story by Ruth Nicolaus
Gage Hunt only wears Wranglers.
Unless he’s at the swimming pool, you won’t find him in anything else. Even when he was a baby, and his mom put him in cute carpenter’s pants, he wasn’t happy till he had on Wranglers, like his dad.
That’s because the Beryl Junction, Utah boy, a member of the Utah Junior High School Rodeo Association, is a ranch cowboy and a rodeo cowboy. He is in his first year of competition and is a chute dogger, following in the footsteps of his dad, a former steer wrestler.
Gage, who is thirteen years old, is in eighth grade at Enterprise High School. He loves art class, where the class has been working on drawing animal pictures. He likes to draw, because “it takes my mind off things,” he said. His least favorite part of the school day is language art, because it involves writing and “a bunch of different commas and semicolons and citations and stuff.”
For fun, Gage likes to hang out with friends or play with his cousin in the fort he built in his backyard.
His favorite food his mom makes is hamburger gravy, mashed potatoes, and corn piled on top. His favorite dessert is tres leches and his beverage of choice is Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. The best school lunch is pizza, although calling any school lunch a favorite is a stretch, Gage said. The pizza “is the kind in the movies where you go to take a bite and it flops down.”
On TV, Gage likes to watch the Ultimate Beastmaster. He enjoys movies, and liked The Maze Runner. In his first year of rodeo, he’s liked getting to know his competition, making new friends, and trying to do his best.
He is the oldest of four children, with girls as siblings, and he wishes he had a brother. The girls are good, but sometimes he needs some space from them.
His parents appreciate their boy, his mom says. He’s a hard worker on the family ranch, driving tractors, loaders, doing chores, and moving cows in the mountains. “My heavenly father knew what he was doing when he sent him to me first,” his mom Stacy said. “I tell him that all the time. He’s easy to talk to, and he makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world. He’s low maintenance, a good kid who is responsible with his money. He’s great.”
He’s also a good big brother to the girls: Hailey, who is eleven, Kinley, age eight, and Sadie, who is six. “He’s a good brother but gets annoyed with them,” Stacy said. “He can only handle them for so long before he has to walk away and get his distance from them.”
Gage wants to be a farmer and rancher when he grows up. He is the fifth generation to live on the family ranch; the family runs their cattle in the Dixie National Forest and surrounding area. His parents are Stacy and Jeremy Hunt.