About

A brief history of the ‘Hawk

 
Timber Hawk was started in Salt Lake City in 2005 by childhood friends and Michigan transplants, Mike O’Reilly and Paul Thomas. Paul had been in Utah for a few years already, working for Ogio as head designer of golf, motocross and school bags. In 2004 Mike and his wife headed west where Mike began a two year Masters program studying poetry, nonfiction and philosophy at U of U. During this time, while other Ph.D and Masters students were vying for grant money and professor jobs, Mike found himself sneaking into position on monster mule deer bucks that — even as you read this — relax in the cool, timbered alpine bedrooms of Utah’s Wasatch mountains.

The idea of starting a pack or clothing company was bandied about that fall over campfires and over the following spring’s whitewater runoff as we brought our midwestern flyfishing skills to bear on the raging provo. By the time hunting season rolled around in 2005 we were testing out the first sample run of prototypes in the hills of Emigration Canyon just outside SLC. There, where the wide-open, sage covered terrain offers little to conceal one’s outline or movement besides clusters of impenetrable scrub oak, we realized we had way too much black on the packs. Even for heavily wooded hunting situations the solid black of our hypalon panels was sticking out way too much.

A few rounds of samples later we had what would become the first Timber Hawk lineup, and we went into full production the following spring, after announcing our presence and taking product orders at the 2006 SHOT show, in Las Vegas