mrmiji
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# Posted: 21 May 2011 09:15pm - Edited by: mrmiji
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A fine individual I work with took me with him to his family ranch. Though mine's about 80 acres, his is measured in miles and is the combination of his wife's and his families. BIG. He'd already taken what he'd wanted and was taking me to shoot a doe. We saw mule deer all day but that wasn't what we were there for though if I had my Browning 1885/7mm, I could have tagged any of them. They had a range they felt safe (though they were wrong as I practice to hit gallon jugs at out to a measured 300 yards) and would maintain it watching us work the field. We'd watch them to see what they could also spot. They would glance to a spot opposite us occasionally and the cattle were behind us so we worked our way around the ridge to see a large whitetail doe jump a fence line and drop into a canyon. Jim went one way and I went the other with an agreed meeting point. As I knew he was flushing the fingers of the canyons ahead of me and saw him on the ridge in front of me, I knew she had to be in the next finger canyon. I found an offset wash to crawl up with my Ruger 77/MkII Frontier rifle on my back, settled down for about 1 minute (I tried to count it out) and then slowly stood up. She was 40 yards from me but missing a hole in her chest. I fixed that.
After that, I kept remembering my college years where I learned to hunt with my roommates because I couldn't afford meat. We were damned efficient. The vehicle was a Honda XL125...a tow vehicle really and I'd tow a roommate miles out to the fishing and hunting sites. I really missed that. Finding land to hunt has become so hard. Permission disappears with groups like the Edmond Sporting Society bring their deep pockets up acquiring leases. I'd regularly get offers from acquaintances but it almost always fell through. What I missed most was a connection to the land.
Through an inheritance, I was able to acquire my ranch. It has some odd stories behind the property that neighbors have shared and I can if anyone's interested. I paid just short of 100,000 USD for it. I think I got it because it wasn't auctioned but listed and improperly. It was also probably too small for a large OKC-related leaser to pursue. We've had it for going on three years. Every time I head out there, I feel a little more free and sane. My blind is the only structure so it's pretty raw with a commanding view as it's on the crest of a butte. Other than a couple months this summer where one neighbor's cows came to visit, it's been a wonderful therapeutic experience. No more permission to hunt, phone calls, or annoying hippie neighbors. Along with the deer, there are several large coveys of quail moving through the place and enough squirrels to profoundly reduce my stock of .22s. Yeah, it's nice out there.
It's the first weekend since after we'd closed on the property. My wife had never seen the place and my daughter didn't really understand the significance of what we were doing. I'd been out twice looking at the place but really though I'd seen about half the place at a distance, the other half I'd never seen. I still haven't been up three of the canyons. We get out there and are walking one of the driving trails that had at one point been graveled. I'd walked some of the deer trails and was showing the family around when a clearing caught my eye...no shrubs, just a straight path through some trees covered in blue stem grass. It's one of the highest points on the property with a commanding view of almost all of my land. As we walk, I pick up a shiny reflection on the ground and it strikes me that I know what it is - a gravestone. I don't recognize the name but it's dated maybe seven years ago. It's Friday.
I stew on this all weekend and call my lawyer that specializes in real estate transfer and ask him, "Do you think that at closing maybe Mr. XXXX might have mentioned the body buried out on the ranch?" He thought it was rather funny and explained my options but encouraged me to just call Mr. XXXX. When I called him, he stated that it was his sister-in-law and that they'd sprinkled half of her ashes there and half in her home state. Though we eventually will build a 30 X 30 cottage with a concrete basement, we'll not need to disturb her marker. Whether it's haunted or not, you decide. I finally got that hernia operation after clearing two thirds of the place. She's welcome to visit but I hope she's not a heavy drinker.
I'm still searching for a complete history of the property. One owner was involved in heavy construction, earth moving, and such. He brought his own equipment in to build the dam. The spillway has two water traps constructed of stacked sacks of concrete and is really something to see. They're quite large and tall; something I could never afford to do today. The dam itself is just earth moved from near the canyon. I'm told by different sources that while prepping the dam, they hit bones...dinosaur bones. They shut the dig down and allowed the University of Oklahoma to come out and dig through the construction site. As this was a low spot created by erosion and they were only allowed to dig in the construction site, the obvious conclusion is that there are plenty more under there.
As I wander around trying to explore the whole place, I continue to find odd things. For instance, in the middle of a stand of trees, there's a galvanized trash can held down with three steel T-posts and bailing wire holding it all in place with the top wired down. I'd sure like anyone's opinion as to why someone would do that. I opened it with a fair amount of trepidation and there was some indication that some small amount of organic material had been in it and the bottom had rotted out.
