During the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was forced to take a break. From the stealthy workaholics to adventurous vacationers, all were cooped up inside their homes. At the time, NBA legend George Hill decided to live at the Scenic Hills Ranch. A sprawling 850-acre private property in the Texas Hill Country that is home to more than 1,000 exotic animals.In August 2017, he purchased the massive plot of land here in Texas Hill Country, a 35-minute drive north of his family’s offseason home in San Antonio. Over time, the property has been bulldozed, sculpted and preened into a sprawling ranch. Soon after the announcement that games would be put on hold on March 11, 2020, Hill, his wife, Samantha, and their 4-year-old son, Zayden, and 2-year-old daughter, Zoe, flew to Texas from Milwaukee. “I just think it’s cool for my kids to see,” Hill said to ESPN. “And for them to have something different. Everyone has a dog or a cat. … I just choose other animals,” he said at the time.
Making a ranch
In August 2017, he purchased the massive plot of land here in Texas Hill Country
Fallow deer were the first animals Hill introduced on his land. Then, he added sables, 500-pound brown and white antelope native to Africa. Now, he has dozens of different animal species. Hill owns scimitar oryx, tan-and-white creatures that are also in the antelope family, with curved, pointy horns and big bellies. He has Arabian oryx and red lechwe. There are New Zealand red stag, kudu and ostrich, too.Hill said he purchased his animals from Texas-based licensed speciality breeders. According to Lonesome Bull Ranch, an exotic wildlife breeder in Corpus Christi, zebras run anywhere from $3,950 to $5,750. The most expensive animals on Hill’s property are the female sable antelope and kudu, which cost $20,000 to $25,000 apiece. He only keeps herbivores that can nibble on the grass, roots and shrubs.The animals have plenty of room to roam. Hill’s 850-acre ranch is massive, dwarfing the land areas of the biggest zoos in the country: The Texas Zoo in Victoria, 130 miles southwest of Hill Country, is 106 acres, the Bronx Zoo is 265 acres and the Minnesota Zoo is 485 acres. “Most of [the animals have] been out there relaxing and reproducing,” Hill said.In Texas, owning exotic animals such as zebras and kangaroos is legal. Texas residents, according to the state health and safety codes, need a permit for “dangerous wild animals,” such as lions, tigers, cougars, leopards and cheetahs, among others.For Hill, a place like this had been a dream for years. When he played for the Indiana Pacers in the mid-2010s, he would often talk to friend and teammate C.J. Miles about the dream. “He was a country boy even back in his Indiana days. I knew it was a matter of time before he found somewhere he could disappear to,” Miles said.
The beginning of a dream
On the property, there are more than 1,000 different animals including impalas, zebras, elk, stags, antelope, sables, deer, kangaroos, oryx, ostrich, horses, red lechwes and more.
It all began with a horse named Ropey. Whecn Hill was a teenager in Indianapolis, his father purchased two pintos that were brothers. Hill named one of the horses “Ropey” after the rope that was slung around the horn of his saddle “We used to ride through the neighbourhood,” he said.Hill’s father, who loved horses, had bought a modest plot of land near Wes Montgomery Park. “He never had [a horse] or really seen people from the hood that had horses,” Hill said of his father. “So he wanted to step outside the box.”Hill would go to the barn, sling a pad and saddle over Ropey’s back and ride him to his neighbourhood down the road. In Indianapolis, a 20-minute drive sees a quaint downtown give way to cornfields and farmland. During summers, he would ride Ropey to Washington Park to play basketball. He would stuff plastic, gallon-sized jugs of water into the side bags that draped over Ropey’s withers. When Hill got to the park, he would pour the water into a bucket, tie Ropey’s lead to a tree and play pickup on the outdoor court.While he is an experienced hunter, the animals on his ranch are not for hunting. “The only thing I hunt on my land is wild hogs and coyotes, because they cause so many problems,” Hill said in 2020. The hogs, he said, can burrow under the fences and eat the corn and grass meant for his animals, while coyotes can climb in and kill his baby deer.After his 2022-23 season with the Milwaukee Bucks and Indiana Pacers, Hill ended his 15-year career in the league. Now, he peacefully resides at his ranch. On the property, there are more than 1,000 different animals including impalas, zebras, elk, stags, antelope, sables, deer, kangaroos, oryx, ostrich, horses, red lechwes and more.“I don’t want to leave my kids in debt. I want to leave my kids with something that’s going to start generational [wealth]. Start them off better, and on a better career path. So, I’m going to own a ranch and I will put it into my kids’ trust fund, and it’s going to be a family ranch forever. So that’s how this came about. That’s how the whole ranch started,” he told Andscape in 2024. Hill said he scouted about 15 different locations in Hill Country before finding his 900-acre property for purchase. He received his wish of buying land that was “plain, raw and bare” with no houses or any other buildings on it.The property has a two-storey house and a horse stable. Hill also has a modern home which includes a deck overlooking a nearby pond. An NBA regulation basketball court is located a short walk behind the home, fully enclosed with a fence to keep the wildlife out.The Hill family has another home closer to San Antonio and stays at the home on the ranch on select weekend days and during the summer.
