32 minute read
v HOW TEXAS BEEWORKS’S ERIKA THOMPSON BECAME THE QUEEN BEE OF PASTORAL TIKTOK
How Texas Beeworks’s Erika Thompson Became the Queen Bee of Pastoral TikTok
By Lauren Larson
Photos by Jasmine Archie
Afew years ago, when Erika Thompson was living in Austin, she came across a dove languishing on the sidewalk. She scooped the dove up, took him home, and nursed him back to health. Thompson hoped to release him into the wild when he was ready, but he refused to fly.
The dove, Lime, now perches on the back of one of Thompson’s dogs, a wiry mutt named Shelby. “We think Lime likes the fur,” Thompson says, watching the pair serenely for a few seconds. The cross-species harmony is broken when Thompson’s husband, Andrew Hollister, suddenly opens their house’s back door. Shelby hurls herself towards Hollister and Lime does a ruffled loop before perching on a nearby table. Thompson sighs. “That’s about as much as he flies,” she says, coaxing Lime onto an outstretched finger. Lime has settled into the Thompson menagerie, along with her three dogs, five chickens, and millions of bees.
Thompson, 34, is a beekeeper, a TikTok star, and a woodland Disney princess. Her life is a pastoral idyll. Every day she has a slice of pumpkin pie for breakfast; sometimes she takes her coffee riverside, surrounded by her three dogs. She suspects her H-E-B keeps one pumpkin pie per week in stock year-round, just for her.
On one of the first tolerably warm days in September, she walks me around her place near Elgin, which she and Hollister bought last year. “When we first saw this property, we’d been looking for a while. I just wanted to get out of town,” Thompson says. As a beekeeper with her own company, Texas Beeworks, she needed more space for her beekeeping equipment, and she wanted to be able to keep hives closer to home.
A significant part of her business is removing unwanted colonies from people’s properties, a process which can take anywhere from 45 minutes to four hours, depending on the size of the hive. When she lived in Austin, after each removal she had to drive the bees to one of her apiaries across Central Texas. (In Texas, homeowners who host colonies on their properties can qualify for agricultural tax exemptions.)
Now she just takes the bees home to her apiary, two long rows of stacked white wooden boxes a short walk from her house. “I just drive
Left: Erika Thompson pumping smoke on her bees outside her home, then lifting a comb out of a hive to show the difference between worker bees, male bees, and the queen bee.
around, go inside, and have dinner. It’s the best.”
She and Hollister liked the house, which is pink and unpretentious. But mostly they were drawn to the quirks of the surrounding land. Thompson shows me the 100-year-old pecan tree in the backyard, where she and Hollister had a pandemic-size wedding ceremony this month. (They met on Bumble.)
A ways off from the pecan tree, Thompson and Hollister keep a brood of chickens in a spacious coop. She opens the coop’s door so “the girls”—all named after female country singers—can peck around in the grass. The chickens meander out of the coop and stand around for a moment, like a clique getting their bearings at a middle school dance. Then, suddenly, they race off as one, rounding the house.
Thompson hurries after them, shaking a bag of feed. All but one of the chickens follow her back and allow her to corral them back into the coop—a small gray lady named Emmylou is missing. “She loves the trash,” Thompson explains. She creeps up to the trash cans behind the house, from which a twitching gray chicken tush is peeking out. She shakes the bag again, then calmly herds Emmylou back into the coop.
Then Thompson leads me to a corner of the backyard where a path goes down to the Colorado River. When the previous owner showed them the house, Thompson recalls, she guided them to this spot and said, “We can walk down to the river if you want, but I have to tell you something: in this log, there is a beehive.” She presented it as a possible dealbreaker, but Thompson was thrilled. “It’s just such a good reminder that bees are going to do this with or without me,” she says of the hive, “and we’re gonna stand under that tree and get married, and there’s a beehive!” To each bride her own.
Now Thompson approaches the wild hive, keeping a reverent distance. The log is large and hollowed out, and bees clamber over each other at the mouth of the hollow. “I just love seeing how the entrance changes, and how their activity changes, without any intervention from a beekeeper,” she says pensively. “It’s so cool to me.”
