The Oak Creek Ranch is located 14 miles west of Medicine Lodge and 5 miles south of Lake City in historic Barber County, Kansas. The ranch encompasses more than 2,000 contiguous acres of habitat including Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grassland, wooded canyons, oak trees, a 38 acre lake, numerous ponds, springs and Oak Creek, which traverses over 4 miles of the ranch.
Whitetail deer hunts and wild turkey hunts are now available on the Oak Creek Ranch. We are interested in granting annual hunting leases by the acre to independent, experienced hunters.
Deer feeders and food plots, in addition to natural foods growing on the ranch, nurture the thriving wildlife population. Wildlife on the ranch includes White-tailed deer, mule deer, Rio Grande wild turkey, quail, pheasant, Canadian geese and many other types of birds.
Wildflowers are abundant on the ranch, which is part of the scenic Red Hills geological area and was originally Osage Diminished Reserve land.
The Oak Creek Ranch is part of the "last American frontier". Kansas was one of the areas in the Great Plains which were passed over for settlement as gold discoveries in California and Alaska caused settlers and prospectors to flood to the west coast from the east coast. Barber County, Kansas, has many authentic "Wild West" stories about it. Most of the events mentioned in the following histories took place within less than twenty miles of the Oak Creek Ranch:
Recollections of the Past - The Festive Buffalo (A Barber County buffalo hunt that backfired.)
A Christmas in the Wilderness, 1871 - A story by Scott Cummins about a buffalo hunters' Christmas dinner near where Medicine Lodge, Barber County, Kansas, was established a few years later.
The Medicine Lodge Peace Council": A Graphic Description of Famous Peace Council By An Eye Witness, Gov. A. A. Taylor of Tenn. - Barber County Index, September 29, 1927.
Green Adams Describe Things As He Saw Them In Barber County In The Early 1870's - Barber County Index, October 6, 1927.
If you live in a city, you'll probably stand lost in marveling at all the stars visible in the night time sky from the Oak Creek Ranch, far from the glare and glow of city lights.
You may wonder at the quiet of the night, free from honking taxi cabs and the relentless buzz of traffic and railroad train horns, as you tune into the soft whispering of wind in the prairie grass and the distant croaks of bull frogs, the calls of wild turkeys, the snorts and whistles of whitetail deer and the lonesome cries of coyotes echoing across the Kansas hills. Some people think of it as the natural music of the American prairie.
