Lot 39

A pale caliche road runs the south edge of this tract, hard-packed and wide enough that two trucks can pass without either one taking the ditch. Start there. Behind it lie 12.03 acres of ranch land for sale at 44 Ranch North, squared off in the Duval County chaparral, dense and green from one survey line to the next, with red dirt showing bright where the boundary lines were bladed clean. From the road you can't see far into it. That's the nature of this tract.

The growth stands chest to head high, honest South Texas thorn scrub, gray-green and dark green mottled together, the kind that shades an animal all day in August. Walk into it and the sound of your boots changes. Sandy red loam underfoot, bare soil showing in the small openings, and a canopy tight enough that you'll be picking thorns out of a sleeve by the time you get back to the truck. Quail like this sort of thing. The same screen that holds birds along the edges in early fall is the screen that keeps anyone from watching you set up camp.

There's roughly 10 ft of fall from one end of the tract to the other, which in practical terms means you choose a building site instead of letting the terrain choose it for you. A camp pad, a drive, a set of pens later on: no cut and fill to fight, no washout to armor after a hard rain. The bladed strips that square this tract also give you a way to walk the interior without swinging a machete, and they're a fair spot to start if you want to push a two-track into the middle. Pick your own opening, then let the rest grow the way it wants to.

This is Duval County, South Texas, in a stretch that had a hunting reputation long before anybody surveyed tracts out here. August middays run hot and the clouds stack white and enormous. In the early hours the scrub turns gold before it settles back to gray-green for the day. Look at the far skyline and you'll pick out a tower and a caliche pad or two, because this region earns a living, oilfield and cattle both, and that is the honest picture of what surrounds you.

44 Ranch North totals 1,119 recorded acres, and these 12.03 are a size a person can learn in a single season and hunt properly. Every tract here is surveyed, and light restrictions keep commercial operations out, so what borders you tomorrow stays the same kind of land you bought today. Owner financing is written plain, with as little as 5% to get started. We'll go line by line with you on the terms, and on how the access is written in the deed and on the recorded plat, since those documents govern and not the road you drove in on.

• 12.03 surveyed acres, level end to end
• Caliche road running the south edge
• Heavy native thorn growth boundary to boundary
• Owner financing starting at 5%

Wear boots you don't mind scarring and long sleeves, whatever the month. The best walk is an early hour in late fall once the heat has let up, and you'll want a solid two hours to see it right. We'll meet you at the caliche, show you the survey stakes along the west and east lines, and follow the bladed edge as far east as you care to go. Bring water and a hat. That scrub shades an animal a lot better than it shades a man.