Though Thompson technically makes a living in agriculture, which can seem antithetical to wildness, she has an unusual respect for animality. Her esteem for nature manifests itself in her beekeeping—though she occasionally collects honey from her bees to donate locally or gift to friends, she talks about honey harvesting with some derision—and in smaller ways.
As she walks past the house on her way to her truck to gather her tools, three dog snouts appear over the window sill and begin howling. “Oh, thank you,” she says to the dogs, in a high, loving voice. “Thank you so much!”
Thompson’s deep understanding of and appreciation for animal behavior allows her to get very close to her bees, an intimacy that plays well on video-sharing platform TikTok. When Thompson began posting videos on TikTok this past spring, she quickly catapulted into the viral vortex. Six months since her first post, she has amassed 1.9 million followers.
In one particularly popular removal video from August, which has been viewed 38.4 million times, Thompson used her bare hands to scoop clusters of bees from a colony in a compost bin into their new hive. (Bees often settle in compost bins and water meter boxes, the latter because the boxes are underground and thus climate-controlled, and the hole at the top is an easy entrance for bees to defend.)
When she found the queen bee, Thompson put her in a tiny plastic container that looked like a hair clip, placed her in the box, and let the other bees follow her in.
In her videos, Thompson moves slowly and purposefully, and she looks calm and content. In a voice-over, she narrates the process. Before she turned to beekeeping full-time last year, Thompson was a communications director, and while a background in communications does not necessarily guarantee that one is a good communicator, Thompson is: her voice has the uncondescending warmth of a kindergarten teacher’s.
In the comments below the video from August, viewers lost their minds, many of them balking over Thompson’s lack of gear. Unless she notices signs of aggression from the bees she’s inspecting, Thompson rarely wears a suit when she does her bee work: she does get stung occasionally, but she doesn’t mind. “How is she not scared[?] when I see a bee [I] pass out for a year,” one commenter wrote. “I just really love bees!” Thompson replied.
Thompson thinks people like to see their preconceived notions about beekeeping upended. “I think it’s probably good that people have a healthy fear of bees. We should respect them— they can be very hurtful to people,” she says. “But I think it was very much an element of seeing someone handle creatures that you normally
Top: Thompson removing the lid from a hive in order to check on her bees. Thompson letting a bee rest on her hand.
don’t see people that hands-on with.”
Besides the shock value of seeing someone so hands-on with a sometimes-maligned species, Thompson’s TikToks are very soothing, and they tap into our innate fascination with bee behavior.
When Thompson took a crash course on beekeeping a decade ago, she had no intention of becoming a beekeeper; she was just curious about honeybees as a species, particularly because she’d heard they were imperiled.
She’d dabbled in bugs as a child, until she was 16, when she got her first dog, a dalmatian that she brought to college at the University of Texas. The beekeeping course renewed her interest in insects. Before she started her own colonies—first a small backyard hive, then a few on a friend’s property—she read everything she could about bees. But Thompson doesn’t just have an extensive knowledge of bee behavior; she can demystify it.
For instance, there’s a reason why you don’t often see male bees out and about, Thompson explains: the mating happens in “drone congre-
gation areas” hundreds of feet up in the sky. She pops open her van’s back doors and gathers a few tools. Bees fly out of the van and circle her with a deep, ominous hum. She doesn’t seem to notice them.
“When a drone male bee mates with a queen, his endophallus rips out of his abdominal cavity, and he falls to the ground,” she continues cheerfully. If you see a male bee on the ground, he’s probably in the grip of post-coital paralysis.
The lady bees run the show; the male bees are secondary to all operations. “They’re not out in the world doing bee work,” Thompson says. They don’t forage, they don’t build the hive because they don’t have wax glands, and they don’t defend the hive, because they don’t have stingers. Typical.
“In the winter, the female worker bees will kick all the male drone bees out of the hive because they are a draw on the resources, and they won’t let them back in. They’ll either starve or freeze to death. Isn’t that crazy? Like, they have figured this out!” She shuts the van’s doors heavily, and we set off for her apiary.
Watching Thompson handle bees is like watching a circus sword-swallower: you know that they have practiced enough that what they’re doing is no longer dangerous, but you still feel a primal hnnnrgh watching it happen.
