C2 Ranch

[c2ranch]

Having been reading for a long time, I hope y'all don't mind me posting our place. Hopefully I can pick up some good guidance as we go - I'm learning every day I work on the property, and there's so much to be done.

We purchased 98 acres in deep East Texas back in 2021, our goals were to create a place where we could hunt, recreate, work remotely when work allowed, and to really create a space to focus on conservation and native habitat while being able to get out of the city as often as possible. I know that's not a big native space, but I figured every little bit counts, and I only have so many hours of labor available!

We spent the better part of the year hunting for a place within 2 hours of Houston -- I had been on a lease in Central Texas for years, and the 4.5-5 hour drive each way really took a toll on how much time I could spend out there. So, 2 hours was the max we were willing to drive each way every week.

Luck was on our side, we found a property that was:

Secluded - small dirt county road, that turns into a private road just past our place means only 3-4 cars a day go by, and we know every one of them.
Interesting topography - for east Texas, it works out nicely with 120' of elevation change across the property. Not great for a lot of ag purposes, it's surprisingly hilly.
Just the right size - like Goldilocks, we didn't want something too small, like 10-20 acres that we could barely hunt, nor too large for our budget (cash and time)
In good shape - I can't begin to describe the wide variance in quality we were seeing, properties that were all flood plain with 5+ expired oil wells and trash heaps to nothing but improved grasses for cows, completely denuded. This one was a timber property owned by someone who cared, and had had its last commercial thinning done a few years before we bought it, which meant there were great trees, but it wasn't completely overgrown and impossible to navigate.

We pulled the trigger and got to work right away! Here's an overview of the land:

(Note - these satellite photos show the house and lake we built and some of the clearing, just imagine them not there :)



The colored lines are the trails on the property. We have excellent access to all of it. There's a nice mix of high and dry hills, and very low and wet creeks/bottoms.

You can see the cleared strips around some of the property lines, and a large area cleared around the house. That hill area is about 12 acres all in. These cleared areas are native meadow we're maintaining, and killing back the invasives/hardwoods as they come. We haven't planted anything but have instead been encouraging the native seedbank to grow more grass or forbs/flowers depending on the area with timed mowing and burning in specific zones.

and here's the topographic view:



Finally, here's the current outlook on what we've been doing for this year (and next year's) projects:



The pink zones are "to be left alone" for the next two years. They will ultimately get the TSI treatment, but we're trying to create a safe space while we trample over the rest of the property.

The blue zone is a known deer bedding area. Lots of good grass, and high brush boundaries make this a safe space, doesn't hurt that it's at a high elevation either.

The green zone is our current hunting zone and TSI area. We plane to have the eastern 2/3rds done this summer, and the western 3rd done this coming winter.

The small red box is a little "kill plot" at the end of a "deer funnel" we've created by cutting a wide trail with brush on either side leading from the end of the blue zone to the middle of the green zone. The idea is to create a feeding attractant along an easy, safe, route between bedding areas. It's working pretty well so far, we have corn and protein feeders along the funnel, and a tower box blind at the top 440' hill looking down into the funnel and an area all around it that has been TSI'd.

Next up: the house.

 

[Catscratch]

Wow, hell of a lot of planning and work into your place. Don't forget to talk about the pond a little.

 

[c2ranch]

The land had no house, water, power, etc. So that would have to be remedied. My wife was adamant that it be nothing like the hunting shack we had at the lease, if I ever expected her to stay there! Ok, so it has to be nice, it has to be in our budget, and we both prefer a more modern style, so going with pre-made plans weren't in the budget.

I opened up CAD and decided to design a house for the property. Rather, I designed a handful of different houses until my wife gave me the thumbs-up.



We can ignore some of the obvious omissions, like vertical supports for the porch overhang, I hand-waved those and the builder and I worked them out (we ended up using western red cedar timbers...)

So, with a builder under contract, and a house design, we got to work. Needed electricity, driveway, well, septic, house and all of that. Project went surprisingly quick, given it was the height of covid and all, but we got it all done in less than 6 months, and under budget(?! don't ask me).

First, you have to clear a spot. We picked the back side of a hill that would allow the back porch to overlook the lake, while giving us a bit more privacy from the road. This tree is pretty much right in the middle of where the house will go.




