No, in a deposition you are open to having to answer questions about pretty much anything. Your attorney can't do much to object or stop a line of questioning without a court order limiting scope.
Some attorney's will ask about totally irrelevant things just to annoy you or hoping to catch you off guard when they come back to the topic later. Or in some cases, they simply want to get you frustrated so that they get under your skin when they are asking their important questions. Depositions are just another part of discovery.
All the attorney has to do is catch you in one lie or to get you to make a misstatement that conflicts with some document they know they have and they will pound it into the ground in court. This is where the ammunition for the "were you lying then or are you lying now?" crap comes from.
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.
Some attorney's will ask about totally irrelevant things just to annoy you or hoping to catch you off guard when they come back to the topic later. Or in some cases, they simply want to get you frustrated so that they get under your skin when they are asking their important questions. Depositions are just another part of discovery.
All the attorney has to do is catch you in one lie or to get you to make a misstatement that conflicts with some document they know they have and they will pound it into the ground in court. This is where the ammunition for the "were you lying then or are you lying now?" crap comes from.