Thompson first looks at the entrance to the hive to read the bees’ bee-havior (sorry). “If there’s a bunch of guard bees out and a bunch of other bees trying to rob them, that might mean they’re a little more defensive,” she says.
“This is really good. We’ve got little lady bees coming and going; we’ve got one bee actually cleaning this other bee.” Satisfied, Thompson moves to the back of the hive and gently lifts the lid off the box.
“Hey, babies, how are you doing?” she says in the same octave she uses to converse with her dogs. She pumps smoke on the bees—to calm them, she explains—from her metal bee smoker, a witchy-looking device filled with pine needles and other kindling. (The smoke obscures the smell of the pheromones bees release when they’re alarmed.) The bees scatter but begin an angry-sounding drone that lasts for a few seconds. Thompson, unperturbed, studies the hive and waits for the bees to go quiet before lifting each piece of comb.
Though the day is relatively cool for late summer, the bee suit I’m wearing over my jeans and T-shirt has begun to feel suffocating in the heat. (Additionally, because Thompson warned me that bees can confuse the smell of bananas with the smell of the pheromone they emit when a colony is queen-less, I have not eaten bananas for two weeks.) I feel like a fish fillet in a sous vide bag. While I cook, Thompson, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved button-up, studies the bees closely, apparently unaffected by the weather. She is committed to showing me a queen bee and a male bee.
The queen, the largest present, is easy to spot: in one hive, Thompson lifts out a comb and hands it to me. “See her?” she asks. A wall of identical bees moves in my hands. Sometimes I can’t recognize the queen bee even when Thompson points her out in her removal videos, but this time I do. Thompson ordered this queen, and she has a neon-blue marking on her back.
But when Thompson points to a male bee at the bottom of one comb—the male bees are thicker than the worker bees, and they have bigger eyes—I don’t see it, even though she is following its path closely with her finger.
Behind the bees, some of the combs are uniformly yellow and clean-looking. They look almost machine-made. Others are darker and messier. There are food combs and brood combs, Thompson explains. The food combs look like stones—some parts look like a Himalayan salt rock—while the hexagons of the brood combs, where eggs are stored, look like they’ve been stuffed with ground-up graham crackers.
“I just think there’s so much beauty to this texture—and the fact that these insects have
built all of this, and how tiny they are,” she says, sounding moved.
Thompson holds each comb up to eye level. Congratulating the bees for their good work, she makes some notes describing their progress on top of each box. “Thank you, bees,” she says before putting the lid back on. “We appreciate you.”
Post-bees, we sit on Thompson’s porch drinking ice-cold flavored seltzers, looking out over her front yard and the brambles that separate us from her apiary. TikTok, I suggest, seems at odds with the peaceful life that Thompson has created for herself.
On the surface, Thompson appears to be well suited to social media stardom. She looks, in her TikToks and in-person, like she’s just walked through a flattering Instagram filter: her blond hair is loosely, perfectly curled; her skin is Glossier-dewy; her makeup, suspiciously unsmudged even after hours in the heat, is present but subtle. (“I’m maybe not what people imagine when they think of a beekeeper, but it’s fun to surprise people.”)
She’s not particularly comfortable with the wave of attention that accompanies her removal videos. After her breakout removal video, she recalls, some days she would wake up to 50 emails from media outlets. She has a few removal videos that she has yet to upload on TikTok because she’s bracing herself for the response.
Thompson is a private person—she doesn’t curate her life “for the ’gram” or for TikTok. She looks as put-together as she does, she says, because that’s how she’s always looked. “I curl my hair because I always curled my hair when I had an office job—it stays out of my face. I like being a Southern lady, and this is how I was raised: you put your makeup on in the morning, you do your hair. I always try to wear a collared shirt because I want to look presentable,” she says.
So why does a private person just going about her days join TikTok? For one thing, Thompson says, she was intrigued by the possibility of educating more people about bees. She also liked how user-friendly the app is. She can quickly boil down hours of removal footage into a oneminute TikTok.
She hasn’t spent much time on TikTok as a consumer, but she’d been TikTok-curious for a while. She too has succumbed to TikTok’s powerful algorithm, which delivers videos that kaleidoscopically cycle through a viewer’s wildly disparate interests.
