Ed Yates (right) is one of the two inaugural inductees into the PANTHEON.
Ed Yates did not begin to hunt extensively until the later years of his executive business career, so he had to pack a lifetime of hunting into a much shorter period of time than most who will eventually be inducted into the Pantheon. Ed’s first guided hunt came in 1988 at age 46. During the ten years after the big game hunting bug bit him, Ed literally attacked the world and he had traveled to every huntable continent by the mid-1990s. By the time he retired, he had made multiple trips to each continent, including extensive hunting in North America. To make up for a late start, at retirement in 1998 Ed became pretty much a full time hunter, and he would readily admit that. He keeps talking about slowing down, and he has a little, but he is still on a mission for additional trophies to fill in a gap here and there that he might have missed on a past trip.
Ed has been an extremely active member of both GSCO and SCI and he usually documents his hunts within days of their completion. As a former accountant, he seems to understand dotting i’s and crossing t’s. The SCI record book is littered with his name throughout, and it is a rare occasion for him not to be featured in GSCO’s publications. While taking more than 300 different species and subspecies from around the world, Ed has faced many adversities, as one must to achieve Pantheon status. His Grand Slam #1318 was completed in 2006. He had a Capra World Slam by 1998 and an Ovis World Slam by 1999. His Ovis Super 30 was completed in 2008 and his Capra Super 30 in 2010. He completed the Super Slam of North American Big Game in 2009. As for the World Conservation and Hunting Award, Ed completed that goal way back, and received that award the first year it was bestowed in 2006. So there you have it: a lifetime of hunting, all packed into approximately 25 years, and Ed does not appear to be slowing down much.