Mining the miners: How to cash in on recreational ranching

The big thing in ranching currently is in discovering profit centers on your ranch that were previously lying dormant. I'm talking recreational ranching where you charge dudes who want to be western for a week. Ranching dudes is nothing new. Howard Eaton started the first one in 1881, and Oscar Wilde later came up with the term by combining the word "dud" with "attitude."

You may think that because you’re ranching in Freezeout, Mud Flats or Suckertown that you have nothing to offer — no world class fishing stream, rustic cabin or herd of elk for the gunsels to shoot at. But just because your ranch isn’t near Jackson Hole doesn’t mean you can’t cash in; simply turn your negatives into positives.

You may not have a lake full of rainbow trout, but you have a pond or even a water trough the tenderfeet can cast into with their Orvis® rods while wearing neoprene from head to toe. And there will be no time-consuming snags or fish to clean afterwards. Guests won’t even have to bait their hooks or make decisions about whether they got a bite or not or waste a lot of effort fighting big fish into the boat. That can all be very stressful, and these folks need rest not stress.

Sell the sizzle! Your guests can fish without even getting their feet wet!

Same with hunting. The dudes won’t have to buy lots of ammunition or get dirty skinning any exotic game because there hasn’t been as much as a forked horn on your place in a hundred years. Guests probably don’t even need a license because they’re just going to get skunked. And do you know how expensive taxidermy can be? Dudes won’t have to get up early either because no matter what time they go hunting they aren’t going to find anything. So sleep in.

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