WHY I STARTED DEAD HEAD OUTDOORS

I started this brand for a pretty simple reason.

I wanted a piece of hunting land that I could call my own.

I just wanted a place. Somewhere that I didn’t need to ask for permission to hunt every season.

A piece of dirt where I could hang stands and leave them there. Where I could plant food plants, manage a deer herd, build a little camp, learn every ridge and funnel, and eventually take my children hunting.

I want to know where the deer cross the creek and which oak starts dropping first. I want stands that stay in the same trees year after year.

I want a fire pit with chairs around it.

More importantly, I want the kind of place where, 30 years from now, my kids can point toward a ridge and say, “Dad and I used to hunt right over there.”

But land isn’t cheap.

And I don’t have somebody waiting to hand me a hunting property.

So instead of sitting around wishing I had it, I decided I’d try to build something that could help me get there.

That’s where Dead Head Outdoors came from.

Dead Head isn’t exactly new either.

I started it years ago (2023), and like a lot of things in life, it eventually got pushed to the side.

Work. Family. Responsibilities. Life.

But I never really let go of the idea.

When I decided to bring it back, I wanted to do it differently.

I didn’t just want to sell hunting shirts. There are plenty of places that do that already.

I wanted to build something that people actually wanted to be a part of.

And somewhere along the way, Dead Head started becoming more than the original idea.

I started thinking about my first deer.

Old hunting camps.

The stories guys tell over and over, even though everybody around the fire has already heard them.

Hunting with your dad.

The dog that starts losing its mind when the shotgun comes out.

The truck rides in the dark.

The old hunting pictures we all have buried somewhere from 10, 20, or 50 years ago.

Teaching your kids something that somebody once taught you.

Looking at an old picture and remembering exactly what that morning felt like.

And I realized something.

That’s the part of hunting I actually care about most.

The memories.

The traditions.

The stuff that gets passed down.

That’s what Dead Head Outdoors is becoming.

The shirts and hats are part of it. But so are First Deer, Deer Camp, Hunter’s Wisdom, Around the Campfire, and the stories that hunters send me.

I’m trying to build a brand around the parts of hunting that survive long after the hunt is over.

There’s no big company behind this

I’m not a giant outdoor company.

There’s no corporate office. No marketing department. No team of people sitting around a conference table figuring out what Dead Head should be.

It’s me. And my wife, telling me to “crush it.”

I work a full-time job. I’m raising a family. And most of Dead Head gets built in whatever hours I can find in between.

Some nights that means working on a new design after everybody else has gone to bed.

Other nights, it’s answering messages, working on this website, writing something for Around the Campfire, figuring out why something isn’t working, or teaching myself how to do something I’ve never done before because there isn’t anybody else here to do it.

I’m learning as I go.

Some ideas will work.

Some probably won’t.

But I’m going to keep trying.

And every time somebody places an order, I still get excited about it.

Seriously.

There’s literally a guy on the other side of that order thinking, “Holy cow! Somebody bought one.”

I hope that feeling never goes away.

Because every order means this crazy little idea is a little more real than it was the day before.

I’m building this thing one shirt, one order, one story, and one late night at a time.

A note about AI

Since I’m telling you who’s actually behind Dead Head, I want to be transparent about something else too.

I use AI.

You’ll see it sometimes in Dead Head’s content and in product mockups on the website.

The reason is pretty simple.

I don’t have a photography department. I don’t have a studio, models, elaborate sets, or a creative agency I can call every time an idea pops into my head.

I’m one guy building a small brand around a full-time job and raising a family. Right now, I couldn’t afford all of that even if I wanted to.

So I use the tools available to me.

AI lets me take an idea that’s sitting in my head and turn it into something I can actually show you. It lets me create the kind of visuals that would require resources I simply don’t have yet.

And I’m not interested in pretending otherwise.

The products are real. The designs are real. The orders are real. The stories are real. And there’s a real person behind all of it.

AI doesn’t decide what Dead Head Outdoors is.

It’s just one of the tools I use to help bring the ideas in my head to life.

So what’s the dream?

Honestly, it hasn’t changed.

I still want that piece of dirt.

I want the stands.

I want the food plots.

I want the little camp.

I want my kids there.

I want friends sitting around a fire telling the same stupid stories we’ve already heard a hundred times.

I want pictures hanging on the wall from hunts that haven’t even happened yet.

And I want to stand there someday and know that I didn’t just spend years talking about doing it.

I built something that helped me get there.

Maybe Dead Head does that.

Maybe it stays small.

Maybe it turns into something bigger than I ever expected.

I honestly don’t know.

But somewhere along the way, what started as a way to chase my own dream has turned into something I care about building for other people too.

A place for the first-deer pictures.

The old hunting stories.

The lessons your grandfather taught you.

The deer camps that have been around longer than any of us.

The dogs we’ll never forget.

The traditions worth keeping alive.

So I’m going to keep showing up.

Keep making things.

Keep telling hunting stories.

Keep trying ideas.

And keep building this thing one customer at a time.

If you’ve bought something from Dead Head, followed the page, shared a post, submitted a story, signed up for Around the Campfire, or even just spent a few minutes reading this ridiculously long About page…

Thank you. Seriously.

You’re helping a regular guy find out how far he can take an idea.

And if Dead Head does get me to that piece of hunting land someday, I hope my kids are sitting around a fire on that property years from now telling stories about the hunts we had there.

Maybe they’ll even laugh about how the whole thing started with their dad staying up too late trying to sell hunting shirts on the internet.

That’s the dream.

Until then, I’m going to keep building.

One shirt. One order. One story. One late night at a time.

- Jacob
Founder, Dead Head Outdoors