Learn Russian: Пастух гонит скот на поле. - The shepherd is driving the livestock to the field.

гонит is the present tense of гнать, which is the unidirectional verb of motion for driving, herding, or chasing. We use it here because the shepherd is actively herding the livestock in one specific direction (to the field) right now. If he were herding them around aimlessly, or if this were a general statement about his daily habit, we would use the multidirectional verb гонять.

The infinitive is гнать (ending in -ать). Why does it conjugate with an -ит ending?

гнать is one of the famous exceptions in Russian. Even though it ends in -ать, it belongs to the second conjugation group. Its stem also shifts in the present tense by inserting an о, giving us the pattern: я гоню, ты гонишь, он/она гонит.

Since livestock are living animals, why isn't the accusative object скота (animate) instead of скот?

Even though the animals themselves are alive, collective nouns that represent a group, such as скот (livestock), стадо (herd), or толпа (crowd), are grammatically inanimate in Russian. Because скот is a masculine inanimate noun, its accusative form is identical to its nominative form.

Why do we use the preposition на instead of в for going to the field?