Our Rancher Partners: Theda and Chris Pogue
Theda Pogue (Muscogee Creek Nation) and her husband, Chris, are one of our rancher partners that joined us in 2023 and received Buffalo from our partnership with The Nature Conservancy.
The couple, along with their children, run GP Ranch — a 60-acre property in Hopkins County, TX, about 90 miles northeast of Dallas. The couple is featured in a video series which commemorates Tanka Fund’s 10 years of work in Buffalo restoration. Watch video here: The Buffalo Return: A Decade of Healing and Renewal
How it started
The Pogues first started herding bison in 2018 and entered the meat industry. However, they discovered the demand was a lot greater than their supply. Because they didn’t want to compromise their family values or quality, they sold during the Covid pandemic and chose to caretake Buffalo as a conservation effort. Theda said that there has been an uptick in the Buffalo meat industry to ranch Buffalo in a cattle-like model using feed lots and feeding them grain to gain weight quickly — something opposite of how the animals are meant to be raised.
“We wanted it to be a way, that as Native Americans, I can connect back to my tribe and help tribal members who have lost that knowledge,” she said. “We wanted it to be a tribal herd as well as a conservation herd that helps not just tribes, but also the local community and local youth to get into the agriculture industry altogether.”
Honoring the herd
Last year GP Ranch hosted a gathering during National Bison Day to celebrate the Buffalo they received from Tanka Fund and The Nature Conservatory. The Pogues felt it was important to commemorate the herd with an intertribal blessing and members from a variety of tribes came to honor them. The Pogues plan to host a hunt this year on Nov. 2 for National Bison Day where they will teach a tribal member, chosen by a raffle fund, how to process a Buffalo from start to finish, head to tail. This includes not just for food but also other uses such as clothing and tools.
Biodiversity
One of the things Theda said changed with having Buffalo on the land was the environment. Prior to the conservation herd, much of the habitat on the ranch had been stripped and taken away. As a keystone species for ecology, Buffalo brings biodiversity wherever they live and since having the herd, as well as adding Native grasses, GP Ranch has seen a shift in the wildlife and land.
“We have since returned to having big deer in our pasture now. We have rabbits, we have butterflies, we have bees that pollinate the plants, and this increase of a whole circle of life that all started with the bison and that’s just awe-inspiring.”
More photos and videos below:
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