ON Ranch pursues leads in cattle theft, deaths

Written By: Chelsea T. Hicks

(OSAGE RESERVATION) The investigation of 12 missing calves and five cows, as well as the death of 11 cows at the Osage Nation Ranch is underway. The Osage Nation Police Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Osage County Sheriff’s Office and the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) are actively pursuing the thieves.

Read this story on Osage News here.

“We reached out to the FBI as well, I have not got any confirmation from them,” said ON Police Chief Nick Williams.

As of Friday, Aug. 8, the investigation is open with multiple leads.

The gate on the road where the theft occurred could not be locked, as it is a county road where the public can pass through, said Osage LLC Board Chairman Galen Crum.

ON Ranch Foreman Mike Alexander is working with the investigating agencies to solve the crime. Amidst efforts to respond to the theft and deaths, his cowboys have been upset by a critical social media response from Osage constituents and the public, he said.

Some Osages who read about the cattle theft criticized the hard workers, Alexander said.

Clay McKinney, the director of law enforcement at the TSCRA, said the cowboys should not be blamed for the crimes.

“I don’t think it would be fair to cast any kind of blame in this instance. … I can tell you I have seen theft occur at producers’ ranches who are the best in the business and have been in the business for generations and still get cattle stolen from them,” he said.

“The crooks are good at what they do, until they get caught—and they all eventually get caught. They know where the gates are, they know when the gates are not locked, they know when the cowboys make their rounds,” McKinney said.

Cattle theft is widespread

Cattle rustling theft is a major threat across the globe, inviting defense solution applications from UAV drone monitoring. China-based unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) company Jingrong Innovation Hub names Texas, Oregon, California, Latin America, and East and West Africa as major sites of cattle rustling.

There are 1,000 agricultural crime cases investigated per year, according to the TSCRA webpage on Theft and Law. The organization was founded in 1877 to fight cattle rustling and they represent over 28,000 beef cattle producers, ranching families, and businesses managing approximately 4 million head of cattle on 76 million acres primarily in Texas and Oklahoma.

There is a black market for cattle, McKinney said.

“The Osage Nation Ranch is enormous,” said Gavin Gatrell, who is one of 27 special rangers working at the TSCRA, exclusively devoted to investigating agricultural crimes. “It’s not a huge staff,” he said of the two cowboys and one foreman who work at ON Ranch.

Osage County Sheriff Bart Perrier said the ranch’s low acreage-to-cowboy ratio makes the ON Ranch a typical target, “because they have less than a dozen cowboys working there at any given time, and it is a massive ranch,” said Perrier.

“It’s a low-risk, high-reward crime,” Perrier said. He worked with the TSCRA for more than 13 years and said there were “probably a dozen thefts in Osage County from various sizes.”

Cattle theft is not as common for branded cattle, like those that were stolen from the ON Ranch. Cattle rustlers often go after unbranded cattle first, as reported by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

The time frame of the theft at the end of Cavalcade Rodeo is of note in the investigation, said Gatrell, but he would not say more so as not to compromise the ongoing case.

Evaluating the circumstances

“I believe the Osage Nation is doing everything they can to prevent cattle theft,” said Perrier. “In my opinion, they are very successful at what they do. It’s frustrating [seeing people] tearing these poor guys apart [on social media].”

“In the summertime, you don’t feed cattle,” said Perrier. “They eat grass. You’re cutting hay, getting ready for the winter. [Theft] is not uncommon [and] a lock only keeps out an honest thief. I encourage people to put locks on gates and pens but it’s not practical because we don’t live life expecting to be victimized.”

Gatrell agreed that in the wintertime, it’s easy to count cattle. “But in the summertime, it is much more difficult. We recommend [counts] once a week,” Gatrell said.

Police Chief Williams said cattle theft is one of the hardest crimes out there to solve, but he will not give up.

“Livestock is something we kind of anticipated at some point in time because of our ranch. We’ve had private citizens called and we’ve been able to solve them, but … we’re doing everything we can as diligently as we can to follow our leads and move forward with it.”

According to Crum, the cowboys “didn’t do anything wrong. … there are a lot of people complaining ‘they should’ve been looking at them.’ You couldn’t see them all in a day, not with the number of cowboys we can afford to have around at all. Matter of fact, we were checking the cattle way more times this year because of preg checks,” Crum said.

“Preg checks” or Pregnancy checks, had the cowboys working in different pastures for three days, until they circled back on Sunday and found the dead animals.

Cowboys at the Osage Nation Ranch are typically out on the pasture by dawn, and have numerous jobs to do that make daily checks of all 2,500 head of cattle on the 43,000-acre ranch impossible.

In the winter the cowboys do bring a feed truck to the pastures to feed cattle daily, making daily cattle counts more feasible, but in the summertime, the cattle prefer green grass and will not come in, Alexander said. “That’s where the horse comes in,” he said, who confirmed the cowboys were on “preg checks” in the days when the theft and deaths occurred.

There are no cameras currently installed to monitor cattle, nor are there locks on the gates.

Next steps for ON Ranch

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation commissions Gatrell to investigate, and he said that in his experience, cattle theft occurs more commonly in Creek and Muscogee Counties than the Osage, where the professionalized nature of cattle ranching can deter thieves.

Since the cattle are already branded regularly, there is no procedure to remedy there. However, the Osage LLC will discuss possible deterrents of theft with ON Police.

Osage LLC Board Chairman Galen Crum is currently working with Osage LLC CEO Russell Goff to determine what all can be done to prevent thefts in the future, from high-tech drone solutions associated with the Nation’s drone flight corridor, to motion cameras that can detect movement and provide evidence and alerts in the event of attempted future thefts.

The Osage LLC is expected to discuss preventative measures at an Aug. 11 board meeting.