Taking shape:



... and here it is, house, garage, driveway and hydromulching the forest all done:



Of course, the back porch is where the main hang-out/entertainment space is, and this is where we put most of the effort, and cedar siding budget:



A little bit later, I'd add some gravel and extend the hang out area to the ground:



One of my frustrations was that I wanted a bigger in hand in building whatever we built, but work was pushing me hard with 60-70 hour weeks during the build, so I couldn't do more than project manage. But, having to add something, I designed the stand for the wood burning stove out of ash and concrete -- I cast the concrete portion and had the builder make the ash legs:



Wanting a lot of wood, without breaking the bank, we used sheets of radiata pine plywood, and stained all of the pine trim clear. We used the plywood on black backing grids to give them texture throughout the main living area and master bedroom. The cabinets are ash.




Next up, I'll go through the lake building (or pond, whichever works for you :) -- and the issues we've had with that project along the way.

 

[c2ranch]

Wow, hell of a lot of planning and work into your place. Don't forget to talk about the pond a little.

Absolutely! That's my next post, along with the "year the rain came all at once every time" that have made the project a minor nightmare.

 

[c2ranch]

On to the pond!

For most of my life, I've fished saltwater, but I do like fishing in a small pond or lake and not having to work all day getting to fish and back. Sometimes you just want to sit on a nice dock and relax with a beer. Also, I really, really wanted a pond - but we couldn't find a property that had a nice pond and met all of our other requirements.

If you look back at the topo map above, you'll note that there's a single trail connecting the part of the property the house is on, to the rest of the property - heading SW to NE. That lower trail on the south crosses a gulley and is too muddy to use in the winter. The main trail also crosses a bottom area, but the one with the most water moving through it. So, we needed a way to ensure we could access the property when it's wet (which would end up being half the year) from the cabin.

We wanted a pond, and we needed a dam to help us cross the low area, so we worked with a crew to build a pond with that trail as the dam.

We ended up with a ~ 2.5 acre pond that's has a nice 13' deep hole as its deepest point.

Here's the trail we need to get through in winter, and where we decided to make the pond (the pond will be on the right side of this trail in the photo, and some clearing has already started there in this photo)



It was a small crew working with 1 excavator, 1 bulldozer, and a dump truck. The soil on most of the place is about 12" sand on top of solid red clay, so we were able to harvest all of the clay we needed within a few yards of where they were working at any time.



Added a bunch of edges for bass to hunt, and some structure using stuff we found in the area along with tree stumps that we had cleared out:




The guys who were building the pond did a great job -- a lot of clearing, digging, and thinking through how to fish it later :)

Here's the pond when it first filled up in the winter. I'll post some pictures soon of how it looks now that it's grown in and looking more natural.



Last year we added bluegill, sunfish, and fathead minnows around this time and I've caught a few 4" BG over the summer. The neighboring ranch needed some 10-12" bass harvested from their lake last weekend, so we were able to get 10 in that size range from them. We're going to have the release some tilapia next week as well, there's a ton of brown algae in the pond and it needs to get eaten.



I'll post later about the flooding we had over the last year, and the problems it presented for the pond.

 

[Catscratch]

Great job adding cover and ledges! Are you far enough south to have Florida genetics?

 

[c2ranch]

Great job adding cover and ledges! Are you far enough south to have Florida genetics?

Yep! The fishery near me sells pure Florida LMB. I don't know where the ones we got this weekend came from, so I'm not sure of their makeup.

 

[Catscratch]

I'd bet if the neighboring ranch was stocked there's a good chance it's with Florida fish.

 

[c2ranch]

Ok, now, on to a less pleasant topic. Flooding and drainage issues.

While the invasive plants and the ever-advancing march of sweetgum annoy me daily, the big challenge for us recently has been flooding. It seems like we're shifting into more a monsoonal weather pattern in East Texas and it's showing in how the rain falls. So far, while we've had a lot of rainy days this year, last year was a brutal winter for rain.

When we originally designed the pond, we followed what was standard practice for the area for small ponds, and to simply add a spillway instead of adding a main drain pipe. The decision was made to conserve cost and reduce potential maintenance/risk, but one thing we really failed to do was calculate the actual drainage area into the pond. Well, we calculated it, but we got it wrong. We calculated, poorly, a drain area of 40 acres. In actuality, it's over 100 acres.

Zooming back out on the topo, and looking at drains, we can see why -- the blue circle is the area of the pond.



The small blue lines are minor creeks/drains, and the dark blue lines are major drains/creeks.

