Pecos Bilberry | Jeff Bilberry 2025 RHA Working Cowboy Award-West

Appeared in the 2025 Summer Ranch Record. Written by Ross Hecox.

Jeff Bilberry views his cowboy life in the Pecos River Basin as more than just a livelihood. He seizes opportunities.

Splashing across the wide, shallow waters of the Pecos River, Jeff Bilberry steers his horse toward the western bank. He studies the riverbed closely, searching for cow tracks and avoiding boggy patches that might suck his sorrel gelding down into the riverbed.

Once he crosses the Pecos, he trots north to check on two black, cow-calf pairs he spotted earlier from a bluff on the eastern side. Prowling the river country of the Bojax Division of Singleton Ranches in New Mexico, Bilberry covers miles of open river country that has been traversed by all kinds of peoples, from Spanish explorers to Comanche warriors, cattle rustlers, buffalo hunters, outlaws and trail drovers following the Goodnight-Loving Trail.

Bilberry represents the fourth generation of a family that has remained and ranched int he area for ore than 100 years.

“I make the same horse tracks that my granddad and great-granddad did,” he says. “My great-granddad on my mother’s side was Dave Howell, and he bought a water well near Kenna that was drilled by George Causey, a buffalo hunter who went to drilling wells around here once the buffalo were gone.”

For nearly 50 years, whether working for family, himself or one of the largest cattle operations in the nation, Bilberry has cowboyed near Kenna, 60 miles southeast of Fort Sumner and 30 miles due east of the Pecos.

“He’s made a life for himself and his family on the back of a horse,” says Sarah Fitzgerald, a friend and rancher from Fort Sumner. “He’s a good example of what can happen if you’re willing to stick with something and put in the hours.”

Bilberry is the vice president and general manager of Singleton Ranches, a 1.3-million-acre cow-calf operation that hired him in 1992. His duties include overseeing the operations of several divisions of the Singletons, nevertheless, he gets horseback regularly. He’s joined many Zoom calls from the saddle and still competes on the Singleton Ranches rodeo team.

“Watching ranch rodeo, you can tell the difference between guys who simply rope really well and guys that are real, day-in and day-out cowboys,” says Dusty Burson, cattle division manager for the Four Sixes Ranch in Guthrie, Texas. “Just the way Jeff rides, reads cattle, and how his horses react to what he’s wanting to do, it’s pretty evident that he’s a cowboy.”

Trent Bilberry, who was raised on and now works for Singleton Ranches, says he is still impressed by his dad’s skills as a stockman and horseman.

“He reads cattle like nobody I’ve ever met,” Trent says. “To watch him work in the gate, sorting dries, or pairing cows in a big, 400-head herd, it just flows. His horses are always in tune [with him]. They can slip around without making a fuss.”

In true cowboy fashion, Bilberry has learned to be proficient at a wide range of tasks, from doctoring yearlings and sorting cows to fixing windmills and marketing calves. He’s also added the skills of ranch manager, school board chairman and county commissioner.

“He can walk into a board room and negotiate on a proposed 500-megawatt wind farm and then get on his phone and contract 10,000 calves,” says New Mexico state senator, rancher and longtime friend Pat Boone. “And then he might drive half the night to Albuquerque because he’s got a hand with a new baby in the neonatal unit, and he’s there just to stand with the parents and pray with them. He’s just the complete package when it comes to doing what he’s called to do.”

Driven by Duty

Born in 1961, Bilberry gained a strong sense of responsibility at a young age. Pat Boone remembers his friend regularly pulling up to their high school with horses and a trailer attached to his pickup.

“His dad was in bad health when he was in high school, and Jeff stepped up,” remembers Boone. “He had a feed route and was taking care of cattle 40 to 50 miles from home when he was 14 years old. His family had ranches leased in the area. He’d just jump a couple horses in this little trailer, and before school, he’d go feed a little bit. When school was out, he’d go feed a little more. He did those kinds of things because h e felt he was supposed to. He never complained.”

In addition to school and ranch work, he competed in calf roping, which meant purchasing calves, buying and training horses and building his own arena. Upon graduation from Elida High School (10 miles from Kenna), e earned a rodeo scholarship from Eastern New Mexico University. Boone says Bilberry wasn’t one to shy away from hard work or a challenge.

“He wasn’t bashful about stepping up and saying, ‘I can do that.’ He was brash,” Boone recalls. “But then he’d go do what he had said he could do. He just was that way.”

During his junior year, Bilberry decided to return home to help with his family’s ranch. Much of that involved buying yearlings in Mexico and running them on wheat pasture in the area. He also continued to enter a few rodeos and compete in calf roping. He was so consumed with the cowboy world, it’s a wonder he fell in love with Cheree 41 years ago. They met on a blind date, and despite different backgrounds and interests, they quickly found common ground.

“She was a town girl,” Bilberry says. “We got set up by two mutual friends who had gotten married. Before the date, I told God, ‘If she’s not a Christian, I want to talk to her about You.’ And then in the back o my mind I though, ‘… and then maybe she’ll go away.’ But she shared her faith, and I shared my faith. I didn’t know that night that she was the one, but it wasn’t too long that I did.”

Cheree says her goal was to live in the city, not down a dirt road 45 minutes from the nearest Allsup’s convenience store.

