Ray Hunt (1929 - 2009) was raised on a farm in Mountain Home, Idaho, Ray hunt grew up with hard work and horses. “We put crops in the ground with horses, and we took them out with horses. We worked until the ground froze. When the ground thawed we plowed again.” Stuck behind a plow, Ray longed to be a cowboy. Finally, at the age of 20 he left the family farm to fulfill his lifetime ambition.

After more than a decade buckarooing in Oregon and Nevada, Ray sought Tom Dorrance’s help with a troubled horse named Hondo. “I was a wreck going somewhere to happen, like a Charlie Russell painting. Then I met Tom and he saved my life.”

Armed with Tom’s principles and a determination to make “breaking” horses a thing of the past, Ray hit the road. He staked his life and his livelihood on the notion that horse training didn’t have to be a battle for dominance.

Years before anyone called it “natural horsemanship.” Long before “horse whispering” became big business, Ray Hunt was out there in an old pickup with a two-horse trailer, hoping to make enough gas money to get him to the next fairgrounds. “I didn’t see any commercial value it. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

The horse world didn’t exactly welcome him with open arms. “I was working with the mind and a lot of people didn’t want to believe the horse had a mind. Get a bigger bit. Get a bigger stick. That was their approach.”

At Ray’s clinics, spectators watched as untouched colts were saddled and ridden for the first time with hardly a buck. In a matter of days the young horses were ready to go to on the “payroll,” meaning they had enough faith in their riders and had learned enough of the rudiments to be useful and get a job done. In this atmosphere of trust and understanding, with no hobbles or snubbing posts, no external devices, except for the now widely imitated orange flag; it was hard to see what Ray was doing to get such extraordinary results. Accused of using ringers, drugging horses, even hypnotizing them, Ray laughed it off and kept going. “I was there for the horse. People were way down the list.”

From the beginning he was direct, intimidating and unapologetic about it. A lot of people found him too abrasive. But horses everywhere are better off for the approach Ray Hunt popularized and the clinic industry he spawned.

Ray and Tom’s message spread and the clinics grew, as Ray traveled the world helping horses and people and changing lives wherever he went. Eventually Ray was recognized for his achievements. He won the Top Hand Award, and was inducted in to the California Reined Cow Horse Hall of Fame in 2004 and was Western Horseman Magazine’s first Horseman of the year in 2005.

Despite the well earned respect and all the adulations that finally came his way, Ray always remained dedicated to the horse and unimpressed by his fame. “I couldn’t care less about all that. I’m in this for the horse.”

(Written by Patti Hudson)