So, we've got > 100 acres draining into a 2.5 acre pond with only a spillway and a prayer. What could go wrong? Last year, we learned when we had a 3" rain in one hour followed by 6" over 4 hours a week later on top of very wet ground. Let's back up a bit though.

Early on we decided the spillway would be too small at 16' wide, so we expanded it to 25' wide.




We had grass growing on it by winter, but not enough to be effective. January kicked things off with a 2"/hour rain and filled the spillway.



Made it through this rain just fine, but it wouldn't go more than a day or two without rain for the rest of the winter and spring. The ground was absolutely soaked -- when we got hit the with the 1-2 punch of 3" one night, then 6" a few nights later, the land couldn't take it any more - and nor could the spillway. Complete washout, all the way down to the main creek. Note this photo is looking roughly exactly where that spillway photo was:



This happened in one night! Some more shots down the main creek (all of these photos taken a few months after the damage was done):




Of course, the spillway/creek wasn't the only thing impacted. One of our main trails that crossed one of the drains went from passable, to this in that same night -- photos don't do it justice, that new gulley is 8' deep.



We're now going to have to rework the pond dam. The plan is to raise the dam by about 6', adding a new primary drain w/ drain box 3-4' higher than current water level using a 16" plastic pipe 100' long, adding another 3' or so of freeboard to take a heavy rain hit and moving the spillway to virgin ground -- only using the equipment to move a support berm up to it, so we don't damage any of the plant structure there.

Overall, it's a huge, unplanned expense which took away the ability to do some other projects, but we really don't want to abandon the pond. As an upside, we're estimating raising the water 3-4' will potentially add up to 2 more acres to the total pond size. The work starts this summer, assuming we ever dry out. The spillway hasn't been without running water since November, and it's May.

As an aside - that main creek area is a DEEP JUNGLE - here are a few views of it about 500 yards downstream of the dam -- the water is about 12' below where I'm standing.

 

[c2ranch]

We did our first burn in spring of 2024. We burned 53 acres during the growing season, and we plan to do a dormant season burn here in the coming winter of '26.

Originally, we applied for a grant through the turkey restoration program with TPWD (there are few, if any turkeys in our region - I've never seen or heard one on our property), but we lost out on that one given the size of our property. We did get a grant from Texas A&M though, which covered half the cost of hiring a company to do the burn.

I wanted to hire someone to do it for a couple of reasons: 1, I've never done a burn before and wasn't confident that I wouldn't start a multi-property conflagration, and 2: the state of Texas has a law that says if you hire a certified burn manager, then you have no liability under law if it gets out of control.

I mentioned earlier how wet last year was, and it was a problem for us. We had to wait until the very end of the allowable burn season, and even then it was still very wet. We didn't get an amazing burn, but it was enough to really spur some native grass growth and knock back some smaller hardwoods.

These were the areas we burned, in the winter we took a bulldozer through and ensured we had a clean 12' firebreak around each zone.



Due to the wetness, we didn't really get a lot of "big flames," but did get a ton of smoke.









This is what most of the burned areas looked like when all was said and done. Again, we didn't the level of burn we were hoping for, but it was good enough to really stimulate grasses and forbs. Still a bunch of fuel left for this year's dormant season burn.

 

[Catscratch]

Lots of erosion there.

When I was young and helping some ranchers during burn season I had one tell me "I've never lit a fire that I didn't immediately regret"... there's a lot of peace of mind with hiring a professional!

 

[c2ranch]

Indeed, it is. Erosion is a major issue across the whole property. With the sandy soil and lots of hills, there's always something popping up. You'll get a good rain and then there'll be a little hole in the middle of a trail.

I really liked working with the burn crew, but not being in control of the schedule makes me nervous ha! There'll be a day when the weather's right and they happen to be free, and all of a sudden they call you with "we're showing up in the morning!"

Looks like y'all had a great burn on your thread. I'm hoping we get something closer to that on our upcoming dormant season burn.

 

[c2ranch]

We have a few invasive problems. The most obvious and common would be the privet and Chinese tallow. That stuff is everywhere, and we try to knock back some of it every time we're out there. Just run around with a tank of herbicide and spray the plants/trees until you run out or get bored.

One of the things we learned is that you can't foliar treat Chinese tallow with triclopyr 4. When using that, you have to do basal bark treatment or you'll just kill off the leaves and within a couple of months, they'll just sprout back. Basal bark treatment does kill them dead, however. We could use triclopyr 3, but I have serious reservations spraying that with any amount of wind due to the potential for permanent eye damage.

