Couple realizes longtime dream of running bison ranch

Hot Springs ranchers Jon Sepp and Brittany Masters are chasing their dreams.

With three full-time staff and several volunteers, the engaged couple has worked hard to transform the Roam Free Bison Ranch from a small operation with eight animals to a sprawling 10,000-plus acre spread with a herd of 150 bison and more than 100 miles of fencing.

For Sepp, the ranch is a dream come true.

“When I was young, I always loved bison,” he said. “On one of our cross-country moves when I was 4 or 5, we were driving across Montana and my family stopped to show me some wild bison and I became enthralled with them. From that moment on, I wanted to one day be able to raise them myself, but I never expected it to grow into what it is now.”

The son of an Air Force officer, Sepp and his family moved 13 times before his 18th birthday, living on bases all over the United States before settling down in Norway for Sepp’s junior high and high school years. Following his father’s footsteps, Sepp attended the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs before taking a position as a commander in the parachute testing division, all the while saving money for his dream ranch.

In late 2013, Sepp put his plans into action, buying a small parcel of land southeast of Hot Springs and eight bison from a rancher on the Crow Reservation. While he was finally living his dream, times were tough for Sepp in those early days as he struggled to pay the bills.

Then, in 2016, he met Brittany Masters.

A marketing director at Boeing in Seattle, Masters quickly fell in love with both Sepp and his ranch.

“He took me out to see his ranch in Montana when I was working a somewhat stressful corporate job and I was just ready to live here,” Masters said. “It was just what I needed.”

Masters quickly put her marketing skills to work to help promote the ranch and its line of bison jerky products.

“At that time I was struggling hard with the ranch. I was not able to sustain it and pay for it and I was working two other jobs to try to make ends meet,” Sepp recalled. “Brittany helped me develop our product and we quit our other jobs to focus all of our efforts on making this work.”

After leaving her job at Boeing and selling her house, Masters made the move to the ranch to help out full-time.

“Jon had done all of the hard work, building a ranch from scratch, I just came on and helped with the marketing,” she said. “He was having a hard time making the economics work and I was able to help with that.”

Today, the Roam Free Ranch offers four flavors of its “Bison Bits” jerky, including original, Thai chili ginger, Moroccan heat and wood-fired pizza. Available online and at 150 independent retailers, mostly in Montana, as well as in national parks as part of a deal with Xanterra Travel Collection, the jerky is gluten-, carb- and sugar-free, with no added hormones, nitrates or antibiotics.

According to Sepp, the holistically raised, grass-fed bison of the Roam Free Ranch provide a dense, nutrient-rich meat that is leaner than chicken or fish but much higher in protein than beef.

“The taste of bison is a little bit sweeter than beef, but they are both red meat. It would be hard to tell them apart in a blind taste test, but bison meat is much better for you,” he said.

In conjunction with their jerky enterprise, the Roam Free Ranch owners are proud to raise bison in a way that helps promote the return of the land to its original state as a natural grassland area. Sepp and Masters are even grazing the bison in certain areas at different times of the year to promote certain species of grass in an effort to bring the ranch back to the condition it would have been when the bison dominated the area. By concentrating grazing in certain areas at different times of the year they hope to produce better, healthier grass for their herd.

“There are a number of reasons why that is important, but the biggest is probably that native grass prairie is the most endangered ecosystem in North America and second most endangered in the world,” Sepp said. “There is only about one percent of it left, and most of that is in Montana.”

The couple say they are proud to be a part of the efforts that have helped save bison from extinction, pointing out that the vast majority of the remaining bison in the world are privately owned.

“It is a unique situation of capitalist venture helping to conserve a species. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about the National Park Service having brought the bison back, but we like to let people know that it is really the ranchers who have done that,” Sepp said. “By eating our products, people are helping to support the species.”

Sepp said he intends to lease additional land in the near future and plans to have more than 12,000 acres by January 2021 and is excited to continue living his dream of raising bison.

“Bison are very smart — exceptionally smart. I think a lot of people underestimate them based on their slow movements. They seem like they don’t really want to pay attention to people, but there is a lot going on beneath the surface with bison. They are smart, and that makes them a challenge to raise and keep every day interesting,” he said. “That’s what makes it so fun.”

To learn more about the Roam Free Ranch, visit their website at www.goroamfree.com or find them on Facebook.

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.