West Texas Ranchers Marketing
Peace And Quiet And Solitude

By Colleen Schreiber

SANDERSON — Monte and Lisa Harkins are still trying to make a living the old fashioned way, from the land and livestock. A wide variety of factors, however, combine to make that living harder and harder to come by.

Monte is a fourth generation rancher. His great grandfather, N.H. Corder, came to Terrell County in 1905 when it was still part of Pecos County. Corder and four other men, R.R. Russell, L.L. Russell, I.W. Ellis and William Bevans, bought land from the Dull heirs to form the Big Canyon Ranch Company. They acquired the land by trading rail steel to the Southern Pacific Railroad. The partnership was later dissolved and the ranch divided among several different family members.

Monte’s parents, Sid and Mary Francis Corder Harkins, and now Monte and Lisa, continue to operate some of that same country where Monte’s great grandfather got his start.

Beginning in 1980, Monte and his father decided to cut way back on livestock numbers beginning to try to grow some grass and let the country recover. It wasn’t easy to make a living with such reduced numbers, Monte says, and it took their federal wool incentive check to keep them afloat while they tried their best to improve the range.

Then the drouth hit and hung on for five years. Many of the oldtimers considered it as tough as or tougher than the seven-year drouth of the 1950s.

The rains finally began in May 1996.

"We had already planned to sell out if rains didn’t come by the fall," Monte says.

When the Harkins first heard that sheep and goat producers might lose the incentive program, they began to look for ways to diversify and offset that lost income.

"When we lost the incentive we didn’t want to lose our way of living, too," Lisa says, "so we looked for alternatives."

The Harkins had worked hard since 1978 to develop their deer herd.

"We had quantity, but we realized that hunters put out more dollars for quality," Harkins says.

Once they had achieved what they considered trophy status for their herd, they began fixing up some hunting headquarters.

They turned the old ranch house where Monte grew up into a hunting cabin of sorts. They did the majority of the work themselves, hired a cook and a skilled hunting guide, and prepared all the other amenities that normally accompany such an experience.

They tried this route for two years, but it didn’t take long for them to realize that the guided hunting operation wasn’t penciling out. In addition, they found that repeat customers weren’t very common.

"We assumed that if you provided them with a quality hunt and you gave them lots of amenities, they would come back every year," Harkins says, "but what we found out was that once they killed a quality deer on our place they were ready to move on to bigger things."

It was their regular commercial hunters who really gave Monte and Lisa the idea for a "get-away" ranch.

"Our hunters got to coming down most every weekend just to get out of the city and away from their jobs," Monte says. "We finally told them that this was a seasonal hunting lease, not a recreational get-away."

It was the realization that many of their hunters got as much or more out of the peace and quiet and open space as they did from their hunting adventure that pushed Monte and Lisa to test the waters in the recreational aspect.

The Harkins chose not to call their new enterprise a bed and breakfast, and it’s not a dude ranch. Essentially what they’re selling is access to their land. Guests can walk, hike, bird watch or just sit and enjoy the silence.

"It’s a get-away ranch," Lisa says.

They essentially had the necessary facilities for overnight stays. The problem was finding an effective way to let people know about their "get-away" ranch. Initially, they contacted several of the well known publications like the Wall Street Journal and the Houston Chronicle. Then they attended a Texas Rural Community Development meeting to learn more about the very thing they were attempting to put together. It was through this meeting that they realized the Internet was the way to go.

Someone in Sanderson designed a home page for them. Part of their website address has a Big Bend extension, and that alone, Monte says, has drawn them some business. A lot of their guests are on their way either to or from Big Bend or other tourist sites in the West Texas area.

Their facility accommodates 10 people with four sleeping areas and two full baths. The rates are based on a 24-hour stay. By design it has no television, telephone or fax. Those amenities are available at the headquarters for guest access, however.

Originally Lisa had planned to cook, but doing so required an inspection process and they decided that was one hassle they didn’t want to mess with.

Guests can participate in some of the daily ranch activities, star gaze, go birding, hiking, biking etc. Guests also have access to a shooting range, but the Harkins have found that most guests come seeking solitude and authenticity.

If guests so choose, they can accompany Monte during his morning rounds to check the livestock, waterings or whatever chore he has planned for that day.

"People don’t know how water gets to the windmills, they don’t understand about pipelines or about the animals and what it takes to care for all that," Lisa says.

"We tend to get so busy ranching that we haven’t always been good about taking time out to educate the public," Monte adds. "The majority of our problems stem from the fact that people don’t understand what we’re doing. We, (ranchers) have been our own worst enemy."

The Harkins’ first guests came at Thanksgiving in 1996, and in a year’s time they’ve had some 30 guests.

Though the Harkins haven’t invested a great deal of capital, and they haven’t spent a great deal of time promoting their operation, the couple admits that they expected the business to be steadier than it has been.

"We still ranch seven days a week and we fit this in," Monte says. "It takes work, and if we’re going to make this work, we have to do it full-time."

Several other ranch people have called inquiring about their operation, and Lisa says she encourages them to give it a try but to be careful about initial capital output.

Insurance, the couple says, is one of their biggest expenses. They had a particularly hard time finding a company to insure them because of the shooting range.

"They didn’t know what to call us," Monte says. "We weren’t a bed and breakfast and we weren’t a dude ranch. And most of them just nearly fell over backwards when they heard we had a shooting range," Monte remarks.

A carrier finally agreed to take them on, but swimming and horseback riding are not covered in the liability policy and therefore these activities are not offered as part of the package.

Despite the challenging times, Harkins says he’s never been more excited about ranching in his life.

"I just wish I could make a living at it. Dad always says, ‘I wish I could live to be 200, because it gets to be more of a challenge.’ You learn more every year and you want to learn more," Harkins says. "It’s a way of life. It’s a good way of life, but it’s a lot of work."

Lisa says she wasn’t planning on living this kind of life, but after they married she understood why her husband was willing to work from sunup to sundown.

She developed that same passion and love for the land and the way of life after they began raising the prolific Finn sheep.

"They weren’t an easy sheep to love," Lisa recalls. "We were out in the barn with the dogies at all hours of the night, but I got to the point where I didn’t mind it. You either hate this way of life or you love it. If you’re not interested in it, you’re not going to do it well."