by Ruth Nicolaus
Ruger Payne does the rifle shooting in the Utah Junior High School Rodeo Association.
The fourteen year old, a resident of Cleveland, Utah, has been shooting since he was five years old, and often trap shoots with his family.
He is an eighth grade student at Canyon View Junior High School in Huntington, where he enjoys the experiments he does in science but is not fond of history class. He works hard to get good grades, and is on the honor roll.
In addition to trap shooting, Ruger loves racing motocross. He competes at races across Utah, riding a Kawasaki 85. When he grows up, he’d like to be a professional motocross racer, like his hero Ryan Dungey. Ruger got Ryan’s autograph at a race in Salt Lake City. He also has Chad Reed’s autograph.
He enjoys watching TV, especially “Diesel Brothers,” and loves to eat his mom’s spaghetti. His Grandma Payne makes good turkey, and Grandma Noyes makes a mean chicken and noodles dish. The best lunch at school is pepperoni pizza.
Ruger enjoys hunting deer and elk and last year got a cow elk. He loves working on motors with his dad.
His parents, Brandon and Trinie, are very proud of their son, and how hard he works. They appreciate “the hard work he puts into stuff that he does,” his mom said. “With his shooting, he practices, and when we go to motocross races, he practices before we go. He puts a lot of effort into anything he wants to do.”
His mom points out a specific example of Ruger’s hard work. Last semester, he was a few points away from a 4.0 GPA. “He saw how close he was to getting a four (grade point average) so he worked hard to get it, and barely missed it.”
Ruger is the youngest of three boys; his older brothers are Trinity, who is sixteen, and Laramie, twenty.
