulty.

“Greg’s Army commitment prevented him from quitting at the time, and I was more local to the shipping and operations of the business,” Power said. “We made that decision, and I gave my notice on Monday morning.”

Godfrey soon made his own transition to the company full-time after his discharge from the military. With both men now on board, Tethrd was off and running with more success ahead. Then, in 2020, the craziness of a global pandemic happened.

Fast forward to today and Tethrd has successfully navigated its way through the pandemic, supply chain shortages, delivery issues and a challenging economy. It has moved from the infant stage that took place online and around a campfire into a mature business phase where it’s expanding, making future plans and even hiring its first CEO this year. The company has settled on the core products it continues to manufacture and perfect, along with accessories designed to make the saddle-hunting experience even better. That comes from a dedicated team of workers — great people who form the backbone of the company.

“Like the Bible says, iron sharpens iron,” Godfrey said. “Surround yourself with good people and you win.”

Customers Come First

Of course, the real winners in this are Tethrd’s customers, since they originate from the saddle-hunting community that gave Tethrd its birth, growth and future.

“We try to reach and serve our customer,” Godfrey said. “We want to make products that work, that our customers can trust, because they are hanging 20 feet high in a tree from our gear, and it has to be right, because his or her life depends on it. Everything we do filters through that lens.”

Power looks through that same lens and sees unlimited opportunity, although he knows there will be some challenges ahead. But ever the optimist, he isn’t afraid for Tethrd to jump into the future either.

“I really feel like the sky is the limit,” he said. “When you look at how many hunters there are in the world, it is easy to see that we are only just scratching the surface. Saddle hunters are still a niche group, but we are growing.

“I see a future where when I talk to a deer hunter, every single one of them has either heard of saddle hunting or is a saddle hunter. I truly feel that saddle hunting makes the hunter a more efficient and effective hunter, and I can’t wait to spread the word even more than we already have.”

Keep preaching, Mr. Power, because a community of more successful hunters is better for all of us, and we can’t wait to see what’s next from the team at Tethrd!

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