The largest "guntube" channel's days are numbered as Matt Carriker, the man behind Demolition Ranch, announced on Tuesday he is turning off the cameras.
Texas-based Carriker, who has been on YouTube since 2007, started the Demolition Ranch channel in January 2011. With 724 videos still cataloged as of Tuesday, the channel has 11.8 million subscribers and has racked up over 2.5 billion views, going a long way toward helping to build and entertain the modern American gun community.
The operation has since expanded to successful peripheral non-firearm related channels including Vet Ranch – Carriker is a licensed veterinarian – Off The Ranch, and the Bunker Branding line of apparel while his 350-acre Desperado Resort in Boerne, Texas has been in the resort business for the past several years.
But all that is coming to a close as Carriker, in a video posted Tuesday, details.
"I actually started this channel in 2007 which was right around the time when YouTube was bought by Google and back then YouTube was totally different," he said. "You could not get famous on YouTube. You could not get an audience on YouTube. You could not make money on it on YouTube. There were no ads. I started a channel just 'cause I liked it. I wasn't trying to get famous, I just thought it was cool."
Fast forward 18 years and Carriker, who stepped away from his veterinary practice and then quit appearing in Vet Tube videos years ago, said he is shuttering the other channels as well.
"I've loved it but I've surpassed every goal I've ever had with it, and my wife and I realized recently – and it sounds stupid to say 'we realized' but we really did – we realized our kids are getting old really fast and they're not going to be in our house a whole lot longer, and that's hit us real hard. I know that in the next few years when all of our kids leave our house and we're empty nesters, I'm not going to look back and say 'I wish I made more YouTube videos,'" said Carriker.
As for the end date, he said he still has some videos and projects underway that will filter out to the sites over the next two (ish) months.
Other than that, the ranch seen in so many videos is listed for sale.
End of an era.
In a sense, we were all able to grow up with Matt in a way that we weren't with his young-guy-having-fun-with-great-guns contemporaries Dugan Ashley and FPS Russia.
So be sure to enjoy those old Demolition Ranch videos before YouTube, as a result of inevitable retroactive policy changes, zaps the channel out of existence and it all vanishes into the ether.
Some of our favorites over the years, include firing the "World's smallest AK" through 300 pounds of butter, seeing if Flex Seal stops a bullet, and testing just how bulletproof stacked Legos really are:
