Gary Reeder
To explain something about the YO
Saturday, November 29, 2025, 11:32

I have had folks ask who made up the Celebrities. The YO ranch in Texas was the site for our chosen celebrity hunt. The Celebrity Handgun Hunt was to come up with hopefully a large amount of meat for the needy. Each hunter paid around $1000 to hunt and a portion of this went to the needy along with the meat.

The hunt was limited to 50 hunters and they were (in the past, movie celebrities, Hollywood people), but as the years went on the celebrities lost interest and didn't show up as it was well known by invitation only. Taz Ridley, the head man asked me to help with the invitations to get some fresh "meat" in the hunt in the way of new hunters. To get invited to the Celebrity handgun hunt was considered special. All the gun magazines wrote about the Celebrity hunt that was something that was held every December at the YO for charity. Taz wanted me to invite serious handgun hunters, whereas in years past those invited were there for the free booze and never bid on any of the guns and hunts that were donated. So I invited mostly people on this forum and people I knew to be serious handgun hunters.
The hunt was to come up with meat and some money for the needy at Christmas and for the next around 10 years the invitations were based on handgun hunters that were serious and who donated the meat and money to help out the needy. The first year I was there was in 1994 and the hunt had already been going on for several years. As I mentioned the hunters paid around $950 to hunt. The fee to hunt went up a bit each year. Several well known gun manufacturers and ammo companies donated guns and gear which we bid on, again for charity.
The YO decided what animals were to be hunted, usually animals that they had an abundance of. This was usually a Sika deer buck and 2 does. The YO was a large ranch and was over-run with the Sikas. The hunters could hunt other exotic animals but the prices were considerably higher. One of the hunters decided he wanted to get one of the custom handguns and I saw him write a check for around $35,000 to win a $5000 1911. All the meat went to the needy and some prizes went to the hunters that brought in the most meat.

It was a great time for those that attended as we got to spend time with well known handgun hunters that we only knew thru the gun magazines. The hunters were put in groups of 4 to 5 and Taz chose the hunters in each group. _Prizes were given to the hunter that brought in the most meat and the most unusual animal. Several of the hunters hunted large animals to put them into the prize categories. But no matter what we hunted it was a grand time and a hunt I will really miss.
The hunt lasted around 25 years before being dropped due to lack of interest.