Chris and Macy Young’s 4-year-old gelding by Gunners Special Nite won the Gold Buckle Futurities 4-&-Under Heeling Title just one month after being crowned ARHFA World Champion.
Joseph Harrison and One Nite Special won $22,000 at the Gold Buckle Futurities Fall Event in Abilene, Texas, for their score of 914.61 on four head, winning the third round, the main average and the lucrative Elite Stallion Incentive.
The bay 2020 gelding is hot off the American Rope Horse Futurity Association World Championship open and 4-year-old world titles, with his QData earnings hitting $103,852 after the GBF.
One Nite Special is by Gunners Special Nite out of Thelmas Whiz by Topsail Whiz, and Mike and Michelle Preston of Kent, Washington, raised the horse.
“That little horse—I shouldn’t call him a little horse because he’s pretty big if you get right up next to him—but he’s been very, very good for us on the year,” Harrison, 37, of Marietta, Oklahoma, said. “But just in the last probably 30 days, I’ve went right at a hundred thousand on him. Man, he’s just a good little horse. He’s a 4-year-old that I feel like I could go jackpot on. He’ll let you set him up. If you don’t have him set up, he’ll push you in there and find him a good spot on the cow. And I think part of it comes from how level-minded them colts are. And it ain’t just him. I’m a Gunners Special Nite fan. You know what I mean? We just bought a couple of them.”
Arizona heeler Chris Young—a friend of Harrison’s they call ‘Gucci’ who’s married to NFBR breakaway roper Macy Young—sent him the colt after hearing the Oklahoma heeler say in an interview he was wanting to add some to his string. So Harrison went to heeling on him, and the rest has been history.
“We was planning on, right after the big futurity, I was going to send it home,” Harrison said. “He was going to mess with him and rope on him. If he decided he wanted to send him back at some point, we would show it, fine. Well ,then, we won. He’s like, eh, ‘Why don’t you just keep it?’ So here we are. And yes, I’m going to say that Chris is going to get the heel on it if Macy doesn’t take it away from him. Which, she might.”
