From an Alabama Pasture to the Hall of Fame: Snip O Gun Always Stood Out

Tammye Hutton and her family were driving home from a beach vacation in Florida more than 20 years ago when, rather than take the interstate back to Tennessee, they decided to take the scenic route.

Conveniently, their route took them near the farm of Hill and Dollie Clements, who stood the stallion One Gun. Though they’d been to the Clements farm before and seen their stallion, One Gun, a son of Mr. Gun Smoke, they’d never bought a horse there.

That would soon change.

“We were driving by and I jumped up and I go, ‘I think that Hill’s place! Turn around, lets go look at some horses!’ So, everybody was on board, you know, go look at horses,” recalled Hutton, whose Hilldale Farm is now in Brashear, Texas.

Hill Clements took them out into the pasture and they saw a bay mare named Snip O Gun. Hutton couldn’t get the mare out of her mind, and told her then-husband, Charlie, about the broodmare by One Gun and out of Miss Kim O Lena (by Doc O’Lena) as soon as she got home. Once Hutton figured out a way to find the money to buy her, the mare became part of Hilldale’s broodmare band. It would be her second and final owner, as she was part of the Hilldale family until her death on March 9.

“We thought she had just great confirmation, a great disposition and of course, loved her pedigree,” Hutton said.

If it wasn’t for a spur-of-the-moment decision on a road trip, the reining industry may have been without Snip O Gun, one of its great broodmares. The EquiStat Elite $1 Million Dam and National Reining Horse Association (NRHA) Hall of Fame inductee, who died in March, leaves behind a long legacy that is still being felt in the reining world.

“She’s the greatest mare,” Hutton said. “And, I’m just so blessed that she came to live with us.”

Hilldale Farm Homebreds

While Snip O Gun was never shown — she was already well into her derby years when the Huttons bought her, so they sent her straight to the broodmare barn — she had everything she needed to be an incredible producer. Overall, Snip O Gun has foaled the winners of more than $1.24 million in EquiStat. Twenty-one of her 30 AQHA-registered foals were money earners, averaging $59,093 each in EquiStat.

“What I loved about her, of course, was her mind and the fact that she had phenomenal, great confirmation,” Hutton said. “She had a big soft eye and a really pretty head, really wide between the eyes. She was good-eared. Beautiful neck, and I mean, the way her neck tied into her shoulder and her slope of shoulder and great wither … And she’s a very deep-hearted mare: pretty hipped, a lot of bone — a LOT of bone — good foot. And she was sound till the day she died.”

When Snip O Gun joined Hilldale Farms, its headline stallion was EquiStat Elite $3 Million Sire Nu Chex To Cash. He was her most frequent partner in the breeding shed, siring 14 of her 30 American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA)-registered foals. The mare was also paired several times with the late great stallion’s sons, Night Deposit Chex, Busy Winin Chex, Lil Joe Cash and Wimpys Little Step. She also was paired with his grandson, CFR Centenario Wimpy (by Wimpys Little Step).

Two of the mare’s top five money-earning performers came from that cross:

• 2005 NRHA Futurity Level 4 Open Reserve Champion Big Chex To Cash ($219,265, by Nu Chex To Cash), who went on to become an EquiStat Elite $1 Million Sire after his show career was over.
• Congress Reining Futurity Level 4 Open Champion Hot Smokin Chex ($195,696, by Nu Chex To Cash), who was sent to Europe midway through his career and competed for several years overseas.
• 2015 Reining By The Bay Derby Level 3 Open Champion Chexmaster ($103,911, by Nu Chex To Cash).

Andrea Fappani on Big Chex To Cash * Photo by John O’Hara Adding Some Smoke

When Nu Chex To Cash got older and became sterile, Hutton needed to find Snip O Gun another suitor.

“I was trying to figure out what to breed her to, and I decided I was going to breed her to Gunnatrashya,” she recalled. “Because, I remembered when Dale Wilkinson used to come over to our stalls at the Futurity, he’d come over and eat, hang out and him and [her former husband] Charlie would talk horses. I remember Dale saying to cross the Gun Smokes really close and several times. And I thought well, I couldn’t get much closer.”

Though some believed too much Mr Gun Smoke could make an offspring too hot — and Snip O Gun’s father, One Gun, was a son of Mr Gun Smoke — Hutton believed it would work because of Snip O Gun’s mind. The mare was very cool and her foals seemed to be the same way. Hutton believed her sire, One Gun, factored into that mindset — so much so that, at one time, she said Hilldale Farm owned 17 daughters of One Gun.

All four of Snip O Gun’s foals by EquiStat Elite $11 Million Sire Gunnatrashya — whose sire, Colonels Smoking Gun (Gunner), was a great-grandson of One Gun — were money earners. The most successful were:

• 2015 NRHA Futurity Level 4 Open Reserve Champion Inferno Sixty Six ($216,165, by Gunnatrashya), a leading reining junior sire whose offspring have earned more than $2.5 million.
• Multiple aged event finalist Smoking Trash ($115,387, by Gunnatrashya), who competed in the Million Dollar Competition at the 2021 and 2022 editions of The Run For A Million.

She also was bred once each to Gunner sons Colonels Shining Gun and HF Mobster, which resulted in money earners both times.

Franco Bertolani on Inferno Sixty Six * Photo by Waltenberry Continuing Legacy

Snip O Gun’s legacy will live on not only through her sons, who are proving to be successful sires, but also through her daughters. Her most successful daughter so far, Snip O Chex (by Nu Chex To Cash), has produced the winners of more than $563,617.

Hilldale Ranch still owns two of the mare’s daughters: Snips Shining Gun (by Colonels Shining Gun) and Snip O Satellite (by Nu Chex to Cash). Both are winners in the show pen — Snips Shining Gun earned $52,171 and Snip O Satellite earned $96,423 — and Hutton looks forward to see what they produce.

Hilldale Farm also owns and stands the great mare’s final AQHA-registered foals, Shift N Gears, one of Snip O Gun’s sons sired by Gunnatrashya. An earner of $41,284, the stallion’s oldest foals turned 3 this year.

Snip O Gun’s Final Resting Place

After Snip O Gun’s last foal was born in 2016, she stayed at Hilldale Farm. She’d been in good health, though age takes a toll on everyone eventually.

“Unless the weather was bad, we’d turn her out every day for awhile. And you’d see her, she’d trot or she’d lope a little ways and was just the sound as she can be. But, she started having trouble getting up and down. She’d get down and we’d have to help her get up.

“The other day she said, ‘Uh, uh. I’m not getting up.’ We had the neighbors [over], we had everybody here but we couldn’t get her up. And I said, ‘Well, I she just told us what she wanted.'”

Putting down a mare that’s been part of your life for nearing three decades wasn’t easy, but Hutton didn’t want the mare to suffer. Snip O Gun died less than a week after her longtime buddy Lockyourgun, another One Gun daughter, passed away in her sleep. The two mares had lived together most of their lives — they were bought at different times, but clearly remembered each other and were pasture buddies. It didn’t escape Hutton that the two longtime friends and sisters left the world around the same time.

“I don’t know, it’s nice to know that they were together this whole time,” she said.

Even though she’s passed, Snip O Gun is still part of Hilldale Farm.

“She’s buried in my front yard next to Nu Chex To Cash,” Hutton said.