© Silvies Valley Ranch/David Zaitz PhotographySilvies Valley Ranch is a 140,000-acre property in Oregon’s largest county, where cattle outnumber people 14-to-1.
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.
Comment: Details of some of the attacks reported from the country over the past 4 years: