Hunting, Hardware, and the Hard Path: Inside Bridger Watch with Cody

In the hunting world, founders often emerge from the same place their customers come from: the mountains, the prairies, the long days under packs, and the long nights around a kitchen table tinkering with ideas. Cody is no different—except that his path took a sharp turn most hunters (and most entrepreneurs) never dare to take.

On this episode of Outside’s Insiders, Nic sits down with longtime friend and multi-company founder Cody, who’s traded in the lightweight world of digital startups for the brutally heavy lift of hardware. His new venture, Bridger Watch, is a purpose-built smartwatch designed for hunters—an audacious, almost unbelievable undertaking that’s already redefining what field gear can be.

This is a story about taking the hard path on purpose. About timing, talent, and ten-year ideas. And about building something real—something rugged—for a community that loves to test gear in the only place that matters: outside.

From Farm Kid to Founder

Cody never set out to be a “big” entrepreneur. He grew up a farm kid who wanted one thing above all else: to spend more time hunting. Entrepreneurship, in his 20s, was simply a means to an end.

Like so many in that era, The 4-Hour Workweek hit him like lightning. Lifestyle design, location independence, passive income—those ideas were oxygen. He built businesses deliberately small, deliberately efficient, deliberately… freeing. If a company let him hunt 100 days a year, it was a success.

But something shifted.

As he put it on the show, there comes a moment where making enough money to buy time isn't the same thing as building something meaningful. The itch wasn’t for more leisure—it was for more impact. More challenge. More purpose.

The Big Question: What’s Next?

Like many founders who “figure it out early,” Cody hit the same crossroads Nic has talked about with countless guests: after you hit your lifestyle goals… what’s next?

Is it building a company you can hang your hat on? Is it tackling a problem no one else will? Is it finding work that fills the cup instead of just the calendar?

For Cody, the spark arrived on a turkey hunt.

He was hiking to a glassing knob, pulling his phone out every few minutes to check OnX, track his route, and make sure he wasn’t veering off a ridge. He had just bought a new smartwatch. He had CarPlay running in the truck that morning. And somewhere between the tech on his wrist and the map on his phone, the obvious question hit him:

Why isn’t any of this built for hunters?

The Idea That Wouldn’t Let Go

The idea of a hunter-first watch started as a passing annoyance… and quickly became an obsession.

A watch that actually reduced how often you pulled out your phone. A watch that ran truly offline mapping. A watch rugged enough for the backcountry—but smart enough for everyday life. A watch that didn’t pretend to be for hunters while really being for triathletes.

Every time Cody pulled out his phone in the field—hundreds of times a day, by his estimate—the idea dug in deeper.

Most entrepreneurs test the market with a lightweight version. A half-step. Something duct-taped together just to validate demand.

Cody refused.

“No,” he told his team. “We’re all in. This has to work the right way, or not at all.”

That conviction led him down the hardest possible route: build their own hardware, their own firmware, and even their own operating system.

No shortcuts. No off-the-shelf compromises.

Building Hardware: The Hardest Path in Tech

Anyone in software will tell you: hardware is a different beast.

A smartwatch isn’t a sprint. It’s a series of moonshots glued together with patience, math, and pain tolerance.

Cody and his team had to:

• Build their own OS so they weren’t boxed into “round-only” watch frameworks
  
  
• Engineer a rectangular screen optimized for maps
  
  
• Design a watch case rugged enough for hunters but clean enough for daily wear
  
  
• Solve battery life to compete with giants like Garmin
  
  
• Create mapping technology that works offline, gracefully, reliably, intuitively
  
  
• Test models that didn’t work—repeatedly—for years
  
  
  

All because the North Star insisted on one thing: Make the watch hunters actually need. Not the watch that’s easiest to build.

Cody laughs about it now, but even getting designers to stop making the thing “pretty” in an LA sense was a battle. Every bolt, angle, and bevel was fought for.