A few invasives I wasn't planning on - the first being Japanese fern. I first noticed some of this growing in the deep creek this winter, and then next thing you know - I'm finding it all over the place in some of our lowland areas. Spent a couple of weekends over the winter spraying it with gly, and got a lot of it knocked back - but I know there's some I couldn't get to in the thick growth, and it's just impossible to reach the stuff in this section of the deep creek without risking injury. I'll try again in the summer when I can climb down without it being a slick straight drop down 10'.



The other thing that exploded on us was invasive water primrose. I think this is Ludwigia Hexapetala. I couldn't quite get my head around the best way to treat until it started to die back last year, but this year we'll be using a mix of triclopyr 3 (the 4 is not safe for the fish), and a little ecomazapyr when it comes back. It took over a whole side of the pond, completely covered both the banks and the shallows.




The tropical soda apple just gets me mad. It shows up everywhere and I suspect it will be an ongoing challenge for years. I hit it with gly in the meadows, but I also did treat a large infection with triclopyr 4 on the sprayer in one area a few weeks back.



Of course, we wouldn't be in Texas if we didn't talk about our most famous invasive: pigs. We're lucky in that we don't have a constant presence of them as the neighbors hammer them hard and put up mesh fencing to reduce the traffic. But when we have them show up, they do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.



I can always tell a sounder that hasn't faced a lot of hunting pressure yet -- they come back after you shoot the first of them, so that you can get 3 in one sitting.



We put two of them in the freezer, and the 3rd got to be coyote food. It's just too hot in June to get through 3 pigs cleaning solo before things get too ripe. (As you can see in the game cam photo, it was nearly 100 degrees out.)

... bonus if you notice the Chinese tallow in the top left of that photo

 

[c2ranch]

Had a friend able to join me for a task this weekend, so I took Friday off. Unfortunately, when schedules align, the weather doesn't - so we were stuck, two guys aged well to the north end of prime for manual labor digging holes and lifting wood in a heat wave. Took more breaks than I'd like to get it done, but we got a new stand for the rifle range built.

The roofing metal's not on b/c there wasn't any of the size we needed available within an hour's drive, and it's missing a purlin because math and I don't always line up. We'll get the metal on and all the trimming done in a few weeks.







Here are a few pics of the pond all grown in now:









That's not clay or silt in the pond, it's brown algae which has really taken over the pond over the past month or so. To combat it, we drove out to the fishery on Saturday morning and got 15#s of "adult" Mozambique tilapia and released those, and added some more fathead minnows while we were at it. Here are a few of them:

 

[c2ranch]

We couldn't do any TSI this weekend, because we needed the "cool mornings" (mornings they were, but cool they were not) to work on the range stand, but here's an interesting comparison between two areas. One, we burned during the growing season, aggressively removed nearly every hardwood tree, and then used the brush hog to knock everything down to almost the dirt. This is what it looks like about a year later:





Now, the other area we first girdled and cut down a bunch of the hardwood trees, then burned it - but didn't do any mowing to the area. We still have a lot of yaupon, privet, and other brushy stuff to kill in here, but compared to the previous area, the forb:grass ratio is much, much higher. This has been one of the things we've noticed is that if we mow in late spring or summer, we drive a lot of grass growth.









We're going through this area and selectively cutting down the volunteer pines to keep it more open. There's a ton of food in here, but nothing the deer like nearly as much as the greenbriar. It's everywhere, and I'll watch them eat it all day long.

I'm a little stuck on what to do about the beautyberry. It grows thick everywhere. I've never seen a deer eat it, but it's a native. It may just end up being one of those natives like sweetgum for me - a little is fine, everything else gets controlled.

Here is our "deer funnel" we created by cutting and mowing a path through the brush and trees leading from the main bedding area, to those two TSI'd spots where a lot of food is. It's a little hard to see in these photos, but the area around it is going through an intensive control on the sweetgum as well with hack-n-slash and basal bark spraying on nearly all of the SGs.



We've also planted some chickasaw plums in the area hoping those'll turn into thickets near the feeders. But, here's the little "kill plot" we made at the end, currently planed in I&C clay peas. It's messy, and low-effort (just burned down the existing veg with gly, and throw-and-mow the peas) - but it's coming along decently now for an early April planting.