DALLAS -- Bill White spent much of Monday the same way he did the day before Hurricane Ike hit his ranch on the Texas Gulf Coast: on horseback, moving cows.

Mr. White's ranch, on the Jefferson County coast, was on the bull's eye for Ike's storm surge. As the hurricane approached, he and some friends pulled off an instant cattle drive, shifting the cattle to the highest enclosed ground they could find.

By sunset, he realized that wasn't going to be high enough. So as the winds and rains started to lash the coast, Mr. White opened the gates and let his cattle out to fend for themselves.

The strategy worked, he said Monday, talking on his phone while on horseback with cattle lowing around him.

While he estimated it would take at least a month to sort his cows from the thousands of other cattle roaming Jefferson and Chambers counties, he figured most of his herd survived.

He plans on moving his cattle north to other ranches for six months to a year while his land recovers from being covered in salt water. All of his ranch's working buildings and fences were destroyed by the storm surge, he said.

Mr. White weathered the storm in the ranch house, on land south of Beaumont that has been in his family since 1819. Asked if he left the house during the height of the storm to check on his property, he just laughed.

"I'm not a TV reporter," he said. "I don't need to go out and get blown around."