[1][2] Burnett was educated at a private academy in St. Louis, Missouri and the Virginia Military Institute.
[1][2] Burnett worked as a cowhand and later wagon boss at the Big Pasture in southwestern Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, he learned to speak the Comanche language and became friends in Chief Quanah Parker.
[1] In 1912, Burnett inherited ranching interests in Wichita County, Texas from his later maternal grandfather, Martin B. Lloyd.
He established the Triangle Ranch, where he raised cattle and drilled newfound oil.
During the Great Depression in the 1930s, he donated school lunches to schoolchildren in Wichita Falls and assisted impoverished cowboys.