Burned Bar B Ranch will carry on
The Bar B Ranch east of Beaver offers some of the best trophy whitetail hunting in Oklahoma.
The terrain consists of more than 20 miles of the Beaver River bottom, rolling sand hills, plum thickets and cottonwood trees.
About 70 percent of the ranch’s 50,000 acres were scorched by a wildfire in northwest Oklahoma this month.
Owner Stanley Barby said deer and quail hunting are an important source of revenue for the ranch.
“It’s a major deal for us,” he said. “We do quite a bit of deer hunts and filming for TV shows.”
Several whitetails on the ranch were consumed by the wildfire, but Barby said it won’t cripple the hunting operation.
“We are finding burned up deer, but we are seeing a lot of deer singed and a lot of deer OK,” Barby said. “I think the deer will be all right. I am sure it hurt me. I am sure it got some of my trophy bucks.”
Barby said it was more difficult for deer to escape the wildfire than the quail.
“The quail will pick up and fly out and they will go get air,” he said. “They will fly up ahead of that fire. I am seeing a lot of birds in the sand hills.
“There is nothing to eat (for them), but there are birds there. If we get some rain and this green grass comes pretty quick, it won’t be enough for the cattle, but the quail will survive.”
Barby said he’s also seen prairie chickens on his ranch since the wildfire.
“And rattlesnakes. They crawled in a hole,” he said. “I think it got the coyotes and porcupines, which is a good thing.”
Barby said some of his best hunting habitat along the Beaver River bottom was torched in the wildfire.
“We lost so many trees and brushes,” he said. “It’s damaged that habitat but it will come back.”