There's a small old trash dump with a lot of bailing wire wadded up, old wine jugs and other containers of glass and rusted metal. There's even an old clamshell truck hood in it. All that will get hauled off to the dump but I have to cut a trail through the trees to get the trailer near enough to make it less physically challenging. When I purchased the place, there was a lot of steel on it left over from the previous owner's attempt to drill for oil. They didn't hit anything. The concrete cap on the hole is there and he removed much of the reusable pipe. The rest I'll cut this spring on the first weekend following a rain.
The oddest thing left behind was a 1951 Tulsa Airplane Company Spartanette Tandem trailer. New, these were really something and cost as much as a house. Built much like an aircraft using jigs, they were the highest order of quality and finely finished on the interior. Sadly, it was neglected over the 30 plus years it had sat on the ranch. Squirrels had worked their way into it along with wasps and it was in horrible condition. There was probably 300 pounds of squirrel poop in it. Still, a single running light was worth maybe 100 dollars and it had three. Though it didn't have the original stove and furniture, most of the original and unobtainable hardware still was present.
I posted it on a forum website not unlike this one offering it for free BUT you had to take everything inside as well...worn out tires, 5 gallon buckets of god-knows-what, the squirrel poop, and all the loose insulation the squirrels had pulled out. My wife thought I was nuts. I bet her one dog washing (normally) my job that someone would want it. The day after posting, I had an offer to pick it up but the person had a budget limit and essentially wanted me to pay for his travel !?! The next person wanted pictures. The third indicated he could pick it up that weekend. WINNER!
He brought 4 new tires on matching wheels. We bottle jacked the suspension up to get the long-since flat tires off using a 6 foot piece of pipe over the ratchet as a cheater bar on the lugs. After all that time, the freshly mounted tires spun effortlessly. We used my 4WD to pull it off the ranch after we'd cut a path through the woods that had grown around it and swapped it onto his Suburban. We followed him back to Enid and noted while he was refueling that the bearings were still cool! He made it home to Denver after stopping for the night in Wichita. I guess he has 7 others in various states and mine will provide hardware and sheeting for those more restorable I'd venture to guess that trailer had well over $1000 in parts on it. I could have Ebayed it out and then scrapped the aluminum sheet but then I'd have a big mess and no place to take it.
The damage to the trailer didn't happen overnight. I was a little surprised to hear that the previous owner had still come out and stayed in it for weeks on until only a few years before I owned the place. He'd tried raising cattle but there's little forage out there worthy of grazing. I'm told he'd drop the gate and let the neighbor's bull onto his property to get him to breed the cattle and then deny any knowledge of any of it. I guess he gave up on the cattle fairly early on but continued to spend time out there. It's also considered common knowledge that he grew the number one cash crop though I've not seen anything of the weed.
Apparently, he would have fairly large extended parties and there's some sign of various campsites around the pond area. There's also a massive concrete picnic bench we use when it's not hunting season. Even when he didn't have company, there was a festive spirit out there. I'm told he walked across the property line to my neighbor's picnic bench in his backyard and laid down on it. When discovered, he wasn't real chatty but did acknowledge that he'd rolled his truck off the dam. That's about a 40 foot drop. It's not there now. Yeah, as much as I'm viewed as a city boy, I'm considerably more accepted by the neighbors in that at least I'm quiet and am working on cleaning it up and improving the habitat for wildlife. I can even fix a fence. But then I paid for my college education doing janitorial services and installing fence so I know how to do manual labor. BTW, my wife did end up washing the dog though she's still bitter about it because she just sees that as my job with no up side if she won.
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mrmiji
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# Posted: 21 May 2011 09:22pm - Edited by: mrmiji
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That trash can thing? Anyone have any idea why someone would but a trash can out in the middle of nowhere 1/8 of a mile from the paved access to the property and then stake it down and wire it closed? I didn't and, again, both I and my wife were rather concerned about opening it. I gave myself a bigger scare though when I did some investigating. It stuns me how much information you can get online. I Googled the previous owner's name but all I had was his given and last but no middle name. What I found was the name of a person that had murdered 2 people. Great, the previous owner was killing people and burying them on the ranch. Well, I found the previous owner's middle name and it didn't match. Still, for that period of time I believed there might be someone underneath that monument and I'd be building right next to it and essentially making it the oddest garden between the driveway...well that was a little easier to take. As far as I know, it's just the dinosaurs and last year's doe that I'd prepared to pass on until she gave me the hoof. Hey, poop on the place but don't disrespect me when I have a gun in my hand on my own ranch.
The guys at work, many of which are actually farmers as well, wouldn't let me call it a farm because I don't grow anything (and I can't claim the history of "weed" growing) and they wouldn't let me call it a ranch because I don't raise anything. Well, for now I can call myself a tick rancher because there are a few out there in the summer. I look forward to improving the place further as a deer habitat and then one day I can call it a deer ranch.
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