TikTok serves Thompson mostly helpful service videos. Recently, Thompson says, she watched a video of a woman painting her stairs with a sock on her hand. She points to the stairs leading up to her porch, which she recently painted herself. “It was so easy!”’
She likes that TikTok is “more of a learning channel, versus a pretty picture of a girl who wants to be an Instagram model,” she says. Besides the sock-painting video, there is a wide world of DIY TikToks, and Thompson joins a particularly robust category that I think of as “pleasant backyard TikTok.” (Fellow Texan Marcus Bridgewater, a.k.a. Garden Marcus, is known for his calming gardening videos and has almost 680,000 followers since December.)
Mostly, Thompson says, she felt burned-out by what she was seeing on Instagram. “I don’t want to see someone’s pretty food photos of their dinner,” she says, “I’m just not interested in that. I have such a limited amount of time.”
There’s bee work to do.
86± ACRES 20040 KEENAN CUTOFF
Southeast Texas v Montgomery County v Montgomery Nestled in the middle of immense landscape, this Mediterraneanstyle home on a park-like setting with a pond on 86± acres of unrestricted land is one of nature’s finest settings. The estate knows few equals as it is exacting when it comes to fine finishes and architectural touches. Architecture articulates image of quality with the stunning sun-lit study. An enormity of light overtakes the gorgeous great room. The dining room boasts views of the grand loggia. The gourmet kitchen features a high-end appliance package. Romantic beautiful features an aristocratic-style bath. A golf simulator and billiard area are just a few spaces found in the game room. An impressive theatre is located off the family room. Fresh water river with water features, putting green, fire pit, 48x30 pool/spa, playground and breathtaking loggia offer resort-style living at its best. Two casitas, three-bedroom log cabin, six-car garage, barn, corral, storage/ hay/equipment shed, lake, three ponds and green pastures. $5,500,000.
Kecia & Arlene Properties Group
Compass Texas RE, LLC Kecia Haseman, 713-515-4948 Arlene English, 713-367-7333
8,988±-ACRE COVENANT RANCH
South Texas v Webb County v Freer
A rich history of being one of the most famous South Texas hunting ranches.
4,989±-ACRE SAN CARLOS RANCH
South Texas v Webb County v Freer
In the “Big Deer Country,” well maintained and improved for years.
2,976±-ACRE LA GARITA RANCH
South Texas v Webb County v Encinal
Prime “Big Deer” ranch has good water, good roads and improvements.
3,656±-ACRE HIGH PLACES RANCH
Central Texas v Uvalde County v Concan
An impressive large offering with views across scenic Frio River Canyon.
282±-ACRE RANCHO RIO LINDO
Central Texas v Uvalde County v Uvalde
This recreational haven offers hunting and Nueces River frontage.
598±-ACRE MONTELL MOUNTAIN RANCH
Central Texas v Uvalde County v Montell
Beautiful ranch has both sides of two named, live-water creeks.
1,588±-ACRE MILSTEAD RANCH
Central Texas v Medina County v Castroville
A unique recreation and cattle ranch just outside of San Antonio.
Robert Dullnig, Broker Associate
6606 N. New Braunfels • San Antonio, TX 78209 210-213-9700
DullnigRanches.com
3,000±-ACRE EL TESORO RANCH
South Texas v Maverick County v Eagle Pass
Exceptional native whitetail deer genetics and large tanks.
3,015±-ACRE PALOMA WEST RANCH
South Texas v Dimmit County v Carrizo Springs
Premier and historic ranch provides grazing, hunting and farming.
1,671±-ACRE SALT CREEK RANCH
South Texas v Dimmit County v Carrizo Springs
Handsome improvements plus brush management for grazing or quail habitat.
917±-ACRE MUY ALTO RANCH
Texas Hill Country v Gillespie County v Kerrville
A superb location couples with water features and a nice headquarters.
890±-ACRE CLT RANCH
Texas Hill Country v Gillespie County v Harper
Recreation, livestock and hunting ranch established in the 1800s.
716±-ACRE NUBE NUEVE RANCH
Texas Hill Country v Kerr County v Mountain Home
High-fenced recreation and hunting has 360-degree scenic views.
