Thirty Years at Cabela’s, a Camo Show on Basic Cable, and the Quietest Comeback in Hunting Apparel: The Code of Silence Story

For Episode 2 of Hunting Incorporated, host Sean Furbrush sat down with Ev Terrell, co-founder and CEO of Code of Silence Apparel. If Episode 1 was about two brothers building a harness out of necessity, this one is about a 30-year veteran of the hunting apparel industry deciding, later in life and later in his career, that he still had one more clothing line in him, built his way this time.

Sean opened the episode with his own camo origin story: a scent-suppressant suit purchase in the mid-2000s that left him looking, in his words, like a large brown blob in a field of gray light. It’s the kind of memory that sticks, and it set up exactly why a guest like Ev, who has spent decades thinking about pattern, texture, and concealment at a level most hunters never consider, was the right person to have on. If you missed the first episode with Hunter Safety System co-founder Jerry Widner, you can catch it and every other conversation on the Hunting Incorporated hub.

Thirty Years at Cabela’s, Then One More Idea

Ev spent the better part of 30 years at Cabela’s, running the hunting clothing division for a retailer that was, by his account, also a serious manufacturer. About 90% of what Cabela’s sold in that category was their own design, their own fabrics, and often their own camouflage patterns. It’s where Ev built the relationships, supply chain knowledge, and manufacturing know-how that would later become the foundation of Code of Silence.

When Cabela’s changed hands and Ev’s role shifted, he found himself with what he called “unfinished business.” He’d gotten bored hanging around after hours, he joked, and eventually landed on a simple question: if he believed the idea was real, and he had the manufacturing know-how and the passion, why not build it himself? Five years later, that question is a real company with roughly 60 styles on the market.

Starting from scratch after three decades inside a major retailer meant relearning things Ev had never had to think about. He’d never assigned an import code, never lined up a shipment, never done a social media post, and never done a podcast before this one. What he did have was a small team of former Cabela’s colleagues who joined him along the way, including co-founder Darren Youngblood in Iowa, and a bench of people he trusts enough to say, “I sleep better when I know they’re here.”

Building a Champagne Product on a Lemonade Budget

Ev’s manufacturing background gave him a clear-eyed view of the markups common across the industry. He described being able to look at a competitor’s garment and identify it as a $60 or $70 product overseas, retailing for $429.95. That kind of pricing was never how Cabela’s operated, and it’s not how Ev wants Code of Silence to operate either.

The value equation at Code of Silence comes largely from cutting out layers most brands keep in place. The team designs its own camo and its own fabrics, negotiates directly with suppliers, and handles its own freight and marketing in-house, all with a team Ev says you can count on one hand. As he put it, the goal is “a champagne level product on a lemonade budget.”

That same philosophy came up naturally in the conversation around insurance. Sean pointed out that buying hunting lease insurance is rarely anyone’s favorite errand, which is exactly why AHLA’s hunting lease insurance is built to make a necessary part of hunting as painless as possible, the same instinct Ev described applying to pricing and quality at Code of Silence.

The Untapped Side of Concealment: Light Reflectance

Ask Ev about camouflage and you’ll get more than color and pattern. After decades in the industry, including personal encounters with legendary camo designers going back to the late 1980s, Ev says the dynamic he never fully considered until starting Code of Silence was light reflectance.

His logic is simple: everything in the woods is organic, high-texture, and absorbs light. Any garment surface that reflects light instead becomes an exception, no matter how accurate its color or pattern is. Ev says he’d rather wear a solid brown suit that absorbs light than the most perfectly colored camouflage pattern that reflects it. He calls this “exception management,” as opposed to the color-and-pattern management most of the industry focuses on.

That principle shows up in how Code of Silence builds its fabrics. Every pattern the company sells is knit, not printed, using a process called Jaccard knitting, the same technique behind sweaters, couch covers, and rugs. Because different-colored yarns sit next to each other rather than being printed onto a single surface, Jaccard knitting creates natural color texture and uses roughly 70% less synthetic material than printing the same pattern would. It’s also, Ev notes, no coincidence that the same qualities that improve light absorption tend to make a garment quieter too. The two goals reinforce each other rather than compete.

Berber, Wool, and the Case Against 100% Anything

Code of Silence’s heavier, late-season garments are built on a Berber wool blend, and Ev is upfront that the company doesn’t use 100% wool on purpose. A fully wool garment would itch more, shrink, and hold up poorly to washing. Instead, Code of Silence blends wool content anywhere from roughly 30% to 95% across its roughly 60 styles, depending on what a given garment needs to deliver, with a single bamboo piece rounding out the line.

