Hunt was born into a football family with his great uncle, Harold Rumney, playing 186 games in the Victorian Football League (now the Australian Football League) for the Collingwood Football Club and Carlton Football Club, including four premierships with Collingwood between 1927 and 1930; and his uncle, Andrew Moir, played 73 matches for the Melbourne Football Club from 1977–1981. He played under 16 level football with the Hampton Rovers Football Club in 2011 before playing school football with Brighton Grammar School. Playing in the Associated Public Schools of Victoria (APS) competition during his draft year, he did not play in the TAC Cup or under 18 championships that year. His only representative match for the year was the APS vs. Associated Grammar Schools of Victoria (AGSV) match.

Playing just the one representative match for the year, Hunt was drafted by the Melbourne Football Club with their third selection and fifty-seventh overall in the 2013 national draft, he was the only player in the draft to not play any football at under 18-level. He was labelled as the draft smoky and Herald Sun journalist, Sam Landsberger, noted he was “plucked from relative obscurity”. After playing the first six matches in the Victorian Football League (VFL) for Melbourne’s affiliate team, the Casey Scorpions in 2014, he was sidelined for over a year after suffering from a back injury and a broken jaw which he injured in June 2015. He returned to the VFL in July and played the remainder of the season including the elimination final loss against Essendon.