“When we were dating, we drove out [near Kenna], and he said, ‘I’m going to live out there some day,'” she recalls. “I said, ‘By yourself. I’m not going out there.’ But now, I couldn’t live in town.”

The Bilberrys decided to get married in late June of 1948 so that Cheree could travel with Jeff to the many rodeos held around the Fourth of July. They honeymooned at the historic West of the Pecos Rodeo in Pecos, Texas. Eventually, he let go of his rodeo passion so he could focus on being a husband and a provider. He says times were lean as he and Cheree lived in various places near Kenna, helping out on his family’s Howell Ranch and building their own cattle business.

“We had a couple of preconditioning yards, and we’d turn out as many cattle as we could find wheat for,” Bilberry says. “The yearling business is so seasonal, you know. You just work, work, work, and then you’d be out of gas. And then you’d starve for a while. The cattle business back then was so tough. The margin was so narrow; there was no room for error. If you could make 20 bucks a head, you were really doing something.”

In 1991, a local rancher offered him a job to manage his Bojax Ranch, located between Kenna and the Pecos River. It was an attractive offer, especially as his business struggled and he could see that the Howell Ranch wasn’t big enough to support his wife and young children, Tori and Trent. Still, he didn’t like the idea of giving up on family operations.

“I didn’t really want to take that job,” Bilberry says. “But Cheree and I had two kids, and we were just barely getting along. I was praying, ‘God, if this job isn’t what You want me to do, shut the door.’ But He had me at a point where I really had to trust Him. God has a plan for your life, and sometimes it doesn’t go the direction you think it should.”

After Bilberry managed the Bojax for about a year, Singleton Ranches purchased it and made him the manager of their new Bojax Division. By 2006, he was managing the Bojax, Agua Verde and the Lobo division, and in 2018 he was promoted to vice president and general manager. For a few years, that role included overseeing Singleton operations in California.

Around the time of his last promotion, his son, Trent, began managing the Bojax Division.

“He let me figure things for myself,” Trent says. “If I asked a question, he wouldn’t give me the answer but would guide me and say, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I’d tell him, and he might say, ‘I think you’re on the right path.’

“He always gives me room to do what I need to, but he’s always there in case I need something. And when he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll flat out say, ‘I don’t know. Let’s work on this together.'”

All-Around Hand

Boone says that Bilberry’s leadership abilities are one reason he recruited his friend to serve on the local school board, which wound up becoming a 16-year commitment.

“I was president of the local school board, and we were in a mess with a faculty member who had done some really bad things,” Boon recalls. “One school board member resigned, and I knew who I wanted to appoint. Jeff didnt want ot get invovled in public life at the time, but he thought about it, prayed about it, and said he’d do it.

“Well, it was a drawn out, nasty ordeal. But Jeff he stayed hooked, even though that person tried to get him thrown off the school board. Later, he served as president of the board for about eight years, even after his kids got out of school.”

Bilberry has also spent years on the board of directors for the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, and he was recognized as the organization’s Cattleman of the Year in 2024. About nine years ago, he says he felt led to run for county commissioner, and he wound up serving two four-year terms.

“I appreciate the fact that he’s always willing to help,” says Fitzgerald. “As far as serving as county commissioner and on so many committees, his sense of community goes past the branding pen. And in New Mexico, if we’re not speaking up, the people in Santa Fe definitely will. I think he takes that to heart.

“The agriculture industry runs in cycles, and everything depends on rain or markets – things that aren’t in our control. So, you have to have a sense of faith that things will work out. I know his belief in God is very important to him, and it has brought him through a lot of personal struggles and has made him the man he is today.”

Most folks who know Bilberry have watched him and his family endure several difficult times. Two in particular stand out. In 1997, he and Cheree lost their third child, a daughter named Taylor to stillbirth. In 2003, they lost their fourth child, Trey, in a horse accident. He was only a few months shy of turning four.

“Cheree and I have both been through a lot of soul searching, trying to understand things,” Bilberry says. “There are a lot of things I hope nobody has to go through. It becomes part of your story, but we have to work at not letting it define our lives.

“When we lost Trey, I knew I was going to have to say something to all those people waiting outside the hospital room. I said, ‘God, I don’t know what to do.’ All that would come to me was to say, ‘For me and my house, we will serve God.'”

At that moment, and many other times, Trent says he watched his dad cling to his beliefs and demonstrate tremendous staying power.

“When it’s all going sideways, he’s going to stand there and hold the line,” Trent says. “He’s definitely a hero to me, especially now that I’m a yound dad. He taught me what’s right is right, and what’s wrong is wrong. Always have integrity and speak the truth. Never shy away from it, even when it feels like it’s going to break you down.”

Bilberry views his experiences, whether they’ve brought triumph or heartache, as part of his calling and the reason he’s been able to cowboy in the Pecos River Basin.

“This has been my lane,” he says. “I’ve been super blessed to be able to raise my family here. And I’ve had so many opportunities to work with men who were good at their trade, honest and always watching out for other people. At my age now, I’m more appreciative of that now than I have ver been.

“You know, sometimes God requires us to walk through some pretty tough stuff. Sometimes He sends us into places where we say, ‘Okay, God. I’m here, and that’s all I know to do.’ Sometimes you just need to be where you’re at so other people can do what they need to do. It’s never been about me.”

Thank you to Frank & Jenni McLelland for being the 2025 sponsor of the RHA Working Cowboy Award-West.