85±-ACRE RANGER CREEK ESTATE
Texas Hill Country v Kendall County v Boerne
Gated privacy and luxury plus natural springs and creek.
Robert Dullnig, Broker Associate
6606 N. New Braunfels • San Antonio, TX 78209 210-213-9700
DullnigRanches.com
7,800±-ACRE SAN SABA RIVER RANCH
Central Texas v Menard County v Menard
The highlight is three miles of pristine San Saba River frontage.
3,500±-ACRE TREATY STONE RANCH
Central Texas v San Saba County v San Saba
This significant, historic ranch provides hunting and cattle options.
4,200±-ACRE PICNIC BEND RANCH
Central Texas v Menard County v Menard
1.5 miles of San Saba River, three water wells and nine stock ponds.
6,570±-ACRE RANCHO EL MIRASOL
Texas Hill Country v Edwards & Val Verde Counties v Del Rio
Scenic ranch is well watered and improved for recreation and hunting.
10,500±-ACRE BIG LOZIER CANYON
West Texas v Terrell County v Dryden
Usable land has abundant potential for ranchers, hunters and explorers.
23,500±-ACRE HIGH LONESOME RANCH
West Texas v Val Verde County v Comstock
This historic working/recreation ranch has been owned since the 1800s.
1,970±-ACRE LA CODORNIZ RANCH
South Texas v Bee County v Beeville
Quail paradise for a wing shooter or cattle-minded rancher.
Robert Dullnig, Broker Associate
6606 N. New Braunfels • San Antonio, TX 78209 210-213-9700
DullnigRanches.com
FULL DRAW RANCH
Full Draw Ranch is any hunter’s dream, but it is the ultimate for bow hunters. It really offers a great opportunity for an investor to run a first-class hunting operation! Located just a short drive west down Hwy 85 from Dilley, Texas in Dimmit County with approximately 370 high-fenced acres of thick South Texas brush in the golden triangle, this ranch offers superior deer and quail hunting with firstclass accommodations. Because of the thick native brush and numerous winding roads, this ranch drives like it is much bigger than the acreage states. Every amenity and tool you may need is already in place and being included with this turnkey ranch sale so that the new owners just need clothes and their weapon of choice to begin their own experience.
CHAPMAN RANCH, TEXAS
This 150±-acre South Texas ranch is the perfect getaway for the executive outdoorsman to unwind after a long day at the office being only 25 minutes from downtown Corpus Christi and less than a mile from the Laureles pasture of the historic King Ranch. This ranch is being offered turnkey even including over 30 head of cattle and gives a buyer the opportunity to come home and go on an afternoon quail hunt, take a large South Texas whitetail deer, or fish for redfish, catfish, or bass in one of the two lakes on your own property. It is also only 20 minutes to the nearest boat ramp if you want to fish one of the bays on the Texas Coast. The highlight of this property is an eightacre lake sitting directly behind a 4,300-square-foot home with a huge back porch to sit and enjoy a morning sunrise or evening of wildlife viewing. This ranch has many more amenities, improvements, and details which can be found at www.stranskyproperties.com.
RIVER RIDGE
River Ridge Ranch is on Hwy 173 approximately four miles south of downtown Kerrville, Texas. It consists of 305 acres with Guadalupe River frontage overlooking and adjoining the Comanche Trace Golf Course. The main house on top of the hill is an eight-bedroom, six-bath home that has spectacular views of downtown Kerrville and the entire ranch itself. The property is divided into seven pipe-fenced pastures with over 160 acres of coastal grass for horses or cattle. Other improvements include three homes, two horse barns, two hay barns, an equipment barn and a workshop all easily accessible by the paved roads within the ranch. Wildlife includes whitetail deer, axis and blackbuck.
TORTUGA RANCH
Tortuga Ranch is located on Hwy 173 approximately seven miles south of Kerrville and three miles north of Camp Verde. It consists of 552 acres that are mostly high fenced, and have some of the best trophy whitetail deer hunting you can find along with some exotics which are protein fed year-round. Both sides of Turtle Creek run through the north side of the property which allow for great swimming and fishing. The main lodge has a pool and outdoor entertainment cabana with great views. The property also has three additional homes, a 20-acre soft-release deer pen, four-stall horse barn, workshop and three water wells. This ranch is being offered turnkey.
