Jimmy Hinton

TUSCALOOSA | Millions of college football fans saw Paul “Bear” Bryant on the sidelines when he was consumed with football.

“He didn’t let anything interfere with football,” said his friend, Jimmy Hinton.

But Hinton also got to see a different side of Bryant. The successful Tuscaloosa businessman owns Sedgefield Plantation, a large Dallas County estate managed for quail hunting. It’s where he’s groomed several national champion pointers. And also that’s where he entertained the national champion coach.

“He liked to go to Sedgefield and get away from everything,” Hinton said. “Nobody would know where he was. He could relax down there.”

Every year, Bryant brought two of his former high school teammates from Fordyce, Ark. to hunt at Sedgefield. It was at Hinton’s house next to Snow Hinton Park where Bryant and his friends planned the hunt in January 1983, less than a month after his last game.

“He was sitting right there in that chair,” Hinton said, pointing across the room. “He started having problems breathing.”

Hinton summoned Bryant’s cardiologist and the paramedics, who took the coach to DCH Regional Medical Center. Hinton wasn’t overly alarmed because Bryant didn’t look too distressed. A call from Paul Bryant Jr. the next morning seemed to confirm that.

The coach’s son told Hinton that everything appeared OK and Bryant planned to go ahead with the hunt. Hinton went down to Sedgefield and took a horse to the back part of his property. When he got back to the barn late that morning, someone was waiting to tell him Bryant was dead.

“He had heart trouble I didn’t know about,” Hinton said. “You never heard him complain about anything.”

Hinton had spent many memorable afternoons with Bryant on horseback following bird dogs at Sedgefield. In 1973, Curt Gowdy went there to film Bryant for an episode of “The American Sportsman.”

Back then, the show was shot on film, not videotape. The cameras could only roll on bright, sunny days and those weren’t always the best for finding birds. So the episode had to be shot over several days.

Hinton remembers at one point, Bryant, who was a competent but not a great shot, managed a double, dropping two quail on a covey rise. He looked exuberantly at the camera man and asked, “Did you get that?”

“Boy, he was proud of that double,” Hinton said, chuckling. “The cameraman looked at him and said, ‘Coach, I’m out of film.’”

That double was a good moment for Bryant. But Hinton believes Bryant enjoyed another hunt even more:The time Bryant took his grandson, Mark Tyson, hunting.

“It was Mark’s first bird hunt,” Hinton said. “I think Mark killed eight birds. I could see how much Coach enjoyed the success the boy was having.”

Hinton also shared happy times with Bryant after football games. After Alabama secured the national championship in 1978, defeating Penn State, 14-7, in the famous “goal-line stand,” the Hintons and Bryants planned to go to dinner. Bryant had someone ask to keep a nearby oyster bar open.

He could have gone into the restaurant directly through a side door in the hotel where they were staying. Instead, Bryant chose to walk a circuitous route through the hotel lobby where a mob of adoring fans could see him.

“It was like a parade,” Hinton said, chuckling.

The Bryant the public saw was serious, often scowling, sometimes humble, poor-mouthing his own coaching ability. They might get to see a gracious smile after a game.

But Hinton got to see the coach after the crowds went home, when the glow of victory was still on him.

“He was really happy,” Hinton remembered. “He was talkative and the life of the party.”