In 1991 World Champion cowboy Lewis Feild announced his retirement.
From each new decade seems to emerge one great all-around cowboy. The 1950s produced Jim Shoulders. In the ’60s, it was Larry Mahan. Tom Ferguson dominated the ’70s. And the ’80s belonged to Lewis Feild.
Feild, who captured the world all-around title from 1985 through 1987, recently announced that he would retire from full-time competition. He plans to finish out the 1991 season, and hopes to gain one of the fifteen National Finals Rodeo berths in the bareback riding event, something he has done each year since 1981. He also hopes to compete in the saddle bronc riding, as he did in 1985, ’86, and ’87.
It has been said that a man’s accomplishments can be measured by the respect of his peers. By this yardstick, Feild is indeed an accomplished cowboy.
“Lew’s probably one of the toughest competitors around. You think he’s getting old, and you turn around and he s spurring like a 19-year-old kid,” said bareback rider Clint Corey. “You can never count Lewis Feild out, that’s for sure.”
Corey speaks from experience. In both 1985 and ’86, Corey was in the chase for the world champion bareback rider’s buckle, only to finish second to Feild at the National Finals. “The first year I went to the NFR, we were in the race for the title, and he beat me out that year and the next. Pressure never gets to him.
“A lot of guys are conservative on rank horses, but he’ll put it to all of ‘em,” said Corey. “When he’s out ahead of you, he’ll really put it to ’em and that makes you think, ‘ Yeah, that’s how to do it.”‘
Another competitor who holds Feild in high esteem is Dave Appleton, a bareback and bronc rider from Queensland, Australia. In 1988, Appleton knocked Feild from the all-around throne by a scant $643.
“Whenever I am at a rodeo with Lewis Feild, it is an honor to compete beside him,” said Appleton. “What can you say about a guy like Lewis? His record speaks for itself.” .
Indeed in his 11-year career in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Field has compiled an impressive record. In 1980, the PRCA named Feild the Rookie Bareback Rider of the Year. In 1981 and ’88, he claimed the Linderman Award, which is given to the cowboy with the highest earnings from both ends of the arena (in addition to his rough-stock skill, Feild is also a talented team roper). He won the National Finals Rodeo bareback riding average in 1984 and 1986, about the time he began his string of five world titles.
Since the PRCA adopted a monetary scoring system in 1945, Feild is among a handful of cowboys to win five world titles in just 3 years. Casey Tibbs, Dean Oliver, Tom Ferguson, and Roy Cooper matched the feat. Only Jim Shoulders surpassed the record, capturing an amazing nine world titles in just 3 years, winning the bareback riding title, the bull riding title, and the all-around in 1956, ’57, and ’58. All of these men, except Lewis Feild, have been inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, and it is virtually certain that Feild will be memorialized there as well.
As Feild amassed titles, he also amassed a fortune. In 1990, he became the first rough-stock rider in PRCA history with career earnings in excess of $1 million. In 1987, he stretched the record for single-season earnings in the bareback riding event to $114,657. That year, he also established a single rodeo earnings record of $75,219. And, until last year when superstar Ty Murray bumped the single-season arena earnings record to $213,771, Feild held that record, too.
At 34, Feild figures he still has a few good years left in him. ”I’m at an age where I could still ride, but I didn’t want to let this chance pass me by,” he said. The chance he speaks of is to become a rodeo stock contractor. This past summer, he and partners Cindy and Steve Gilbert bought out the Stephens Bros. Rodeo Co. of Middleton, Ida., and formed Lewis Feild’s Diamond G Rodeo Co. Inc. They’re also in the process of purchasing the Silver Lining Rodeo Co. , owned by former bareback rider Mickey Young of Jerome, Idaho.
Other forces conspired to draw Feild away from the hectic competitive schedule that once saw him traveling to more than 100 rodeos a season. This year, he’s cut that schedule to about 60 rodeos and is spending the extra time with his family at his ranch in Elk Ridge, Utah. Feild and his wife, Veronica, have a daughter, Maclee, and two sons, Shadrack and Kaycee. Feild has always put his family first, making extra trips home and taking them on the road with him when he could.
Feild also has a special affection for the Utah mountains, where he spends time fishing, hunting, and exploring on a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle. He was raised in Utah’s Kamas Valley near the small town of Peoa, about 60 miles from his picturesque home in Elk Ridge. It was in Kamas in the early ’60s that Feild saw his first rodeo.
“It was the most exciting thing I had ever seen, to watch those cowboys stay on those broncs. It was love at first sight,” said Feild. After that first experience, young Lewis began learning his craft by riding calves at the Peoa ranch of his parents, Keith and True.
He rode his first bucking horse at the Golden Spike Rodeo in Ogden. “It was a junior rodeo and it was not a full-sized horse, but it bucked and I stayed on. They gave me a buckle for an award … first thing I ever won.”
Later, Feild attended college at Utah Valley Community College and Weber State University, earning his keep on an intercollegiate rodeo scholarship. With the help of some friends, he turned pro in 1980. For Feild, life has been something of a whirlwind.
“Ten years in the business … it’s about the lifespan of a pro football or basketball player. I’ve been lucky physically and the sport has been good to me financially;’ said Feild in a recent newspaper interview. “Only in the last couple of years have I come to realize that I couldn’t do it forever.”
Feild must also take into account the dynamic presence of a new all-around cowboy, Ty Murray. That 21-year-old wonder has claimed the world all-around title for the past 2 years, and could possibly be the dominant champion of the ’90s.
Last year, after winning his second consecutive all-around title at the Pendleton Roundup Rodeo, Feild declared that he was having “one of his best years ever – if it weren’t for Ty Murray.”
As the new decade progresses, Feild hopes that history will recall him fondly. “Someday, when rodeo people look back at what I’ve done, I’d like them to say these things: that I rode tough; I could ride with pain and courage; that I was a fierce competitor in the arena, but a quiet, respectable man outside the gate. I just want to be remembered as a cowboy,” said the soft-spoken champion. “That probably says it all.”
* Lewis Feild passed away February 15, 2016 at the age of 59 after battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
This article was originally published in the October 1991 issue of Western Horseman.
As the chairman of the Cache county fair and rodeo later, known as the great American West, rodeo, and sitting on the Board of Directors for seven years, I got to know Louis very well all the things that he wish to be remembered by is something that you remembering for soft-spoken full of determined grit And spur the hair off just about anything you put him on as he transitioned into stock contractor by that time I was serving on the Board of Directors for the wilderness circuit I likely and his beloved wife, the circuit finals he would bring his family and they would sit in the stands close to the buck and shoots I can save Louis Field is he’s a good man and will be remembered as such!.