story by Lily Weinacht
Hunter Johnson is the first bull rider in the last two years to make the buzzer at the 20X Extreme Showcase Rodeo. The 18-year-old from Kadoka, South Dakota, rode one of Sutton Rodeo Company’s bulls and scored a 68 to win the Showcase, and his step-brother, Wyatt Tibbitts, won the team roping with Payton Pirrung.
This was Hunter’s third year competing in the Showcase in bull riding, and he also competes in steer wrestling, entering the SDRA, NLBRA, and NRCA. “I’m motivated by the drive for excitement, plus I get to see all my rodeo family throughout South Dakota,” says Hunter, who started riding steers when he was 11. “After about eight years of doing rodeo, you accumulate quite a few people who become family, and spending time with my own family is really nice.”
He travels with his mom, JoBeth, and her boyfriend, Dean Moncur, along with Hunter’s step-brother, Wyatt, and their younger brother and sister, Hudson and Lilly. While Hunter’s mom, grandpa, and even great-grandpa rodeoed, it was his uncle Ty Eisenbraun who helped Hunter over to the roughstock side of the arena. “There’s a lot of people who have helped me. Alan Good helped me quite a bit in bulldogging, and Casey Olson helped me immensely to get started off in the bulldogging. Bull riding is pretty much my uncle driving me to do better. The first time he actually said ‘good ride’ kind of put a spring in my step!” Hunter thrives on the adrenaline and excitement that happens in such a short span of time in the bull riding, but steer wrestling is a close second with its fast pace.
Dean Moncur hazes for Hunter at SDHSRA rodeos, while Hunter recently retired his equine teammate in the steer wrestling, Scooby. The 23-year-old gelding retired on a high note, carrying Hunter to the 2017 4-H State Finals, where they won the state title. Hunter’s newest horse, Kinky, is a 10-year-old mare. “Our first run, I was just trying her out at a Little Britches rodeo one day, and she worked very well,” says Hunter. “All three of us boys do bulldogging, and we just built a brand-new arena that we all get to practice in this spring. We welded most all of it.”
Hunter can also be found hunting and fishing with his family, who made several trips to Minnesota for ice fishing this winter. “We enjoy that, and snowboarding. We usually go up to Terry Peak up in the Black Hills, or some days we just get ambitious and hook each other up to the snowmobile. We also did that with our horses this winter — we have a couple of big Friesian horses who are very powerful.”
A senior at Kadoka Area High School, Hunter says his Ag. 4 class is by far his favorite this year. “We built a sale barn/cattle working facility and made a whole diagram of that, and we also built pole barns in the class. We built them model scale, so they’re about five feet by four feet.” Hunter also played tight end and defensive end on his school’s football team, where his brother Hudson was the varsity running starting back. He plans to college rodeo and is currently looking at schools. “I’m planning on studying agronomy. It’s the study of seeds and crops, and you can pretty much do anything in any state and any country where there’s agriculture. It’ll be interesting to see where I end up.
“The Little Britches rodeos start up the day I graduate, so they’re going to pause the rodeo for me, and I’ll graduate in my bull riding gear and then go get on a bull,” Hunter adds. “I would really like to win our state high school rodeo in both bull riding and steer wrestling. That would be a pretty cool way to wrap up high school rodeo, and then I want to go to Nationals and do well.”
