For the first time ever, the Legend Award was presented to a husband wife team. Dick and Ethel Leedy of Pennsylvania were honored as the 2014 recipients at the 10th Anuual Hunner & Outfitter Convention in Reno, NV.
Ethel was born in 1928 on a small farm in Pennsylvania. Along with her older sisters and younger brother, she learned early about dedication, perseverance, and hard work. Daily tasks like loading hay, stacking wheat, digging potatoes, cutting corn and a 6 mile round trip walk to school were a great foundation for the determination and tenacity she would need in her amazing hunting career. Also a Pennsylvania native, Dick was no stranger to hard work either. Shoveling snow for a nickel, planting Christmas trees, and working as a trapper to suppliment the family income. Dick learned an early lesson about the value of hunting, finding favor with his boyhood teacher by providing her with fresh game he would harvest on his way to school in the mornings.
Sharing a life-long passion for the outdoors, in the early years of their marriage Dick and Ethel guided and helped manage a lodge in Quebec for fishing and caribou hunting. From there it was off to the outdoorsman’s mecca of Alaska where they would spend the next 40 years working, raising their family, and building there legendary hunting status. Their game-rich home state of Pennsylvania and the vast wilderness of Alaska afforded them many outdoor adventures hunting and fishing. Not only was Dick one of the earliest to accomplish what is now known as the Super Slam (completing the task in 1981) while regularly communicating his progress to GSCO founder Bob Housholder, along the way he also managed to take an astonishing total of over 200 whitetail deer.
Equally legendary in her own right, Ethel was by her husband’s side as much as possible, building her own impressive resume as a big game hunter. Between Ethel’s love for the outdoors and Dick’s encouragement, this lady has become one of the most prolific North American big game hunters completing her Grand Slam in 2006 and her Super Slam in 2010 just 5 days before her 82ND birthday.
Surely all will agree that based on their tremendous lifetime hunting accomplishments, Dick and Ethel Leedy are more than worthy of Legend status. Pictured here with the Leedys are from left to right, GSCO board members Mark Hampton, Keith Hite, Bruce Tatarchuck, and Dale Martin.