Big Game Means Big Business: At Indianhead, hunters and endangered species get a sporting chance

January 28, 2007
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

Nothing could please Laurent Delagrange more than to squash the notion that exotic game hunting is favorably compared to the unearned sobriquet, “Like shooting fish in a barrel.” Not on Indianhead Ranch, it isn’t.

Delagrange’s clients – largely sorted out by Indianhead Ranch’s reputation and the costs of doing business there – and ranch policies on fair game hunting attract customers who are a cut above the meat hunters, the coffee shop braggarts who swear, “Yep, I already got my deer,” and the very rich who want only the bigger trophy than their corporate competitors.

“We get here the real hunters, not the shooters,” Delagrange said, Tuesday (Jan. 2). He chuckled at the comparison, but is very serious about this aspect of managing his 10,000-acre ranch, half an hour north of Del Rio, and a bumpy ride west of U.S. Highway 277.

Something about Delagrange’s philosophy – steeped in European tradition from his native France – is working well in southwest Texas. His business is up 40 percent over the past five years, and he does little advertising. “About 80 to 90 percent of our hunters are repeat customers,” Delagrange said. “So, it’s that and, yes, word of mouth.”

The Delagrange family came into ownership of Indianhead in 1982, and the spread’s co-owners now are Laurent and his father, Philippe, Paris. They purchased the ranch from co-owners and Texas businessmen Red McCombs, Wayne Connally, and Lowry Mays. Before that trio of ownership, Indianhead was part of the historic Rose Ranch.  Laurent moved here full time in 1986, Diane Roederer came to visit with her father who was hunting, and Diane and Laurent married in 1995.

The global recognition Delagrange and Indianhead Ranch enjoy now keeps the reservation system humming, as customers call and E-mail from all over the world. Their origins are as far flung as those of the game they seek, though typically from different continents. Continental Airlines service to Del Rio has made it easier for upwards of 20 hunters a year from France, England, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Germany to get here. The same is true for customers flying in from New York, California, Georgia, Louisiana and Florida. “These people will stay with us usually about three days, but Europeans are here for a week,” Delagrange said.

Delagrange’s 2004 award of Safari Club International’s prestigious “Outstanding Professional Hunter of the Year” only boosted his growing reputation. “It was the first year SCI gave this award to a high-fence exotic game ranch operation,” Delagrange recalled. But Indianhead clients are seduced more by the prospect of a trophy from any of 25 game species from North America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Suppressing or fretting about unwarranted criticism is not a Delagrange pastime. His twin objectives are to maintain gene pools of about 2,500 impressively graceful animals on habitat that keeps both the animals and their populations sound, while providing traditional African-style “drive-spot-stalk” sport hunting. Diane, his wife and partner of 15 years, supervises the administrative aspects of the ranch, and together they are congenial hosts.

More than 300 guests were accommodated at Indianhead in 2006, nearly evenly split between hunters and non-hunters. Top game for most were common exotics, including axis deer and blackbuck antelope, both natives of India, and Algerian aoudad or Barbary sheep. Many of these have become popular on most exotic game ranches in Texas. For example, Delagrange estimates that about 50,000 axis deer are at home across the state now.

But hunters find some of Delagrange’s “super exotics” too tempting to resist, though they are pricier. These include American bison, Rocky Mountain elk, Sika deer, eland antelope, gazelle, and the ranch’s signature species, scimitar-horned oryx. An Indianhead oryx with gracefully curved, 44-inch horns is in the record books of Safari Club International.

Popular, too, is the Pakistani national animal, the markhor goat, prized for its long, spiraling horns for which Delagrange prices by the inch of the longest in a pair of horns. In the Safari Club International Book of Records, 11 markhors appear from Indianhead Ranch. Horns of 38 1/2 inches (left) and 38 5/8 inches (right) top that category. A typical markhor will cost a hunter an average of $10,000. From a herd estimated at 70 animals, only three are taken each year.

Aggressive wildland management and conservative hunting ensure that Indianhead herd populations remain stable and secure, preserving a precious gene pool that is not only a measure of economy on Delagrange’s ranch, but also a preservation measure for many animals long extinct in their native habitat. For example, zoos and exotic game ranches are now the sole habitat for addax antelope, once common on the stony deserts of Chad in Northern Africa, now down to fewer than 500 animals, and critically endangered. “But there’s a good number of them in Texas,” Delagrange said.

Delagrange has no blinds on elevated stands, and no one who can stand erect and walk hunts from ranch vehicle windows. All hunters are guided by Delagrange and other guides such as Darren Carr, who also is a licensed fishing guide on Lake Amistad. Carr services ranch guests who want to lengthen their stay for the legendary bass fishing in the area. Delagrange monitors herds and hunters closely, ensuring that no more than about five percent of his animals are harvested annually, easily compensated by successful breeding and natural reproduction.

Though the ranch stretches along three miles of scenic shoreline on the Devils River, Indianhead habitat also includes 30 trough-style watering holes, fed by wells through thousands of yards of flexible pipe. “Our animals never have to walk more than a mile to water,” Delagrange explained. Herds on the 15.5–square-mile ranch are unfettered by fences, and undaunted by steep and deep canyons.

“The key here is that everything is open. You can go to the far ends of the ranch, and never have to open another gate,” Delagrange said.

However, future plans will necessitate segregation of a new husbandry effort at Indianhead. Delagrange will implement a managed trophy white-tailed deer breeding program, beginning next year, though he expects five or six years will be needed to bring it to fruition.

 

In the meantime, Delagrange also busies himself with the ranch’s hunter education program, co-sponsored with Safari Club International. Young hunters can receive scholarships to travel to Indianhead, and receive top-notch training from firearms experts, guides and biologists. The culmination of the program is a trip afield to practice newfound or honed skills in an actual hunt.

For more information, see www.indianheadranch.com .