Is Under Armour Anti-Hunting?

So, word this past week in the online hunting world is that clothing mogul Under Armour (UA) is anti-hunting. And here’s why.

Earlier this year, UA began sponsoring Sarah Bowmar as part of their first advertising campaign aimed at women who hunt.

Sarah’s husband, who was not affiliated with UA, killed a large black bear with a spear and posted a video of it online. The video was later taken down, but edited versions have been reposted. (I won’t share them here because they attempt to ridicule the hunter.)

In the video, Bowmar launches a spear from a distance, hitting a large black bear at a feeding station. The bear then runs away and the spear falls out when it hits a tree beside which the bruin has run.

The hunt was legal, the bear was reportedly recovered quickly, and there’s one fewer huge predator in the woods. Personally, I like those things.

According to Josh Bowmar:

That bear was dead within four seconds at most, 10 seconds if he wasn’t running full speed. But let’s go further as to say it was a bear that was capable of running slow and live with its vitals cut the way they were, there’s no way it didn’t die within 30 seconds. The animal didn’t suffer any more from my spear than it would with a broadhead from an arrow. The author made me out to be unethical and Under Armour is making me out to be unethical as well. This animal ran on adrenaline and died very quickly and humanely.

But the bear-huggers got busy and created a petition asking UA to pull their sponsorship from the hunter’s wife. And UA did just that. Here’s a statement from them:

The method used to harvest this animal was reckless and we do not condone it. Under Armour is dedicated to the hunting community and supports hunting that is conducted in compliance with applicable federal, state and local laws and hunting practices that ensure a responsible and safe harvest of the animal.

I have mixed emotions about it myself. Would I launch a spear at a bear? Only if that’s the only thing I had, and I was being threatened by the bear. Throwing a spear is not exactly a precision thing, and no matter how practiced a person is, precise placement of a thrown spear isn’t something I believe we can rely on. So I really can’t condone this type of hunting.

But it was legal and he made a cleaner kill than many other methods, especially archery, and besides, he was not the one being sponsored by UA.

Yet UA dropped his wife from sponsorship.

His wife did, however, record the hunt on video and posed with her hubby and the dead bear in the photo above.

Lest anyone hop too quickly aboard the Bowmar hate train, they own Whitetail Wisdom, a charity that takes animals donated by hunters, processes them, and then donates the meat to needy families. So even if they did make an unwise hunting decision, they seem to be decent folks.

How do you feel about this kind of hunting? And regardless of our personal feelings, was UA right to drop its sponsorship of the hunter’s wife?

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.