Why I Mentor: Bruce Moon
This Is Why I Mentor Series
A series to share, educate, and inspire others with mentoring stories.
We have all had one in our lives…. Someone we look up to. Someone we call when we have questions, concerns, and frustrations. Someone who provides sound and nurturing wisdom. Someone we can expose our true selves to and still feel supported. Someone we can hunt with. Someone we can fish with. Someone we can spend time with. A mentor.
This series is meant to be a way to educate and motivate you to give back to others. It is designed to inspire you to become a mentor. It is a reminder to thank your mentor. Hopefully the advice and stories shared here will leave you nothing short of empowered!
Mentor: Bruce Moon
A Hunt Not Forgotten
Hunts are remembered for what went right, what went wrong and for the special people who were there with you. Taking a nice animal is memorable, and nothing creates memories like stumbling backwards into a cactus patch on a 15 degree morning, or literally almost being run over by a doe being chased by a young buck with your rifle leaning against a tree 20 feet away. Good friends create good memories regardless of what happens on the hunt.
One hunt in particular combined all three aspects; Thanksgiving weekend 1989, in the Texas Hill Country. I was hunting with my brother, Sedrick Sutton. Sedrick and I weren’t blood kin, but we were brothers just the same. We had been “matched” through Big Brothers Big Sisters when I was in school. When we were first matched, we didn’t have money to do much of anything except hang out together, but we did a lot of that. One of the many things we talked about was hunting together some day. Our match officially ended when I finished school and moved away to take a job, but we remained “brothers” even though we now lived hours apart. My finances improved with employment and we did hunt together. I was at his side when he first fired a gun, first went hunting, and first took an animal.
Sedrick was 16 when I picked him up on the way to my new lease. We had a couple of hours in the car together. We caught up on his school, my work, girls, and how our families were doing. We talked about shot placement and gun safety. I teased him about his new earring and reminded him to be on his best behavior around the landowner, a sweet country lady in her 80’s who had hesitated before giving me permission to bring Sedrick to hunt on her land. I am sure Sedrick was the first young black man she had ever met in her life. I swelled with secret pride when Sedrick removed his earring before meeting her and quietly said he was doing so to make her feel more comfortable. The introduction evidently went well, as she did something the next morning she had never done before-- she brought a huge country breakfast to the converted chicken coop we used as our hunting cabin, complete with a big hug for Sedrick. Sedrick had that effect on people.
The weekend was great. Good weather, no television, just a couple of guys catching up and enjoying the opportunity to hunt together. We saw lots of deer and turkey and took a nice 8-point for the area. Sedrick even tried to teach me how to “moon walk” (the latest craze at the time) the last night in camp, with hilarious results. He didn’t have much of a pupil.
The problem occurred as we were packing to leave. Somehow in the excitement the keys got locked in the trunk with the deer. Shock set in -- the landowner was visiting her grandchildren and staying overnight, and we were literally in the middle of nowhere. The deer had the keys, but he refused to help. Finally, I took a wrecking bar and pried up the trunk lid of my first new car. It worked, but it was a painful experience for all involved. The weekend was in danger of being ruined. As we began the drive back, tension filled the car. Instead of filing away the memories of our hunt and time together, my jaw was clenched as I wondered how I was going to afford a new trunk lid, and how I could be such an idiot. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked over at Sedrick. He looked at me seriously and said, “Bruce, I know it’s bad right now, but we’ll laugh about this 10 years from now.” The tension evaporated immediately and we laughed together right then. Sedrick had saved the trip. The drive back was filled with stories of what we had seen and done, how much fun we’d had, and when we’d be going back. I also swore Sedrick to secrecy regarding the “moon walk” lessons. We joked about our $1,000 deer (unfortunately an estimate which proved prophetic) and how rude it had been for the buck to refuse to help us out of our jam.
The only problem was we didn’t get to laugh about it 10 years later. Sedrick died in a car accident at age 19. I miss him still. But I have pictures of him and pictures of our hunt, and even more important, I have the memories of a special hunt with my little brother. It was a very good time.
R. Bruce Moon
Fort Worth, Texas
2005
The above article was published in the NRA’s American Hunter magazine in November 2005.