In Fields Alone

By Keith “Catfish” Sutton

Keith Sutton
15601 Mountain Dr.
Alexander, AR 72002
501-847-9643
catfishdude@sbcglobal.net

On a sunny February morning, a 12-year-old kid in blue jeans walks out the back door, grabs a single-shot 410 as he goes and heads for the back forty—a field of briar patches, broomsedge and brushy edges across the pasture from his home.

The boy doesn’t notice his feet scuffing through the weeds, but he can taste the dust he stirs. The smells of earth and grass and leaves fill his nose. He hears crows cawing in the distance. A cool breeze brushes his cheek.

 

In the grass up ahead, he glimpses a movement. Suddenly, his chest feels wrapped in rubber bands. His heart slams in his ears. He puts a shell in his shotgun and inches forward.

There they go! A thousand of ‘em in all directions! Everything’s a flurry of sound and dust and motion, but the lad finds his mark and then … it’s over.

He picks up the bobwhite he has killed, smoothes its feathers, then places the bird in the pocket of his hunting vest. He smiles, knowing his mother and grandmother will be proud. They’ll have quail for tomorrow’s breakfast.

 

The boy hunts the old field every chance he gets. It is a world full of bobwhites and cottontails and youthful adventure—the perfect place for a country kid growing up. And while he is there, hunting and exploring, the boy grows up.

The field looks smaller now. I stopped there with a friend last week and looked out across it. Nothing has changed much in thirty-five years. Nothing but its size.

That seemed strange at first. How could a place that once seemed so enormous, a landscape I could explore for weeks without discovering all its secrets, now seem so small?

I pondered the question that night while reminiscing about those boyhood days, and decided the answer must be this: A place seems bigger when you are there alone.

Looking back, I realized that when I hunted the old field, I always hunted there alone.

The reasons I hunted alone came back to me as well. I had plenty of friends who enjoyed chasing rabbits and quail as much as me, and all would have loved to accompany me on my hunts in the field. My mother, however, would not allow it.

She bought my first shotgun when I was twelve—a little single-shot 410 from Sears—and when she placed it in my hands on my birthday, she looked in my eyes and told me I could hunt with it near home, but unless I was with an adult, I must hunt with it alone.

I was young, but I understood. My nineteen-year-old cousin had been killed in a hunting accident the year before, an accident where a hunting companion had shot at a sound in the brush. It was a senseless tragedy that had a profound effect on our extended family, and on my mother in particular. Try as she might, she couldn’t forget that horrible mishap.

Mom knew, however, I was destined to be a hunter. Her father had been a hunter and his father and his father before him. My uncles were hunters, and my cousins and my friends. I, too, would be a hunter. But if Mom had to cope with that reality, she would do so in her own way. She would worry less if I hunted by myself where accidents were less likely to happen.

And so, at her behest, I hunted the field alone.

More than three decades have passed, but I remember every detail.

The field was covered with golden broom sedge and scattered patches of blackberries and sumac. To reach it, I walked through the pasture and climbed through a barbed-wire fence behind my uncle’s barn.

There was a little opening in the fencerow cover where fleeing cottontails would appear for just an instant. Occasionally, in that instant, one fell to my gun.

Quail liked to feed in a patch of beggarweed on the field’s far side, so I approached this spot cautiously on every visit …. and still got spooked out of my wits every time a covey flushed.

On a little rise on the east side, I often sat beneath an ancient oak and watched beavers and ducks in a small pond.

In the pecan orchard on one edge, I hunted squirrels that Mom stewed with dumplings or fried for breakfast.

That first year, the year I was twelve, I hunted the field almost daily—always alone. Age thirteen was a turning point. Mom still worried about my safety, but she agreed I could hunt with friends she trusted.

Even so, when I hunted the field, I hunted there alone. It had become by then a special realm where outsiders weren’t welcome. It had become my field full of my cottontails and my quail. Hunts with friends occurred elsewhere.

I don’t know for sure when I quit hunting the field. I do know that when I did, I still often hunted alone. Going solo became a way to escape and recharge my batteries. Still is.

And when I’m out there alone, the place I’m visiting still seems bigger … because I’m alone.

That is one reason, perhaps, I still treasure the occasional moments I’m able to spend in the field, or in the woods, or on the water, with no other person in sight. Every day, our world seems increasingly smaller and more crowded with people. But when I’m by myself, it doesn’t seem that way any more. I can imagine I’m the only human for miles around.

And though I know it’s only an illusion, it’s an illusion that keeps me sane.

I was at a friend’s house recently when his twelve-year-old son came in and asked his mom if he could go hunting by himself in the field behind his family’s home. “I’d rather you didn’t go alone,” his mother said. “What if something happened? Why don’t you call Bobby and see if he can go with you?”

Times change. Perspectives change. People change.

I’ve changed. If Mom were still alive, I’d tell her that I changed for the better because of a decision she made when I was just twelve.

She sent me out alone because she feared for my safety. In doing so, she allowed me to mature in ways she’d never imagined.

Out there, alone, I witnessed life and death. I saw beauty and blood. I felt exhilaration and sadness. I learned that success tastes sweet and defeat need not taste bitter.
In a field alone, I became a hunter.

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Out There Fishing