Lost Creek Ranch was originally developed as an elk and deer hunting business by Major League Baseball pitcher Brad Penny on an expansive, enclosed 2,017-acre property. The ranch contains a 9,775-square-foot custom hunting lodge, a 2,700-square-foot guest lodge, storage barns, pens for elk, and specialty fences – now in the hands of the Osage Nation since 2021.
In 2024, the Nation began surveying the game at Lost Creek Ranch, monitoring the property, and planning initial building repairs.
According to Penny, the success of a high-end game hunting business depends on the quality of the deer. And the quality of the deer is not determined by chance, he said. “I put great genetics in there. Not sure how it was managed after me,” he said.
President and CEO of High Adventure Company, John Burrell, has visited Lost Creek Ranch in the past. According to Assistant Principal Chief RJ Walker, Burrell assessed that a high-end hunting operation could yield half a million dollars in net profit per year, after the operator’s cut.
Walker took Burrell’s estimation to mean, conservatively, Lost Creek Ranch could yield $100,000 to $200,000 in profit per year. Burrell also advised to use the land for quail and deer hunting. “‘Deer hunters will sleep in a tent, but quail hunters want to stay in a mansion,’” Walker musingly recalled Burrell saying.
For the most part, Walker said his hands have been tied as he waits on repairs to the property’s building and fencing.
To date, no formal decisions have been made on the use of Lost Creek Ranch.
“I don’t like knee-jerk reactions,” he said. “I’m deliberate.”
Walker suffers burns in accident
On May 12, Assistant Chief Walker stood on the steps of the ranch’s main hunting lodge, underneath an intricately stamped leather chandelier. His legs, covered in burns from a recent accident while helping on a controlled burn, has prevented him from going out to the ranch regularly for the past month, he said.
Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear told Osage News he removed Walker from his role as liaison for the development of Lost Creek Ranch. Walker said he is continuing work.
“I never quit working. [I] was just working from home on [a] work computer,” he said during his healing period. Walker said he directed staff to monitor who was coming in and out of the ranch and to try and get inventory on animals, and have the grass mowed and fence work done.
He found out he’d been removed from the post by an email memo. When he saw it, he did not follow up. “Nothing was ever official. Initially, I just asked him if I could work on it. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”
Regarding his decision to remove Walker from the development project, Chief Standing Bear said, “He’s not working. I trust Casey and Jann to take care of it.”
Casey Johnson, Secretary of Development, and Dr. Jann Hayman, Secretary of Natural Resources, have been tasked with securing and repairing buildings on the property and taking inventory of animal and plant life. “I was reliant on RJ to coordinate all these pieces,” said Standing Bear. “He is no longer the liaison because of health issues. I just hope he gets well, we need all the help we can get.”
From million-dollar purchase to management turmoil
The Osage Nation purchased Lost Creek Ranch for $4.9 million in 2021, as negotiated by former Assistant Principal Chief Raymond Red Corn and Attorney General Clint Patterson. The funds came from a $7.3 million sum appropriated via ONCA 21-60, a bill sponsored by former ON Congresswoman Angela Pratt.
Between the time of that purchase and Walker beginning coordination on the project, equipment was stolen from the storage barn, he said. A buggy, a tractor and a four-wheeler, none of them brand new, were all stolen. He does not know when they were stolen, and he does not have a key for that building, nor were there cameras to monitor it. Johnson said the Nation is installing cameras.
According to Osage Nation Police Chief Nick Williams, a police officer had been living in the guest house on Lost Creek Ranch. He moved in during the time the lease was under the LLC. When he inquired about it to a member of the LLC, he was told it was for security purposes, he said. The property is currently secured via a locked gate and surrounded by fencing tall enough to contain elk.
It is not the first time Standing Bear has placed the property into someone else’s management and found the results to be either slow or unsatisfactory.
In 2021, Chief Standing Bear placed the development of Lost Creek Ranch into the hands of the Osage LLC. He told the Osage LLC that he wanted to get things moving “pretty quick” on the ranch, but the property reverted to the Nation’s hands in winter of 2023 after the LLC’s board terminated the lease.
According to a former board member of the Osage LLC, Nancy Trumbly Benthien, they proposed a plan for Lost Creek Ranch to the ON Congress in an appropriations meeting in spring 2023. The proposal passed and was then sent to Chief Standing Bear to sign. “We put the business plan together along with the budget. The Chief said the budget wasn’t ‘detailed’ enough … It was more detailed than a number of items that he signed.”
“It is a jewel,” Benthien said of Lost Creek Ranch. The plan the board proposed involved renovating the 9,775-square-foot custom hunting lodge. “We put together a budget, we put together a business plan, and we got some partners who could run it. … They do high-end hunting around the world. These are really nice people, I thought. … We put together a business plan, but the chief vetoed it. … We didn’t get the appropriations. To me, this was a win-win. It was a line-item veto.”
“There was no member of Congress who was a member of the meetings, so they don’t know what happened.”
Walker, who was assistant principal chief by then, said he saw all of that happen. Walker had been elected in June 2022 and said communication between the LLC and the Executive Branch was “nonexistent.” He asked to take care of Lost Creek Ranch, and after the LLC terminated their lease for it in winter 2023, he began evaluating the property starting the following spring.
Walker’s vision for Lost Creek Ranch
As of November 2024, Walker had seen the structure, including the high fences designed to keep the elk and other game enclosed on the property, and he’d begun evaluating what animals and plants were there. He was also awaiting remodeling.
“I was handcuffed waiting on necessary repairs,” he said, “including to the fence.” Repairs are underway, due for completion in June. “There are probably 10 or more water gaps that need to be monitored after heavy rains. Once we let commercial animals loose out there, we need a full-time person or two.
