A few miles up Long Branch Road, past a gated subdivision, and against the Bledsoe State Forest, is 1,600 acres of prime Cumberland Plateau timberland and a 70-acre bass-and-bluegill lake. It's the kind of property most people would want to keep for themselves.

Co-owner Scott McKinney and his partners feel differently.

“This land is for sharing with people who need it more than us,” he says. “Lots of smiles are generated on this property.”

McKinney and his two partners, Chris Vick and Dennis Byrne, bought the land together in October 2018 and created Buck Lake Outdoors, a Christian-based nonprofit dedicated to bringing people with disabilities, critical illness, or the invisible wounds of military service out to hunt, fish and, for a while, just be taken care of.

McKinney, senior pastor at First Baptist Cookeville and a former row-crop consultant from Georgia, says the idea followed him to Tennessee in 2015.

"I had this vision of taking special needs folks and those who were critically ill hunting and fishing," he says. "Especially with the children, the idea was to provide a memorable, positive experience and video the entire day with their family — because it may be one of the last outings they'd have together."

Initially, the land — just outside of Spencer, Tennessee — was barely suitable. Ninety-eight percent closed canopy, deficient soil, deer population thin and undernourished. Over the ensuing years, the property has been transformed thanks to copious hard work and a solid partnership with the local Co-op. McKinney credits Ag1 Farmers Co-op in both Cookeville and Livingston for helping rebuild the ground from eight measly acres of food plots to a robust 78 — clover, chicory, alfalfa, soybeans, corn and wheat.

"The Co-op has been our source for seed, and we've sent our soil samples through them so we could manage fertility," McKinney says. "The Co-op folks have been instrumental in what to plant, where to plant, and what sprays to use. All our fertilizer and chemicals come through them."

Josh Grissom, agronomy manager at the Ag1 Crop Center in Rickman who now sits on the Buck Lake Outdoors board, says the Co-op's role covers the full inputs list, including a variety of cover crop, food plot, and forage seed, as well as fertility and crop protection chemicals. This year, that included Verdesian Phree-uP®, a phosphate-enhancing product to help utilize nutrients that would otherwise be tied up in the soil, along with a lineup of Ladino and 2,4-D-tolerant red clover for the food plots.

"The deer have been working it hard," Grissom says. “It’s been fun to see.”

For Grissom, helping Buck Lake Outdoors isn't just a business relationship. McKinney is a close friend, and the mission itself hits home.

"Life is hard enough as it is, but it’s exponentially tougher for people live with PTSD, have been injured, or have a sick child," Grissom says. "Any way you can make somebody's day a little better, it's worth the effort."

Along with Co-op, the project has been a group effort. Partnering with agencies including North American Land Trust, US Fish & Wildlife Services, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Buck Lake team has completed habitat work funded through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) — controlled burns, timber thinning, invasive species removal — onto the food-plot rebuild, even reclaiming old strip-mine ground.

The payoff shows up in the numbers. For example, during a single hunt last season, 42 deer hunters and their families harvested 38 animals.

But the harvest isn't really the point.

McKinney recounts a story about Bradley, one of the ministry's first clients, who has hunted with Buck Lake for seven years from a wheelchair. During one hunt, Bradley's father pulled McKinney aside.

"We take care of Bradley every day," he told McKinney. "You'll never know how impactful it is when you see somebody else take care of your son."

In another case, a veteran approached McKinney after a hunt and asked if he knew the significance of the number 22 — a reference to the estimated number of veterans who die by suicide daily in the U.S.

"He said, 'I had every intention of taking my life today,'" McKinney recalls. "'But after hunting with y'all the last three days, I've had the most fun of my life. I've got a renewed vision and hope. I'm going to go home and live.'"

The ministry has operated almost entirely on the partners' own resources, McKinney says, though becoming a registered 501(c)(3) in 2025 opened the door for others to help. Donors have provide funding for power line to the camp and a liming and stocking project for the lake. A wheelchair-accessible cabin is under construction, and the group hopes to add a dock so hunters and anglers with mobility challenges can reach the water safely.

Through it all, McKinney returns to the phrase he and his partners have built the ministry around, one written into their wills to keep the land out of private hands for good.

"It's not ours," he says. "It's just our turn."

To learn more, visit www.bucklakeoutdoors.com. If you’d like to be involved, send an email to bucklakeoutdoorstn@gmail.com.