WELFARE RANCH
These 411 acres are sitting at the Welfare Exit on Interstate 10 West, with over 2,000 feet of frontage. It is just six miles from downtown Boerne in Kendall County, one of the fastest growing counties in Texas. The property has incredible 360-degree views, with elevation changes of over 300 feet from the tops of the hills down to the fields on both sides of Zinke Creek, which cuts through the property. This would make a great ranch to enjoy with the family and an even better investment to sell when Boerne reaches your doorstep in the near future.
PICKENS RANCH
Pickens Ranch is a total of approximately 27 acres fronting on Hwy 16 just five miles south of Bandera, Texas and in Bandera School District. The property is mainly an open field with good soils and a few trees in the southeast corner and approximately 830 feet of visible frontage on Hwy 16. This property has been in the same family for several decades and used for agricultural purposes, but with the growing population several properties adjoining this are now being used for commercial purposes. The ranch has three phase power with a pipeline running through it and good perimeter fencing.
MID-TEX CATTLE COMPANY MID-TEX CATTLE COMPANY
121± Acres // Central Texas // Guadalupe County // Seguin121± Acres // Central Texas // Guadalupe County // Seguin
Mid-Tex Cattle Company is 121± acres and is currently being used as a pre-conditioning yard for cattle. Located only three miles from Seguin, it fronts on three roads (Hwy 90A, Biecker Road, and Weber Road) with adequate frontage on all three. The property has good exterior fencing with numerous cross fences and improved coastal hay pastures. There is one private water well and also public water which currently serve the property. It has both sides of wet-weather Saul Creek going through the middle of the property and is lined with very large trees. There is also piped water to several tanks scattered throughout the property. This property could be developed today into tracts as small as one acre since it has a public water source or just used as is and be a good investment for the future.
WILKINS RANCH
184± Acres // Texas Metroplex // Erath County // Stephenville
Wilkins Ranch is 184± acres conveniently located approximately 4.5 miles northeast of Stephenville, Texas at 10608 N. US Hwy 377. The ranch has about half a mile of frontage on Hwy 377 and also fronts on paved CR 180 (Pilot Knob Road) and paved CR 474 (Roadway Road). There is over 1,500 feet of paved road leading into the ranch to all of the improvements which include a three-bedroom, two-bath manufactured home completely rocked with standing seam roof and front and back rock porches, hay barn with tack room, shop with drive-through bay and overhang, implement storage barn, and small storage shed. Other improvements include two water wells, net wire cross fencing, and about 97 acres of improved coastal hay fields with the remainder of the ranch in dense brush and native grasses. There are also five ponds that hold water in normal rain conditions. This ranch has great elevation changes creating long range views and wildlife native to the area including whitetail deer and hogs.
Lake Creek Ranch contains all of the desirable ingredients of a classic Hill Country property: expansive meadows, wide valleys, and towering mountains with breathtaking views. The property is also blessed with several strong springs and small crystal-clear creeks. And to top it off, an absolutely stunning 15-acre lake is nestled completely within the ranch boundaries. Break out the fishing gear, break out the kayak, or better yet, crank up the jet skis!
This Uvalde County property is located approximately seven miles northwest of Uvalde, Texas. The ranch consists of 2,900± acres. High fenced in two separate pastures, the ranch has been extensively managed for trophy whitetail deer. Cook Slough passes through the property providing large live oak trees and excellent wildlife sanctuary. The ranch includes a center pivot irrigation system, several large stock tanks with large mouth bass, and miles of water lines. The improvements include several homes and a newly constructed barn. This ranch has been very well maintained and offers world-class whitetail hunting and over-the-top bird hunting opportunities.
Located just 11 miles southwest of Brackettville, this 2,963-acre mostly high-fenced ranch offers a unique blend of highly productive fields, rangeland and native brush which will impress any livestock producer or sportsman. Two irrigation wells are permitted for a total of 2,940 acre-feet of water annually and service two irrigation pivots with the capability to irrigate over 530 acres currently. Water troughs and earthen tanks are strategically placed throughout the property to insure efficient water availability to wildlife and domestic livestock. Wildlife species include whitetailed deer, quail, turkey and dove.
