Bill Davis makes his own bull market

While Bill Davis Racing’s newest driver, Jacques Villeneuve, was preparing to debut at Talladega Superspeedway, Davis, himself, was nowhere near the giant Alabama facility. Instead, the race team owner was in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, getting ready for the public unveiling of his newest business venture — Chimney Rock Cattle.

Davis had selected this weekend for his own Chimney Rock 500 — the first public cattle sale at his Concord, Ark., ranch. Hundreds of cattlemen flocked from over 20 states to inspect and, if all went well, to buy the best cows of Davis’ 1,000-head Brangus herd.

Playing the gracious host, Davis, in jeans and a white cowboy hat, hid well the strain of preparing for the two-day sale. In addition to corralling hundreds of heifers (female cows) and bulls (males), Davis and his wife, Gail, also had to put the finishing touches on the centerpiece of the new ranch: a 33,000-square-foot facility that combines a state-of-the-art show area for cattle and a sumptuous lodge.

“We compared this to getting ready for Daytona,” Bill Davis said. “Back in the old days, when it was just two or three of us in the Busch Series, we’d think a couple weeks out, ‘Are we going to make it?’

“Our deal was always, ‘Well, they’re going to have it whether we’re there or not.’ I never thought I could call the Frances and have them delay it a week. So, it’s been a lot like getting ready for Daytona.”

The barn is much more than just a place to keep cows. Deftly mixing business with pleasure, the lodge greets visitors with a combination of Western charm and epicurean comfort.

Seemingly pulled straight from Architectural Digest, the lodge represents a dream long deferred for the Davises.

“The front part of the building is something Gail and I always wanted,” Davis said. “We’ve got a lot planned for it already. We’re doing Thanksgiving there, we’ve got a New Year’s party planned there. We’ll get a lot of use out of it.”

The dark wood walls, leather couches and huge native limestone hearth make the room feel cozy despite the two-story ceiling. The centerpiece of the lodge is its custom-built spiral staircase leading to eight suites reserved for the Davises’ guests. With sculptures made of horseshoes as the newel posts and actual longhorns as the banister supports, the dramatic accent testifies to the Davises’ eye for detail. The lodge also features a full bar with polished sandstone surface, a pool table and a full kitchen and dining room that managed to feed prime rib to over 400 people on the first night of the sale.

However, the backside of the building — known semi-officially as the “Cow Palace” — is the real draw.

“A lot of people just put up portable bleachers in an old barn — just like at the baseball field — and that’s fine, that works,” Davis said. “But we’ve built a really nice arena.”

Shaped like an amphitheatre, focused on a sawdust-covered pen, the Cow Palace easily seated the several hundred cattlemen there to bid on Davis’ (and other ranchers’) prize cows. During the two-day event (there was an exhibition and 4-H-style cattle contest in addition to the sales), an auctioneer, stationed in a booth above the cattle, managed the bidding in full auction-ese, lingering on an individual cow for only a minute or two before moving on to the next.

The gleaming concrete and steel facility couldn’t have happened without some cross-pollination between Chimney Rock Cattle and Bill Davis Racing. Davis is no sucker. When he needed some tricky gates and some fancy metal work, he turned to the metal-fab wizards back in his High Point, N.C, shop.

“They built a ton of stuff,” Davis said. “The stainless steel stuff, the gate in the show barn — which was a real complex deal. They built it. Little bits and pieces everywhere.

“Actually, all the gates and fence braces out on the pasture were built at the race shop. They built several hundred of them.”
Davis even used his racing connections to score the seats for the palace.

“When they tore out the backstretch at Atlanta Motor Speedway after the tornado, they were generous enough to let us get down there and take the grandstands,” Davis said.

At Chimney Rock, the black metal bleachers still bear the “Atlanta Motor Speedway” etchings on the endcaps.

Although the barn pales in comparison to the luxuries of the lodge, Davis’ Cow Palace lives up to its nickname. Before its first sale, the Chimney Rock show barn was already considered the best facility for cattle sales in the country.

“This deal here is second-to-none. I’ve been to cattle auctions all over the U.S. and this is, by far, the premier facility in the country,” Craig Green, president of Chimney Rock Cattle said. “The facility itself and the ranch are going to put Arkansas on the map in terms of elite, upper-end Brangus cattle.”

The quality of the facility was never in doubt. The real challenge for Davis and his staff was convincing their colleagues to buy their cattle. According to Green, most cattlemen need eight to 10 years for their herd to mature. Davis, however, has done it in just under four, so the Chimney Rock name was relatively unknown in cattle circles. Fortunately, the ranch’s sophisticated cattle-raising techniques would do a lot to allay their potential customers’ doubts.

Considered a “seedstock” operation, Chimney Rock Cattle are primarily used for breeding. Instead of going to the feed lot and to the packing plant, most of Davis’ cattle will be bought for their outstanding physical traits. Cattlemen had come to Chimney Rock this weekend to purchase cows that will increase the value and productivity of their own herds.

