PHASE I
Planning the hunting strategy on 5,700 acres
In late 2022, we purchase a 5,700 acre cattle ranch in southwest Kansas. Our largest "blank canvas" to date.
Comanche County has been a well-known hot spot for years, producing some of the biggest frame and scoring deer in the country. To be developing a ranch here is surreal.
We made a trip down in December to do some hunting, get cameras out and start organizing a strategy for how to develop the ranch. To a Midwestern hunter the ranch does look open, but for this part of Kansas it stands out as some of the best deer cover around.
It is apparent the genetics and habitat here are outstanding (see trail cams below). We just need some destination food to hold the deer all year and 12-15 strategic hunting locations with fine tuned ingress and egress.
Converting a cattle ranch
Since the beginning our mission has been to put together a group of some of the most successful farm development minds. On this project we are partnering with our friend Tim Richardson who is managing the ag component of the ranch.
Tim is taking the lead on getting a few hundred acres of alfalfa, milo and wheat fields established. He will also be getting the livestock lease more strategically aligned with deer hunting.
A few hunting spots were already in-place. A few need some slight tweaking for access and wind directions, others will be moved to entirely new locations. You can watch that transformation take place in Phase 2.
The deer
Genetics on the ranch
PHASE II
Executing the hunting strategy vision
We returned to the ranch in mid-January to start working on the hunting spots and get a closer look at the tillable fields. Over a few days we installed new box blinds, treecoys and strategically concealed entrance and exits from the blinds.
PHASE III
The KEY components: food & water
In Phase 3 of the development we have hundreds of acres of milo and green fields going in and explain how the one-of-a-kind water system works to provide the ranch with water all times of the year.