When the first dead bull turned up at the end of July, it didn’t raise an alarm at the Silvies Valley Ranch.
Cattle
sometimes die suddenly on the ranch’s 140,000 acres in Harney County —
struck by disease or felled by a broken leg and unable to find a way out
of the rugged, forested terrain.
But
by the time ranch hands discovered four more dead bulls within 24
hours, they knew they were likely dealing with deliberate, premeditated
killings.
They’re
still baffled by the circumstances. There were no wounds. No signs of a
struggle. And the bulls’ genitals and tongues had been carefully
removed.
The
killing and mutilation of the 4 and 5-year-old Hereford bulls in the
prime of their productive lives has since spurred a multi-agency
investigation in eastern Oregon, but detectives have turned up no leads
and haven’t yet even settled on a cause of death.
“How
somebody put these bulls on the ground at what would be arguably a
fairly close range — and to do it in a way that didn’t leave any signs,
no trace evidence, no footprints, no struggle marks from the animal, no
broken limbs — I have no idea,” said Colby Marshall, vice president of
the Silvies Valley Ranch.
The
mystery deepens because there’s no obvious reason someone would want
those animal parts. They aren’t prime targets for black market sales,
authorities said.
The
deaths are eerily similar to a rash of livestock killings and
mutilations across the West in the 1970s, when hundreds of cows and
bulls turned up dead, also of seemingly unknown causes and with their
genitals and tongues missing.
Back
then, theories ran the gamut from a government conspiracy and UFOs to
natural deaths and scavengers. Today, the circumstances at Silvies
Valley Ranch point to humans as the probable culprits because of the
precise cuts on the bulls.
Anything
else for now is speculation, including ideas of what might have killed a
bull without leaving marks. Marshall said he wonders if the killer used
poison darts.
“We think that these are very sick and dangerous individuals and they need to answer for this horrible crime,” he said.
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