I have a story you might be interested in. It’s been a couple years now since it’s happened but I can remember it pretty well. My family is farmers and ranchers.

One Fall we started moving cattle closer to home for the winter. We moved the heifer pasture and noticed we were short a few bulls but weren’t too worried. There’s a creek in the pasture and they were probably holed up in some brush. A couple days later, dad was out in a field and came across one of the missing bulls, dead in the middle of the field. Some coyotes and eagles had been eating on it and couldn’t tell much but thought it was odd that he was out there dead when there was no sign of how he got out there and he had been healthy just a couple days earlier.

Later that day dad got curious and went looking for the last missing bull. He found it in the pasture, dead in a little flat spot. This one had not been eaten on. Nothing had touched it at all which was an odd sign. When dad found it there were no signs of how he had died. But there were some mutilations. The bull was missing his sheath, testicles, and anus. All of the missing parts had been what looked like surgically cut and removed in perfectly round circles.

At this point dad calls a vet in to do some looking, and as soon as she saw it she said “I can’t help you” and left. So since bulls were expensive and it wasn’t a natural death and we didn’t want this to happen again dad called the sheriff to come out and take a look. At this time I get off the bus from school and get to help take the sheriff’s deputy out to look at the bull and see it for the first time. I think I was about 6th grade at the time, and I made sure my gopher gun had a full clip when we headed out. For perspective the sheriff’s deputy set some weight lifting records in our school, and we were friends from him giving me rides to gun club from time to time, so I knew how he usually acted. Dad had me ride in with him to help for rocks and get there in the dark. He had every single light turned on and was using his hand flashlight to scan the creek and rows of brushy trees all around us. He was very nervous and was always on edge, which made me very uneasy, especially considering the surroundings. It was very quiet that night. I know a 17HMR wouldn’t do much against a bad guy but it sure would be something and I tried not to stray too far from it. The deputy took some pictures and we really tried to find a bullet hole or cut throat or dirt in the esophagus to tell what the cause of death was. We even rolled the bull over and still couldn’t find anything.

To this day I don’t know how those bulls died, but I know it wasn’t a natural death. We still have the pasture and I still think about it every time I ride through there, and I’m almost always packing some heat. From a little bit of research I’ve done and talking with a couple folks the possibilities I’ve come to are cult activity, witchcraft, aliens, or really messed up kids who somehow killed 2 one ton bulls. My best guess is the cult option, but good ole North Dakota isn’t exactly a hot spot for that kinda stuff. On YouTube there was an episode of some show called 'Cattle Mutilations: Unexplained Documentary' but it appears to be blocked now. That gave a good run down of a bit of history about stuff like this happening all over the U.S. CJ

NOTE: it has been noted before that scavengers will usually stay away from mutilated cattle. You don't read or hear many reports of cattle mutilations in North Dakota. Lon