Staff report
Múzquiz, Coah. – A German-ancestored Texas rancher died in early August, a victim of a bull goring on his ranch in Mexico. The goring caused several fractured ribs, but an employee of the rancher told authorities the man initially refused medical treatment.
At approximately noon on Aug. 9, Maximo Gustavo Aih Michaelis died at the top of the hill La Rosita on State Highway No. 20, section Boquillas del Carmen-Múzquiz. He was being transferred to emergency medical care, as an ambulance had been requested to meet the ranch’s employee to take Michaelis to a hospital in a nearby town.
Michaelis was taken to the ambulance by his employee, Juan González Ávila, who said that during the ride the rancher’s injuries look very serious. When Ávila got to the top of La Rosita, he realized Michaelis had died and stopped to report the incident to authorities.
Ávila proceeded to the office of prosecutor Dagoberto Hernandez Portales. Authorities there moved the body to a local funeral home, where cause of death could be determined.
Ávila told authorities that Michaelis had been gored by one of his bulls but refused to be taken to Múzquiz for medical care. When Ávila realized the severity of the injuries, he decided to take the rancher to the hospital, but Michaelis died on the way to meet the ambulance.
Michaelis, who was a naturalized Mexican citizen, owned property west of Kyle on FM 150 for many years, and family members remain on the ranch in Kyle to this day. His ranch was famous for its prize white Charolais cattle.
The Michaelis name has long been connected with Kyle, and the ranch’s brand displayed along with other local brands on the Kyle overpass above IH-35. He was a graduate of Kyle High School, and graduated from the University of Texas in 1960. He bought out his father’s interest in the Kyle ranch in 1972.
In the mid 1980s, Michaelis was part of a group of ranchers who fought the construction of a pipeline to carry Alaskan crude oil from the West Coast to the refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.
At the time, the All American Pipeline Company proposed to cut through his property for about 3.5 miles. With the property sitting on the recharge zone for the southern portion of the Edwards Aquifer, Michaelis, along with other ranchers, fought the proposal.
Michaelis has two sons, Max G. Michaelis IV and Carl Lawrence Michaelis, born in 1983 and 1984.
