3 minute read
Founder von Netzer profile
By CATHY MARTINDALE
Things have come full circle for Garet von Netzer.
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Co-founder of this magazine, Garet grew up on the family ranch near Fredericksburg, working with the operation’s sheep, goats and cattle.
Now he’s back there, working with the livestock and the plentiful wildlife that inhabit the spread.
Although no longer involved in daily newspapering, he remains passionate about local journalism. “Local, local, local” was his mantra as the Amarillo Globe-News sports editor who expanded the paper’s coverage of youth sports, particularly women’s sports and girls’ basketball; he continued that emphasis as the paper’s editor and later publisher. It’s still his passion today. “I just despair sometimes about the media in our country,” he said. “Both ends of the spectrum — the radical right and the radical Garet von Netzer shows off a lamb on the left — don’t want to family ranch near Fredericksburg. print the objective truth. If the news is something they don’t like or agree with, well, just ignore that and go on to something else.”
He’s less pessimistic about the state of small local newspapers that concentrate on local news and events. But he points to the tremendous economic pressures facing those publications.
Today he focuses most of his time and energy on developing and breeding specialized brands of sheep. When he retired from the Globe-News, the staff pooled funds and bought him what surely is a unique going-away present: a specially bred ram christened Headline.
He rattles off facts about Dorper, St. Croix, Mouflon and Royal White breeds like some sports fanatics spout stats about their favorite teams.
He’s been secretary of the Texas Hill Country Dorper Association several times and shows animals at the group’s annual show, an event that has grown so extensively that it now has an internet sales arm.
Another activity keeping him busy is the more than a dozen yearly guided hunts on the ranch, Hunters can seek several exotic species of deer, sheep or antelope that live on the ranch.
Garet is quick to point out that these are not the “canned” hunts sometimes written about where the client is perched right over a feed stand or where beaters flush the game to the spot.
“I’ve never shot off a feeder or out of a truck in my life, and no hunter here has either,” he vowed. “We go to a spot where game frequently come by and we wait. Eventually we usually get a shot.”
Coping with the vagaries of nature and battling nature’s predators — coyotes, buzzards, feral hogs — have kept him so busy that he’s given up one of his passions — youth sports coaching.
“It got to where I was neglecting things at home,” he said.
He and his daughter, Kristin McKinnon, coached Fredericksburg girls youth teams, including his granddaughter, Madison McKinnon, for several years. Their focus on fundamentals has paid off with the Fredericksburg High School Battlin’ Billies now regulars in the UIL playoffs.
Garet and his wife, Mardi, also have a son, Kevin von Netzer, who lives in Amarillo and also has been involved in youth basketball.
Nowadays Garet and Mardi have a little time to enjoy the activities of their six grandchildren. That is, when he isn’t stalking a coyote threatening the flocks, mending miles of fencing or wrangling two or three bottle lambs.
