What was Ray Hunt's approach to starting colts?

Ray Hunt's approach to starting colts was one of the most visible and influential demonstrations of the natural horsemanship philosophy in action, and his public colt starting clinics — in which he would start a colt under saddle in front of an audience, often within a single session — were among the most influential events in shifting the horse world's understanding of what was possible without force. Hunt's approach built directly on Tom Dorrance's foundational ideas about preparing the colt's thought before asking for physical responses, about working below the flight threshold so the colt was always in a state where learning was possible, and about the quality of the colt's understanding and willingness as the measure of successful starting rather than simply the fact of a rider on its back. The specific sequence Hunt used varied with the individual colt's state and responses — he was emphatically not following a fixed script but reading the colt at each moment — but consistently moved through stages of groundwork that developed the colt's understanding of yield-to-pressure and of the trainer's signals before the saddle and rider were introduced. The impression Hunt's colt starting gave observers was not of a trainer following a method but of a horseman in genuine conversation with the colt, responding to what the colt offered and presenting ideas in the sequence and at the pace that the specific colt's readiness allowed. The colts Hunt started in public demonstrations typically left the pen not merely tolerating a rider but genuinely forward and soft, which was a revelation for audiences accustomed to the force-based starting methods that produced frightened, braced horses accepting a rider's weight as a fait accompli.