gary reeder
he was at the Y.O. twice while I was there. I
Tuesday, September 01, 2020, 23:10

vaguely remember meeting him but don't know that there was any conversation to go along with the handshake.I regret that now. This is one of James' pics I think. Bill Grover on the left.

Several people in those early years went on to make a name for themselves. That was when it was still called the Celebrity Handgun Hunt and it was by invitation only, limited to the best 50 handgun hunters in the world. Later on it became more of a hunt to make money for charity, which is good, but it watered down the special feeling to have been invited to the Celebrity Handgun Hunt. There were people there that were famous in my eyes, like Bob Baker of Freedom Arms, John Taffin, Jim Skildun, the owner of Magnum Research, and a lot more, plus there were some people that were just loud mouth wanna be famous shitbirds. For the most part though they were special people and now I just wish I had met more of them personally.

Then later on Taz Ridley, one of the head honchos and a really good friend, put me in charge of inviting new folks to get new blood in the hunt. The hunt had ended up just being 40 old farts that just sat around until the wee hours of the morning playing poker and drinking the free booze. They never bid on any of the free guns that were donated and didn't participate in any of the special contests to bring in more meat for the needy at Christmas. So I ruined the whole thing by inviting about 40 of the Misfits. But we sure put more life into the hunt. It was kind of hard putting the 2 words Misfits and Celebrity together. But we had some really good and fun hunts the last 5 or 6 years the hunt lasted. Like all good things it died a slow death due to the bickering of a few people. We were the original handgun chapter of the Safari Club but a group of rich dudes decided they wanted to be the handgun chapter and they had more pull than we did so the whole thing collapsed. But it was sure fun while it lasted.