N RANCHING
atural Resources
Left alone, mesquite and prickly pear take their toll; even more so in drought.
day over a 10 month period in 2010. “That’s how we know you can spray year-round,” Anne says. “We didn’t just spray when it was freezing or raining, which sel- dom occurred. “Our kill rate is just fantastic — 90 percent, maybe closer to 95 [percent],” she says.
Drought stresses Surmount can be absorbed both by prickly pear
pads and through the soil by the roots. Because it is active in the soil, the Andersons did not spray under desirable oaks. “We hand-grubbed the pear under the oaks,” Anne says. “With drought-stressed oaks, we couldn’t take many chances.” Beginning in 2011, severe drought changed ranch-
ing plans for the Andersons, at least temporarily. They sold all the cattle off the ranch in August 2011, and with only marginal improvement since then, the ranch is still destocked. That’s tough for any cattle raiser, but it’s grating for
Anne, who serves on the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board. The 103-member board oversees the beef checkoff. “I’m a cattle person. I’m on the national beef board, and here we have a cattle ranch with no cattle,” she
60 The Cattleman November 2014
says in disgust. “Thank goodness we have cattle in other locations.”
Survival and restoration But the Andersons are preserving the resource, and
when it does rain, the ranch will be better than when they bought it. In the meantime, Anne is paying the bills through guided hunts, especially of axis deer, stocked on the ranch by a previous owner. “We think we’ve killed the No. 1 black-powder axis deer in the world,” she says. And they’re keeping up their brush work. Even in
drought, Anne can point to improvement of the range- land. Grass covers an area where they sprayed a dense pear colony in 2010. “All that grass came from a rain in March of 2012,”
she says. “Where we spray pear, we’ll have grass there the next year if we get rain. “I need some sustaining rains and sustained grass
growth,” Anne continues. “Even when we start get- ting rains, it will probably be a year before cattle are back on it.” Then the determination shows in her eyes. “We
intended to be a cattle ranch,” she says, “and we will be a cattle ranch again.”
thecattlemanmagazine.com
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