Buying Land in Sanderson TX

My dad is looking at buy some land south of Sanderson about 14 miles down 5 mile road. I drove out and look at it for him since he lives in Oklahoma. I saw a handful of Mule Deer and 5 hogs. My question is what can you expect to see in that area of Tx? Looks like tons of smaller ranches out there with more deer feeders and blinds than i have seen any where else. I am guessing there is alot of pressure on the deer that are in the area. This place he is looking at is 645 acres, with zero improvements. No water wells, fencing etc. The price is honestly why he is considering it, $205,000. Hard to buy 645 acres anywhere else for that kind of money.

Any feed back would be helpful. This property would be used by 3 adult hunters and my 2 sons. I see online certain parts of Terrell county have whitetails would we find them in this area too? or just mule deer.

I would check with a local realtor that deals in ranch land. That price seems high. I have hunted in the area. There is not much habitat to support wildlife. It is mostly rocks. If there is water and vegetation on the property, it should be great hunting. If you buy land out there, good luck if you have to sell it. Did you see the game on the property, or when you were driving to it?

As far as hunting the demise of that area has been the large ranches sold in small parcels. I have a few friends who have bought like this. For the most part an occasional deer. There is always the bordering property guys with 50 to 180 acres. You know "if it's brown it's down". Best of luck to your dad.

BTW, when my buddies bought several yrs ago, they were paying, 125-189 per acre. The oil business has driven even that part of the world up.

I hunted down that five mile road for many years- the other side of Eisenglass canyon. Lots of small parsels of land with lots of absentee landowners. It is very expensive to drill a water well and will be expensive to get electricity out there. I haven't been out there in a lot of years but always loved going out there. Twenty years ago you could have bought all the land you wanted for $50-$75/acre. In 15 or 16 years of going out there I never shot a deer- saw very few mule deer bucks and the ones I did see were small and young. Saw its of does but can't shoot them during gun season.

I hunted down that 5 mile road also a few years back about 12 or 13 miles in. Rough road for sure. Saw lots of muley's just nothing with any size. Like everyone else mentioned the small tracts out there make it hard to grow or manage anything.

No fences in subdivision means anyone and everyone will be hunting it when he is not there. It is forsale for a reason, you have to find out what that reason is.

thanks for the comments guys. The mule deer i saw where not on this property they where about 1/2 a mile away on the drive out right at dark. All the comments support what i was already thinking about the place. We will just keep looking for property.

Go east a bit to val verde and Edwards county.

Edwards has a lot of game per acre compared to Terrell county

That was my next thought. I was looking around last night online and several smaller ranches that we could afford most are around 400 acres. But looks like alot more deer for sure.

We plan on buying 250-300 acre ranch in about 3-4 years, and plan on buying in Edwards.

400 acres in Edwards will hold 10x the amount of game that 640 will in Terrell county

"I am guessing there is alot of pressure on the deer that are in the area" would be correct. The subdivisions vastly diminish the game and subsequent values in these areas. Val Verde, Kinney and SW Edwards county are starting to get more and more chopped up. I personally wouldn't buy anything West of Rocksprings. I've seen acreage for sale now that's already been bought and sold a couple times. If there's a bunch of stuff for sale in the same area, there's a reason.

There are a lot of good land deals out there to be had though. Just have to know where to look.

645 acres is nothing down there. Also never seen hogs but plenty of Javelinas. We predator hunt a place that is about 65k acres just west of Sanderson. Tons of foxes, 2 Bobcats in 7 years, tons of Javelinas, and we see 20-50 mule deer a trip but we cover ALOT of land day and night. A few wild Spanish goats. A few flocks of turkeys. Owner lives on the property and sees a group of elk every few years and says he's killed more mountain lions than he can count over the years. (He's about 55 and lived in the two room concrete block of a house his whole life and has no reason to lie about that) Never seen a wt or coyote on this property.

Seems like once you get just north of Sanderson you start seeing more whitetails and coyotes. Just from what we can tell on the drive through. Lots of coyotes on the fences to the north.


Bottom line, unless you are buying thousands of acres, don't do it.

I don't doubt the mountain lion story my buddy has a place in marathon and he's killed plenty of cats

My in-laws have owned 1200 acres in Eastern Terrell for 20+ years and have taken some decent deer (140 inch). They recently bought an additional 250 acres @ $350 an acre (Water and Electric). I've hunted out there for years and the best advice I can give is to look at the size of the neighboring ranches. There are a lot of animals just gotta find a place surrounded by decent sized properties.

A buddy of mine owned 25,000 acres out there when I was in college. Not sure if they still do, but we spent a week there hunting and all we shot were jackrabbits. Lots and lots and lots of jackrabbits, but I don't recall seeing a single deer of any sort.

There are definitely mountain lions. Hard to find them, but they're there.

Also, pretty funny story associated with his place:

His brother wanted to populate the ranch with Black Buck, so he spent like 15k buying breeding pairs and drove them to the middle of the ranch to release. Opened the gates, watched them majestically running off, bounding up and over the hills...

Not 1 of them was ever seen again. They either just kept running or got eaten or starved quickly.