Ranger Creek Estate, located in a coveted portion of the Hill Country and minutes from Boerne, offers all the beauty the Hill Country has to offer. The 8,420-square-foot plantation-style home offers four bedrooms, seven bathrooms, three living areas and a five-car garage. The large covered patio provides spectacular views of the surrounding landscape and pool. Other improvements include an outdoor kitchen and barn. Wildlife species include whitetailed deer, axis deer, turkey and dove.
Located in Medina and Uvalde Counties, the 741-acre Palomaville Ranch is just an hour’s drive from downtown San Antonio. Palomaville has nearly a mile of frontage along County Road 324 providing easy, direct access to the ranch’s main entry gate. The high-fenced Palomaville Ranch offers deer and dove hunters a South Texas dream. Large oak trees appear throughout and over half a mile of Ranchero Creek runs through the ranch, and well over two miles of three-inch PVC piped from two large casing water wells give wildlife easy access to water. A system of meadows brings thousands of dove to the property with various pastures planted in milo.
Boasting over a mile of both sides of Verde Creek Ranch, multiple stock ponds, historic improvements, and panoramic views, this 1,039± acres in Camp Verde, Texas, is rich in history and beauty. Upon passing through the gated entrance, visitors are presented with Verde Creek, a gorgeous clear-water stream that carries water even during drought conditions. Shaded by massive cypress trees, the rockbottom waterway alternates between areas of rapids and small waterfalls to more tranquil pools that spread out between the banks.
735± acres located in Kerr County, Texas. Highlights include soaring views from desirable topographic change with over 200 feet of relief. Manicured grounds with well-groomed grasses and meadows give rise to prime Texas Hill Country oaks and views. Water is highly improved with concrete spillways and dams built along a spring-fed creek. Water clarity is impeccable. Currently operated as a retreat, this property will give years of enjoyment to the next owners for family gatherings or private weekend getaway.
The 616± acres are high fenced on three sides and located just 2.5 miles east of Tarpley and 10 miles from Bandera. The rolling topography, characteristic of this area, provides the canvas for a diversity of native flora. Elevation changes of 460 feet provide breathtaking views of the ranch. Wildlife includes whitetail deer, axis, aoudad, feral hogs and Rio Grande turkey. The property offers both scenic hilltop views and gentle valleys with several stock tanks. Excellent road frontage and easy access add to the property appeal.
If you’ve ever imagined owning a spectacular Texas Hill Country lake and river-front property, then this is your opportunity. With 1,500± feet of lake/river-front and with no structures, your slate is clean to build what you want. Paved country road frontage and elevated building sites with good access to the lake and dam. Great variety of trees and cover for wildlife, with dynamic views across the water, town, and hills. Create your forever dream home or design the perfect weekend and summer getaway. This location comes alive in the summertime with aquatic activities, and is serene and peaceful when the cypress trees change colors and there’s a chill in the air. Call today to view and be inspired.
Caponus Ranch is comprised of 5,008 high-fenced acres being part of the Legendary La Bandera Ranch. Located approximately eight miles southwest of Carrizo Springs, Texas in the heart of the Golden Triangle. Boasting gently rolling terrain, good native brush diversity, and a history of extensive land management, this ranch offers a well-balanced variety of habitat for the wildlife. Caponus Ranch is very well watered with one irrigation well feeding a 23-acre high-fenced Pivot. (800-1,000± gpm ). There are four solar wells in different locations on the ranch and 21± surface tanks placed throughout the ranch. Caponus Ranch, being one of La Bandera’s premier hunting pastures, offers an abundance of hunting opportunities for whitetailed deer, dove, quail, and Rio Grande turkey. Enrolled as a TPWD, MLDP Level 3 permitted ranch for many years, the ranch abounds with superior whitetailed deer. The ranch is being offered as a whole or in parcel.
On the south fork of the Guadalupe River near Camp Mystic located seven minutes from the Hunt Store, 1.5 hours from San Antonio, and two hours from Austin. Features 340 feet of frontage on the river and a hilltop building site with sweeping hilltop views and a downriver view! Gated access, paved road frontage, electricity, no hunting allowed, wildlife exemption in place, quality restrictions in place.