“Especially if we start having commercial hunts … I have land of my own and run yearlings on. They are looking for a spot to get out.”
He is interested in the elk on the property, most of them bulls, which number about 40 in Walker’s current estimation. “There’s at least one trophy bull along with others, from mature to young, and breeding is going on, and white tail deer with commercial genetics. There are also water gaps in the high fence that need to be maintained,” he said.
A remodeling project geared toward getting the space up and running as a commercial hunting lodge would cost $425,000, according to Walker. “The hunters will come out there like before … High Adventure, they already have a tremendous amount of clientele.”
Additionally, during the hottest Oklahoma months of June, July, August, and September, Walker believes that hunting vacancies can be filled by gamers via the Casino, or “one-armed bandits,” as he called them. “If gaming were to use it … [but] these are very preliminary conversations,” he said.
He hopes to realize his vision for the property, and he remains firm in his hope despite the setbacks caused by his injuries.
“Once the house project is done [in mid-June], I would like–within a year–to see a professional commercial hunting operation being implemented out there and ultimately in 2-4 years, gaming take over it, the big house be put into trust, having gaming machines out there, the casino operate it and bring in their high rollers and they can game and hunt and it be a profitable operation. And at the end of the day, I know there’s scrutiny, criticism regarding the property. I would counter that we have an appreciating asset and that is not going to change,” said Walker.
“We need to put an RFP [Request for Proposal] out for a commercial outfitter to run it and operate it,” he continued, “bring clientele in here. And in the meantime, [with] gaming, file the trust application … it would be easier and faster to put the houses into trust and let them operate it …
“I’m going back in [to the office],” he said. “My vision is that this will be a commercial hunting operation.”
Walker was been back in the office this week.
Timelines differ
Dr. Hayman said the Department of Natural Resources is trying to get a strong baseline for all the plant and animal species that exist on the property, and that this may take up to two years.
“We’ve been working with the University of Arkansas to start that process … we’re reaching out to some other experts in the field, botanists, things like that, taking a deeper dive into everything that exists first, that’s kind of a lengthy process,” she said.
“We’re coordinating the same efforts on the bison preserve, so it’s trying to coordinate people both at the bison preserve and at Lost Creek and on the financial end, it kind of just depends on how much funds we have available to pay some experts to come and look at some of those resources,” she said.
“I see this as possibly a two-year process. We’re coordinating Lost Creek and the bison preserve at the same time. It’s shy of just about 6,000 acres.”
So far, they have found old-growth forests at the ranch and are also conducting wildlife surveys. And while DNR is far from ready to make any official recommendations, Hayman said that it would make sense for hunting to be the focus there, “or one of the focuses … It’s definitely more predominantly the cross-timbers, in terms of the acreage, so grazing and livestock doesn’t make as much sense, like out on the Osage Nation Ranch … it’s potentially good habitat for hunting and that’s where we come in to assess the species that are there,” she said.
Congresswoman Alice Goodfox has been vocal on Lost Creek Ranch, and said she wants to get a proper inventory of every square inch the Nation owns and find out “where everything is headed, what kind of shape everything is in, and what are the uses of the plans moving forward.”
Goodfox, who is the chair of the Congressional Government Operations Committee, has a list of capital projects and will proceed with questioning, she said.
Johnson told Osage News on May 2 that “stuff takes time.” He has been focused on repairs at Lost Creek Ranch. “We had water infiltration through the roof, so we had to repair and fix up one of the upstairs bathrooms because of that,” he said. “This thing has gone from the Nation to the LLC and then from the LLC back to us, so it’s not like a lot of stuff was being done right after we bought it … All I can tell you is we’re going to fix it all up. …
“We’re moving a couple of beehives out there from Harvest Land, we have a location that’s not right next to the house or anything, it’s far away … A lot of stuff takes time around here and that’s just the way it works, you’ve got to have money. … It’ll need all $860,000 and most likely more for completion to the point of readiness to open. What I wanted to make sure was the place was winterized, and [sealed.] That was our initial push, fixing the doors, windows and the deck … the deck was a safety hazard … what we’ll do is look at how much money we have left, if we have any, and take care of some of those small, nitpicky things.”
Johnson referenced ONCA 23-113, in which Congress appropriated $860,000 to Lost Creek Ranch “for repairs and furnishing of the lodge,” according to the enacted law. Sponsored by former ON Congresswoman Paula Stabler, Chief Standing Bear signed the bill into law on Sept. 29, 2023.
In addition to his vision for the commercial game hunting and gaming operations, Walker advocated for the purchase of Lost Creek Ranch in 2021 during Pratt’s sponsored ONCA 21-60. He was a member of the 7th Osage Nation Congress at the time.
Walker is continuing to move on the project, albeit at his own pace, and indicated that when the Executive Chief wants to move slowly, Walker has been the one to take the blame. “I respect him,” he said of Chief Standing Bear, “but he is not my boss.”
With Lost Creek Ranch, Walker hopes it will become all it can and quickly. During the off months from commercial high use, he hopes youth will be able to learn how to shoot a bow safely or handle firearms, including the importance of gun safety.
The area is large and has no cell service and contains vast networks of roads in which it is easy to get lost, said Walker. “I actually got lost at Lost Creek the first time I came here.”
In reviewing his initial actions for the property in addition to collecting ideas for its use, he is insistent that his hands were tied in waiting for repairs and that the chief is using him to take the blame on a project he is not interested in.
“I never wrote an official report and was never requested to do so,” Walker said. He said he has not been officially placed back onto the project and has not followed up with the chief.
He is continuing to work on the project, despite being removed as the liaison.
