Winter 2016

THE RESTORATION
The Taylors’ first move as land stewards was to educate
themselves.
“I’m a learner,” said Taylor, a former electronics factory
manager and self-taught engineer who twice worked his way
from the production floor to the vice-presidential suite in the
computer industry. “I’m the first guy to say ‘I don’t know’—
and I sure as hell didn’t know much about managing Texas
rangelands when we got started.”
For two years, they took advantage of every educational
opportunity they could find including attending TWA
seminars and workshops, consulting with Natural Resources
Conservation Service personnel and Texas Parks & Wildlife
Department biologists, touring facilities such as the Kerr Wildlife
Management Area and the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and
Extension Center in Sonora, and talking to local ranchers.
“The amount of information available and people’s willingness
to share their expertise was staggering,” Taylor said. “It was
a far cry from our previous experiences when bureaucrats
would refuse to answer a question because we didn’t have an
appointment to ask it.”
Armed with new knowledge, the couple set a goal. It began as
a page. They edited it to a paragraph and eventually condensed
it into a single sentence.
“Our goal is ‘increasing species diversity and water into
the aquifer,’” he said. “It’s the litmus test that we weigh our
decisions against.”
The first steps were picking up the massive amount of trash
that littered the ranch and removing the excess Ashe juniper
that was choking out the other vegetation. The Taylors, who
chose not to use herbicides or pesticides on their land,
began with his-and-her chainsaws. They also worked with
Keith Blair, a certified burn manager, to learn about and
later implement prescribed burns.
“In this area, fire historically was the primary ecological
force,” Taylor said. “The grazing herds likely passed
through, but stayed at the lower elevations.”
He laughs at the memory of his naiveté.
“We were en route to our first week-long burn
school and I actually said, ‘Let me get this straight,
we’re going to spend seven days learning how to
light a match?’” Taylor recalled. “Obviously, I had
no idea of the number of variables involved in the
science of fire.”
They held their first prescribed burn in 2003.
“I stood in the midst of the ash and thought,
‘What have we done? We’ve killed it all,’” Taylor
said. “Then two days later, tiny green shoots
were pushing through. It was an ah-ha moment.”
Work on the ranch was put on hold, when Sally
was diagnosed with cancer.
“She told me, ‘I’m not leaving until the last
cedar is cut,’” Taylor said. It was and she died
in 2007.
THE STRATEGIES
Ideally, Taylor and Paris, who has been his partner in life and
conservation for the past eight years, would like to burn onetenth
of the ranch each year.
“We see the greatest response after an area has
been burned three times,” Taylor said. “The seed
bank just seems to be completely reinvigorated by
repeated fire.”
Unfortunately, Mother Nature doesn’t always
cooperate. They’ve had to cancel the last three
scheduled burns because conditions haven’t been
right. As a result, they have not conducted a large
prescribed burn in the past five years.
“We’re betting that conditions will be right this
winter and preparing for a major burn,” Taylor said.
“We need one to maintain our progress because
nature is always in motion.”
While Taylor is the first to admit that the
safety brought by proper conditions is paramount,
he has noticed a subtle change
in the regulatory atmosphere.
“When we started 15 years ago, we could work with our
county officials to get a waiver for a burn,” Taylor said. “Now
they can’t do that because the state has assumed some control
of a local issue.”
In addition to prescribed burning and mechanically controlling
cedar, Taylor and Paris also actively manage the deer herd
under an MLDP to keep the population in balance with the food
supply. When they started their management program, there
was a deer to every 3.5 acres, now it is about one deer to every
12 acres. Initially, they had to harvest at least 75 deer per year.
These days the annual deer harvest is 25.
Paying hunters are allowed to harvest spikes, three-pointers
and older does as the management team works to improve the
quality of their mature bucks. Hunters who want the opportunity
to shoot a mature buck on the ranch, give Taylor a check for
$2,500 in advance. He immediately cashes the check. If the
hunter takes what is considered a trophy on Blue Mountain Peak
Ranch, Taylor keeps the cash. If the hunter doesn’t harvest a
trophy, Taylor gives the money back.
Management whitetails, feral hogs, brown-headed cowbirds
and fire ants are the only animals killed on the ranch. Hogs are
trapped, and deer hunters are offered a $10 per head bounty for
every hog they take.
Paris is in charge of dispatching cowbirds. Last year, she
trapped 309. This year she is operating a second trap to further
reduce the number of nest-parasitizing cowbirds.
Fire ants are controlled with a mixture of orange oil and
molasses called Anti-Fuego Soil Conditioner that improves
soil and drives out fire ants by introducing a fungus into
their mounds. The ranch is home to increasingly scarce
horned lizards, which rely on the harvester ants that are often
decimated by the imported fire ants.
“It’s all about striking a balance, so we can move toward a