Ev also connected a detail most hunters don’t think about: cold, dry, late-season air carries noise farther and makes fabric molecules less flexible, which means more crinkle and crisp noise exactly when hunters are dealing with more educated, wearier deer. Sean noted it was the first time he’d heard someone connect time of season directly to fabric performance rather than just temperature, a level of detail that reflects how deliberately Code of Silence approaches every part of the product.

The MTO50 Legacy

One of the episode’s best moments came when Sean revealed he’d personally owned and loved a rain suit built from a fabric called MTO50 back in the early 2000s, without knowing Ev had helped develop it. Ev and his team created MTO50 in the mid-to-late 1990s for what is now a Bass Pro-owned brand, in an era before hunting fabrics had techy alphanumeric names. Back then, most fabrics had names like Shikari cloth or saddle cloth. MTO50, sourced from a 50-filament fabric made by a company called Max Bin Textiles, became an internal nickname that stuck, to the point that people assumed there was a dedicated lab of technicians behind it. The fabric is still sold today, decades later, a small piece of proof that Ev’s product instincts have held up over time.

Refusing to Launch Without Every Box Checked

Code of Silence’s first year almost didn’t happen on schedule. The team had planned a July launch, but pulled the plug in June after discovering quality issues in the fabric that didn’t meet their standards. Ev described the moment candidly: it would have been easy to see the delay as a sign to quit, or as looking for an out, but that wasn’t it. “If it ain’t right, we ain’t going,” he said.

That first year launched with just six styles, almost all Berber. A key early break came when longtime friend and hunting industry figure Bill Winkie, who Ev had worked with at Cabela’s, agreed to endorse the brand simply because he believed in what they were building. Ev says his first retailer check came in well north of what he expected, an early signal that the market saw what he saw. Customer reviews mattered just as much from day one, and Ev is proud of how much the product has evolved based on that direct feedback loop.

Letting Customers Design the Product

Code of Silence treats social media as more than a marketing channel. When Ev’s team hit a wall trying to improve their binocular harness without sacrificing its quiet performance, they posted the problem directly to their audience and asked for ideas. One customer sent in a suggestion Ev initially assumed wouldn’t be manufacturable. He ran it by their manufacturer anyway, and the answer came back: they could, in fact, do it. That customer, without knowing it yet at the time of the episode, was getting every new binocular harness Code of Silence would produce.

What’s Next: Mid-Layers, a Secret New Top, and a Bow Sling

Asked what’s coming, Ev pointed to mid-layer technology as the next frontier. He spent a two-week stretch of hard December hunting, with mornings in the low-to-mid 20s, wearing a new prototype mid-layer and simply never reaching for the heavy coat he’d brought along. His goal is to build mid-layers capable of doing what a shell used to do: sealing in warmth, managing moisture, and eliminating the need to layer up further in genuinely cold conditions. A new top built around this idea is in sample stage now, and Ev didn’t hide his excitement about it.

Smaller, practical fixes are coming too, including a sewn sleeve cuff on select mid and heavyweight garments that seals around the hand pocket opening to trap warmth without sacrificing quick access. And this spring, Code of Silence is launching a new bow sling and cover product designed to give a bow the same kind of protection hunters already give their firearms, with retractable panels that shield the riser and rest while still allowing quick access when needed.

Everything Matters

If there’s a single phrase that sums up the Code of Silence philosophy, it’s one Ev has said publicly before and repeated on the episode: everything matters. From the fabric’s molecular flexibility in cold weather, to a Pop-Tart wrapper’s noise in a quiet treestand, to a sleeve cuff most hunters would never notice, Ev’s approach treats every detail as a variable worth solving for.

The Bottom Line

Ev Terrell spent three decades helping build one of the biggest hunting retail and manufacturing operations in the country before deciding, with a small team of trusted former colleagues, to build something smaller, leaner, and entirely on his own terms. Code of Silence’s story is a reminder that concealment is about more than color and pattern, that customer feedback can shape a product roadmap as much as any internal whiteboard session, and that sometimes the biggest innovation is simply refusing to compromise on the details everyone else overlooks.

You can find the current Code of Silence lineup, along with a retailer locator, at codeofsilenceapparel.com.

For more founder stories like this one, visit the Hunting Incorporated hub.