Hot Springs couple aim to bring Montana-raised bison products to national shelves (2024)

HOT SPRINGS— Jon Sepp’s first career was to test parachutes for the U.S. military, with over 800 free falls, 200 low-altitude BASE jumps and numerous severe leg injuries under his belt. He’s used to danger and adrenaline. Still, the sight of a 2,200-pound bison chasing him down last August scared the living crap out of him.

“He broke through the metal gate,” Sepp recalled. “And I just looked and saw him coming after me.”

Sepp, a bison rancher with a herd near Camas Prairie just south of the town of Hot Springs in western Montana, was being filmed by a German television documentary crew when the accident happened. The animal pummeled him into the ground, then came back and gored him through the arm and trampled him. He suffered a severe concussion, but was able to escape with the help of a ranch hand.

“It was really, really bad,” Sepp recalled. “For a moment I thought I was going to die.”

That incident, and another time he got trampled in a trailer, didn’t stop him from loving and respecting the animals.

Sepp and his partner Brittany Masters, owners of Roam Free Ranch, manage a herd of 200 bison that will grow to about 300 after calving season, which starts at the end of April.

They’ve found a unique way to make a living with the tens of thousands of pounds of grass-fed meat they harvest every year.

They created a ready-to-eat, pre-cooked Roam Free bison chili product that’s available exclusively at Costco stores in several states in the western U.S., including the Missoula and Kalispell stores. The products have flown off the shelves. The stores may be out soon, but they’re planning another resupply later this year.

Roam Free Ranch also has a line of jerky products and sell cuts of meat locally. It has a growing staff and Sepp and Masters hope to expand to more stores over the next few years.

“We found a chef that created a really amazing recipe for us,” explained Masters, who left a career in marketing at the Boeing aerospace company to move to Montana. “Even when I try to recreate it at home, I can’t make it like he does.”

Masters said it took a huge logistical undertaking to get a product on the shelves of Costco. They had to find a place that was big enough to process a large volume of animals, get the recipe right, find a commercial factory to create the product and convince Costco to put it on their shelves.

“There is no soup plant in Montana, so if anyone wants to start one let us know,” Masters said.

Masters said they also had to prove they were already distributing the jerky to other stores before Costco would accept the chili.

“They’ve seen other companies go in and crash and they don’t want to be responsible for that,” she explained.

Both Sepp and Masters said it’s been exciting to see people trying their creation.

“We’ve run into people at Costco buying it,” Master said.

“We want to interview them, not to be creepy, but just to understand what made them pick that up,” Sepp added. “We did so well at first and we were so excited with the product. I want to know why. Is it the packaging? Is it because it’s bison? Is it a mixture? So we just want to get people’s feedback.”

Sepp said they realized there are very few pre-cooked bison products on the market, and he knows busy people are looking for something that can be heated up quickly. Masters said Costco has sold ground bison for years but there hasn’t been a lot of innovation.

“We knew that there was a bison consumer that shops there,” Master said.

She said Costco originally contracted with them for just 5,000 units, but she decided she’d have another 5,000 made just in case. Sure enough, the 5,000 sold out way before the three months that Costco had estimated, so the company frantically called them and asked how much more they had.

The couple practice regenerative farming methods, which means they confine their herd to small areas so that they intensively graze the grasses down to the ground before they’re moved.

That, combined with the fact that the bison are constantly fertilizing the ground, triggers an emergency response in the grasses and causes them to spread out and keeps the land healthy. But the practice also requires lots of fencing, so most of their summer is spent building scores of miles of fence.

They recently lost a lease on land they had been improving for years, and Sepp laments the fact that Montana is one of the last places where ranching can still be even marginally profitable. Development pressure in places like Colorado means that prime land goes to builders and wealthy homeowners and there will be fewer and fewer small ranchers.

“We have friends in the bison industry who have lost their leases in the last year,” Master said. “It’s not an uncommon thing.”

Despite his run-in with the angry bull, Sepp is still enamored with bison, as he has been since childhood.

"One year, when I was like 4 or something, my mom and dad stopped the car and we got out in Montana somewhere and saw some bison," he recalled. "I always said I was gonna raise them when I got older."

To this day, he still gazes in wonder at the huge beasts from the safety of his truck. Staring into the eyes of a younger bull, with Camas Prairie far down below, Sepp still has the feeling he had those many years ago.

"It never gets old," he said.