Hunting and fishing rule at Spread Oaks
The son of an itinerant oil field worker, Forrest Wylie always loved the outdoors — hunting and fishing especially. His family didn’t have much money, so to feed his habit he’d partake in what he calls a “tennis shoe lease,” sneaking into private ranches and tromping through river slews wearing athletic shoes in case he needed to make a quick escape.
It’s quite a different scenario today. Houston-based Wylie has made a fortune in energy industry investments, and has his very own Texas prairie ranch. He’s ready to share it, too.
Just outside of Bay City, a 90-minute drive from Houston, Spread Oaks Ranch sprawls across 5,500 acres with nearly 5 miles of Colorado River frontage and some 35 ponds. But it’s more than a sportsman’s paradise. Wylie and his team, including manager Tim Soderquist, a former Ducks Unlimited senior director, have integrated active organic farming (corn, rice, soybean) and Brangus cattle ranching operations into a thriving wildlife and nature preserve. This is not your average hunting and fishing club — it’s a full-service destination for groups of up to 10, available for full buy-outs.
The limestone-wrapped main lodge houses a grand master suite and a secondary guest room, as well as an impressive commercial kitchen where full-time chef Ric Rosser utilizes produce grown in an adjacent glass-enclosed greenhouse and beyond, plus fresh beef, lamb and chicken eggs from the pasture. Its soaring great room features oversize leather sofas, a full bar, grand piano, all manner of taxidermy (including a 10-foot alligator taken on the property), Civil War-era relics and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to the infinity pool and 5-acre bass-stocked lake. The building next door contains three casita rooms decorated tastefully, like the rest of the place’s interiors, by Houston designer Ginger Barber. Another six bunks — each large enough to fit a 6-foot-8-inch-tall man — and a game room are across the driveway in a separate bunkhouse, which also holds a cache of fishing gear, ammo and gun vaults.
The beauty of booking Spread Oaks is that everything’s included, with a few exceptions — helicopter rental, say, in the event you want to shoot wild hogs from above. The ranch’s highly skilled guides can make most anything happen, so you can relax instead of schlep equipment, tie flys and so on. Trained Labrador retrievers are part of the package, helpful for navigating — via John Deere Gator UTVs — one of the country’s most primo waterfowl habitats.
“We had a group in from Alabama,” Wylie says, “and on the last hunt of the season they booked to come again before they even left the blind because they had never seen so many teal.”
Geese, dove and white-tail deer, too. On our visit, we spotted a plethora of migratory shorebirds — and more than a half dozen bald eagles. Before watching the sun drop into the horizon from a piñon-wood-loaded firepit at the lodge, you can kayak on the Colorado, practice your shot at the skeet range or toss a few horseshoes. Wylie recently finalized plans to build another structure with additional guest rooms, breaking ground soon. And he seems to delight in all the projects, despite the fact that he still maintains a big-city day job.
“My fun out of this is the doing, not the having,” he says. “I just love sharing it. Growing up, this kind of land saved my life.”