And he meant it—every degree of every corner mattered. The watch had to feel like gear, not jewelry.

Bridger Watch: A Name From the Mountains

The name “Bridger” came to Cody the way his idea did: unexpectedly, but unmistakably.

While reading a biography on frontiersman Jim Bridger, he kept encountering stories about Bridger’s uncanny sixth sense for knowing where he was in wild country. That sixth sense became the seed for the name—one that quietly nods to the heritage of mountain men, navigation, and American backcountry grit.

Sure, in Bozeman everything is named Bridger—including half the dogs. But nationally? It stands apart.

The watch itself? It’s called The Reckon—a tribute to reading country, knowing terrain, and moving confidently through the unknown.

What the Watch Actually Does (and Why It Matters)

Cody is careful not to over-hype what he can’t publicly announce yet, but here’s what’s clear from the interview:

Offline Mapping — Truly Offline

This is the backbone. Hunters need maps that work when phones die, when batteries freeze, when service disappears, and when the stakes get real.

Bridger Watch was built from day one as a redundancy for your map—not a toy. Not a “nice to have.” A backup for the most important piece of gear in your pack.

A Clean, Intuitive OS

Where Garmin is an event-based labyrinth (“Start Hunt” still makes everyone laugh), Bridger’s OS is lifestyle-based. It follows how hunters actually move through a day.

Battery Life That Competes With Giants

Cody wouldn’t build the product unless it could stand toe-to-toe with the top dogs on battery life. He hints that Bridger may beat some of the industry’s biggest names.

Purpose-Built Hunting Features

Without giving away what’s still private, he confirms:

• A red-shift mode for night navigation
  
  
• A built-in flashlight (non-negotiable for him)
  
  
• Dope chart backup (not a ballistic calculator, but smarter for hunters)
  
  
• Mapping integrations that are coming soon
  
  
• Full fitness and health tracking
  
  
• Touchscreen + physical buttons for gloved use
  
  
• Ruggedized titanium bezel and sapphire-grade face
  
  
  

It’s part Fenix, part Tactix—without trying to be either. This isn’t a watch for triathletes. This is a watch for hunters.

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For Watch Guys, For Hunters, For Us

This is something both Nic and Cody talked about openly: watches are identity gear.

A lot of outdoorsmen will never wear an Apple Watch.
Not because it’s bad—but because it doesn’t feel like them.

So Bridger Watch leans into that truth. Bold lines. Rugged materials. A look that says gear, not gadget.

Hunters don’t swap watches—they collect them. This one earns its own spot in the roll.

Why This Matters for the Future of Rec Tech

Every Outsider Insiders conversation has revealed a pattern: Modern rec tech succeeds when it gives hunters more effective time outside.

Not easier hunts. Not shortcuts. Just better use of the tiny windows we get.

Bridger Watch fits squarely into that philosophy.

It reduces friction. Reduces phone dependence. Reduces bad decisions when batteries die or storms roll in. Reduces complexity in gear systems that are already overloaded.

And it’s built by one of our own.

Pre-Sales, Testing, and What’s Next

Cody and the team are rolling through hundreds of beta testers in the coming months, refining software and dialing performance. Pre-sales open December 9, with a limited first run expected to ship in early February.

As Cody put it:
“Help us build something great for the hunting community.”

You can follow along or sign up for updates at BridgerWatch.com, and on their socials at @BridgerWatch.

Final Word

What makes the Bridger story uniquely compelling is simple: Cody didn’t build this because a spreadsheet said the market was big. He built it because he’s a hunter who was annoyed—repeatedly—by the same pain every hunter has felt for years.

It’s what the Outside’s Insiders series is all about: People who live the lifestyle, build for the lifestyle, and push the industry forward because they care about it personally. Bridger Watch isn’t here to compete with Silicon Valley. It’s here to build for us. And in an industry where so few products are truly hunter-made… that matters.

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