Lot 165

Come out at two in the afternoon in July and the cattle will tell you where the shade is. At that hour nothing much moves. Black cows bed down in the dapple under the low brush, horns up, hides shining, waiting on evening the way everything out here waits on evening. That is the first honest thing to understand about these 13.24 acres of ranch land for sale on Tortuga Ranch in Duval County: the cover is heavy, and a cow, a deer or a person on foot can get out of the sun without walking far.

The ground is about as flat as this ranch gets. Call it 10 ft of drop from one end of the tract to the other, which is grade you feel in your boots and almost nowhere else. Water doesn't rip through it and a truck doesn't fight it. If you ever want to clear a camp pad, run a water line or lay out working pens, you'll be starting on ground that doesn't argue with you, and that is worth real money on a tract this size.

Better still, somebody already cut the road. A dirt ranch road enters on the west side and bends through the brush until it exits at the southern line, close to 1,300 ft of it, packed and drivable in a pickup. Most of the acreage is reachable on dirt that is already there. It is an existing ranch road and nothing more than that. The survey, the plat and the deed are what govern the way in, and we'll sit down and go through all three with you.

Wire runs the full east side, and the north side is fenced better than a third of its length. Then there's the feature that gives this tract its shape: a cross fence running north to south straight down the middle, roughly 600 ft of it, dividing the acreage into two pastures. Graze one half and rest the other. Or keep livestock on one side through the season while you sit the other side over a feed lane. What stays with the property and what doesn't is settled in the contract, so ask us about the wire when you come out and we'll give you a straight answer.

This is old grazing ground. The 1880 census reportedly counted close to 197,000 head of sheep in this county, more than any other in America at the time, and land worked that long comes back in brush as readily as in grass. These days the draw is dove and deer. The thornbrush between Freer and San Diego has a long reputation among hunters who know South Texas, and the heavy cover you see standing on this tract is exactly the reason why.

Every tract on the ranch is surveyed, with deeded access on the ranch road system, so your lines are your lines and the way in is written down instead of handshook. Owner financing is available with as little as 5% down, and we keep the paperwork plain. If you want to know how the ag valuation on this ranch is handled, ask and we'll lay it out for you.

Wear boots you don't mind scarring and bring leather gloves, because the brush here bites back. Come in late fall when the heat lets go. We'll drive the dirt road from the west side through to where it leaves the tract, stand at the cross fence where the two pastures divide, and spread the plat on the hood so you can see how it all lines up.