Every one of Davis’ Brangus cattle undergoes extensive examinations to build a statistical breakdown of each cow’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, cattle with high birth weights — a risk to mothers during delivery (and an inconvenience to cowboys) — would ideally be bred with cows that traditionally have lower birth weights. And that’s just the beginning. The measurements get specific enough to gauge the marbling of fat (an attractive quality) in the ribeye area of the cow.

“It’s a real high-tech ranch,” Davis said. “All of our cattle are ultrasounded. We measure the ribeye, the intra-muscular fat, and we color code our commercial herd just like our registered herd. It’s very sophisticated. It’s a lot different than just having some cows out back and turning the bull out with them.”

The Chimney Rock 500, however, was more than an opportunity for Davis to show off his cutting-edge operation. The weekend marked the culmination of a very personal journey for the Davises.

The grandson of a cattleman, Davis had grown up around cattle and horses but had never had the opportunity to have his own ranch — until 10 years ago, when a tragedy brought the Davises out to Chimney Rock.

In August of 1998, Mark Martin’s father and stepmother, Julian and Shelley, who owned the Chimney Rock property, passed away in a plane crash. Longtime friends (and colleagues, Martin drove for Davis in the team’s first Busch Series races), Martin persuaded Bill and Gail to come out and look at the ranch later that year. Struck by its namesake sandstone and limestone formations — three- and four-story spires of rock jutting from the otherwise verdant pasture (see the NASCAR Illustrated Home Tour from September 2005) — the Davises couldn’t resist.

“I had always felt that somewhere in my future, I would have a ranch,” Bill Davis said. “When Julian had his accident, the ranch was available and we didn’t even hesitate. We bought it and started growing the cattle business.”

Julian Martin had a few cattle on the property, but Davis couldn’t content himself with a modest operation. After all, this is the guy who turned his NASCAR “hobby” into a Daytona 500-winning team. Davis is notorious for his over-the-top commitment to his projects. And Chimney Rock was no exception.

So, of all the guests that made the trip to the Chimney Rock 500, Mark Martin, who managed to sneak away from Talladega, stood out.

Dressed in western duds — jeans, boots, belt buckle and a brown Stetson — Martin looked the part. Clearly emotional about returning to his family’s property, he beamed as he strolled around the lodge.

“This is special,” Martin said, after the sale. “When Bill does something, he does it right. He has a passion for this place and you can see it.”

Davis does indeed have a passion for the land. When he and Gail find the time to visit the ranch (they live in North Carolina, near the race shop), Bill Davis rides with the cowboys.

“I’m up at dawn doing whatever needs to be done,” he said. “We might not be back until sundown — or later. This isn’t exactly sitting on the beach.”

After the sale — and round-the-clock entertaining — the Davises skipped the Talladega race. While they recovered, their race team showed signs of regaining the swagger that’s been missing for several seasons. And Davis, meanwhile, could count Chimney Rock Cattle as a success so far. Auction prices for the cattle had met expectations.
“It was a great event,” he said. “We had a huge number of people there from the industry. We got just tons of e-mails and phone calls from people telling us what a great sale it was, what a great facility. It was all a positive.”

The Herd

Bill Davis’ herd is composed of Brangus cattle — a hybrid of  5/8 Angus and 3/8 Brahman. With Brahman stock, these cows have a strong natural resistance to disease and heat and humidity — which makes them the perfect cow for southern cattlemen. Their Angus roots, meanwhile, lend all the characteristics of high-end beef. To be an official Brangus cow, the cow must be all black and be polled — that is, it is genetically hornless.

It is common practice to name the bulls in the cattle business — and generally, generations have themed names. At the Chimney Rock 500, some bulls bore the names of famous football tough guys (Csonka, Ditka) while others sounded more like professional wrestlers (Transformer, Stealth and Blackhawk, for example).

Davis named one generation of bulls after NASCAR tracks, using Daytona, Talladega and Bristol, in particular. This year, Davis named several bulls after his drivers — and waited to tell them until they arrived at the sale.

Below is a comparison between each driver and his namesake bull, a summary of each bull’s unique characteristics and its sale price.

Dave Blaney and CRC’s Blaney

CRC’s Blaney is expected to have an unusually high degree of intramuscular fat. The bull sold for $4,100 at auction.

Mike Skinner and CRC’s Skinner

An all-around strong bull, CRC’s Skinner has the potential to be a herd sire — that is, his offspring could be so productive that he could father an entire herd. Sold for $4,000 at auction.

Johnny Benson and CRC’s Benson

A descendant of Blackhawk, a famous Brangus bull, CRC’s Benson is expected to grow quickly during its first year, ranking in the top 1 percent for weight at its first birthday. Sold for $3,250 at auction.

This article originally appeared in the Dec. 2007 issue of NASCAR Illustrated.