I don't think you would get away with a one minute pause before answering each question without risk of potential sanctions if the lawyer felt you were simply driving up costs, etc. Of course to get sanctions the court would have to agree that your intent was to needlessly drive up the cost of the deposition or to harass the other party. If you are simply answering the question as asked the court would not grant any sanctions. However, if you ask for clarification on a question occasionally and only answer the question as asked you can get away with quite a bit.

He could have answered yes when asked about owning a ranch and made the attorney inquire further. Then upon further questioning he could have said I have multiple ranches. Then made them ask about each one in order to get to their intended question. Depositions are discovery so if they want to uncover, or discover, something then they have to ask the right question in order to get to the information.

I think that's partly where the "don't know which ranch you're talking about" thing comes from. Might as well spend some time on some irrelevant stuff instead of immediately saying which ranch it is.