Heavenly Ranch: Where the buffalo roam

Gamblers edging their way along the buffet line at Mystic Lake may or may not stop to think how appropriate it is for them to be offered buffalo burgers at a casino run by Sioux Indians, whose ancestors shared the Great Plains with the forebears of these same animals.

But there is one part of the picture they might find difficult to believe.

The woman in the ballcap who just roared by outside in her big white truck with the dogs in the cab? That's the niece of the chairman of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, one of the nation's wealthiest tribes. She's heading south to the ranch where the buffalo live, to tend to them and address some of them by name.

And Kathy Crooks says she's delighted to invite anyone -- families, school groups, anyone -- to meet her there for a tour and draw close enough to the shaggy, mighty animals to reach out and pet their ugly mugs.

"Everything about 'em is awesome," she says, gazing across the field on a sunny, windy morning. "They all have their own personalities. They face into storms and put their babies in the middle of all the moms to protect them from predators. The babies are smart enough to know who their mom is."

Heavenly Ranch, as she and husband Ernie Symmes call it, is part of a rapidly growing national phenomenon, according to Gail Griffin of Winona, Minn., president of the Minnesota and national buffalo growers' associations.

"Nationally, sales as of August were 17 percent ahead of last year's, after several years of double-digit growth," she said. "People like that it's natural, raised on pasture, tasty and low in fat."

Ted Turner, founder of CNN and by far the nation's premier bison owner, with more than 40,000 head on his limitless western acreage, "just keeps taking the rest of us along for the ride," she said, promoting the meat to the point where national chains such as Fuddrucker's, as well as fine-dining restaurants in bigger cities, have signed on. "He's brought it on as a thing to do, and yet thankfully Teddy-Boy hasn't come into the Minnesota market himself as a producer."

The number of producers in Minnesota has soared from fewer than 10 when she began in 1991 to more than 200, she said, making Minnesota No. 2 in number of producers and No. 7 in number of buffalo.

Crooks, the niece of tribal chairman Stanley Crooks, and Symmes bought the 74.6-acre spread near Kilkenny, Minn., about 45 minutes south of the reservation, in 2000. They began with the thought of just a handful of bison but have ended up with 58 head -- about average for a Minnesota bison producer -- and a vast apparatus of fencing and work zones.

"We went full-blown into the business," Crooks mused.

The fencing alone is awesome, appearing strong enough for elephants: 14-foot posts, 8 by 6 inches each, have been driven deep into the ground, and 6-inch bolts hold steel pipes as thick as baseball bats. Her uncle, Crooks said, only recently made it out to see the place, and "he was like 'Oh, the fencing!'"

Her husband says: "I told her, 'You're wastin' some serious money here.'" But in fact, Crooks said, buffalo can weigh thousands of pounds, race 35 miles an hour and leap six feet. Of their 2,500-pound bull, she says: "He'll charge. There's spots where he's bent it."

The spread, so deep into farming country south of Scott County that much of Crooks' commute is along dust-raising gravel roads, includes an Amish-built log cabin, a pond stocked with fish, and an RV sitting on a concrete pad, hooked to a satellite dish. The couple could live there, but they choose mostly to commute from their home on tribal lands.

The moment Crooks' truck enters the long gravel driveway in the morning, a whole section of the herd bursts into a run. "That's my special one, leading the way," Crooks says. "She knows my truck when she sees it."

It has been "a long four years getting to know how they operate," she said. One lesson: They needed to put more than one chain on a gate because a buffalo can snap just one.

"They busted one open last spring," she said, "and the whole herd got out. You laugh, but it took us almost four hours to get them all back in the pen. They mauled our pine trees all the way down the road."

The meat is a seasonal feature at the main casino's buffet, and a routine menu item at its Little Six and Tipi restaurants. The tribe recently announced a program of native prairie grass plantings, part of which will go to feed the animals.

Despite the occasional panic, she said, "It's been a blast."

David Peterson • 952-882-9023