IkemanTX
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2015
- Messages
- 3,501
There was some bad blood when tethrd announced they were going to be producing a saddle. He felt that since aero hunter donated some saddles to the 2nd saddlepalooza that they were betrayed. Also, he felt that the mantis was a rip-off of the kestrel. The mantis was a pretty dramatic departure from the kestrel, and the kite had not been announced or hinted at. The consensus was pretty quickly made that Tethrd wasn’t a rip-off, and mentioning such didn’t go over well with him. He said some things I’m sure he regrets, and when people tried pointing out blatant differences between the systems in defense of the tethrd team, he reacted poorly as a double down on his previous comments. Threads were deleted, people had to be warned, several friends/family members of his jumped on with posts that definitely weren’t acceptable to the friendly attitude of the site, and he decided to leave.
It really is a shame because he had some great ideas, was definitely influential in the evolution of modern production saddles, and seemed to be a pretty nice guy when I met him at saddlepalooza.
Also, the saddle hype that resulted from the storm of Tethrd’s spectacular promotion DEFINITELY benefited Aerohunter. They went from a big fish in a small pond, to 50% of the market share in the fastest growing segment of the hunting market. So, I don’t think the bad blood was really worth it. The owners of Aerohunter seem to be really nice people and appear to have moved past it all pretty quickly, but we lost Bobby in the process.
All of this is just my opinion, of course, and is just my imperfect recollection from when it happened.
It really is a shame because he had some great ideas, was definitely influential in the evolution of modern production saddles, and seemed to be a pretty nice guy when I met him at saddlepalooza.
Also, the saddle hype that resulted from the storm of Tethrd’s spectacular promotion DEFINITELY benefited Aerohunter. They went from a big fish in a small pond, to 50% of the market share in the fastest growing segment of the hunting market. So, I don’t think the bad blood was really worth it. The owners of Aerohunter seem to be really nice people and appear to have moved past it all pretty quickly, but we lost Bobby in the process.
All of this is just my opinion, of course, and is just my imperfect recollection from when it happened.