Dead deer mystery
Mule Deer
Yesterday my friend was hunting arrowheads on his ranch in N. CO just south of the WY border when he came upon a freshly dead muley buck and doe. They were lying about 30 feet apart and not yet stiff and cold. He looked them all over and could find no evidence of injury. No sign of any struggle. Both were very healthy looking. The doe was fat, and the 2.5 year old buck looked normal for a post-rut buck.
He called me because he wanted to salvage the meat, and I told him to call CPW immediately. CPW responded and after looking at the carcasses inside and out, have no answer. No bullet holes, no sign of trauma. The doe's final poop had a little blood in it, which is the only clue. They said by the healthy condition it wasn't CWD, but took lymph nodes and meat samples anyway.
Even so, for two to die simultaneously in the same spot from CWD or any other disease is virtually impossible odds. There hasn't been any lightning in the area for a couple months. Their conclusion (with a shrug) is that it is a mystery. His ranch is pretty remote, at the end of a long gravel road, and the deer were about 1/4 mile from anything, in a random yucca-grass pasture.
Anyone ever seen this before? (No, not a spaceship or aliens - I'll preempt that inevitable post....)
Did they check the arteries for peas?
Lightning ? Any recent storms
Without carefully skinning them out to look for small caliber holes it's tough to tell.
The CPW biologist really studied them thoroughly, did a neceopsy. This is an open-country foothills ranch in the middle of nowhere where someone would really have to expend some effort to reach, and then find the deer in the dark, on foot, then shoot them and leave them lay. And get in and out without triggering a security camera on the remote gravel road coming in. Lots easier places to poach very visible deer lose to roads in this part of the county.
Timex, that would make sense except we're in a winter drought and havent had any lightning for a couple months. There weren't even any clouds for a week prior to this.
Guessing they happen to eat something that did them in.
If they run the toxicology maybe it will yield something.
I do think I would want to see the toxicology reports before I ate anything.
But then, maybe they heard that Lou was coming for them and they died of sheer terror?
Any Japanese Yew shrubs in the area? Toxic to elk and pronghorn and maybe deer also.
I couldn’t remember that it was Japanese yew. I remember seeing an article about that several years ago. Paul came through. I was scratching my head.
Have no idea if that’s a possibility in that area.
My other theory is that those deer had some history with Hillary.
Single string, I immediately thought poaching until I thought about it. They died in the night, over a couple rises, out in remote open yucca foothill country four miles from a public road, in an area with low deer density, where they didn't pass any cameras on the only long gravel road in, after passing many miles of great poaching places where they can spotlight from the road and take off if headlights appear. It doesn't make sense. I'll report back after he gets the tox report.
In 2004 over 300 elk in Wy died from eating lichens they had no immunity for. They were elk that apparently had never been in that habitat before and it did them in. This may be something similar. Since I am too simple to attach a link you can google it. ...Mike
I was thinking the same thing Muleysareking. I remember that happening In Wyoming. Think something similar happened in NM.
Lime disease.
Too many gin and tonics at the annual Christmas party.
Blood in stool sounds like some kind of poisoning to me.
Some sort of poisoning, buck hanging with the doe until she dies, then he croaks too. Make as much sense as any other theory.
Could the buck have been chasing the doe for a long time and wore themselves out?
A real Romeo and Doeliet situation
Blue green algae?? NM had a hundred die pretty close together
After further thought, probably not the right time of year.
No other ideas.
Had a few cows chewing on a old car battery they found in a old dump ground 30 years ago that died of lead poisoning. Took forever to find where they had found it as we had never dumped anything in the pasture! Maybe something like that?
JL x2, chased and chased, caught, had their thing and then both to worn out and expired.
Agree with poison theory - Had to of ingested something that poisoned them.
Classic murdeer suicide case
Marty. Did you find them dead? I have had some get into lead from old batteries. I had some just die, some go blind and then they just walk/run circles until they die from exhaustion. It's horrible to see.
Can deer get nitrogen poisoning like cattle can in drought conditions? Not sure if this can happen in winter months though.
I had a similar situation here in MO but it was just a doe. I gutted her to see if there were any internal issues and all organs looked fine and there were no small caliber bullet holes. Equally as odd is that I came back the next week and the whole deer was gone - like it had been airlifted out. Ground not disturbed and no hair or anything on the ground or brush. This was on private land almost dead center of 160 heavily wooded acres. Very odd. Only thing I could figure was some kind of poison caused the death but I never could figure out what came and removed her from the scene - I wondered if a mountain lion would do that??? That’s the only thing I could come up with.
Alien abduction then they dumped the carcasses
Hey Dirty Mike - the peas in arteries theory makes absolutely no sense. Mule deer will not eat peas at a bait. !!! - whatthefoc
IDK, I read it on the Bowsite. Must be true.
Sounds like lightning despite no storm a necropsy can tell (us Vets are trained to detect lightning for livestock insurance claims)
4nolz, lightning would make the most sense except I'm not aware of lightning that can arise from clear blue sky and clear sky at night.
The CPW folks only looked at the entrails, the inside of the body cavity, and an exam of the outside to look for bullet holes or puncture wounds (this is lion country), and found none.
10 years ago we found two whitetail bucks dead about 10 yards apart. Same scenario, no wounds any where. Darndest thing, called in the DNR officer and he took pictures but had no explanation.
Some time ago a friend from works son came across a dead deer no signs of shot or anything... he did not notice a hot line under deer and tried rolling it over... my friend was a volunteer fireman first on the scene.
Thanks, Charlie. Interesting to learn someone else discovered something similar.
Last spring a friend had 3 horses die in 24 hours. This is on a ranch where horses and cattle have been raised for 50+ years with no issues ever. It was studied by a vet and noxious weed expert. No cause was ever found.
Damn, Scentman…. That’s horrible.
Yep, found them dead and a vet found part of the battery in their stomach contents.
Could be EHD, we've been hit hard with it here in NY. Once bitten by the midge, the deer is dead within 3-10 days. At least the biologist took samples for testing.
I have a neighbor who had first hand experience with the never explained cattle mutilations that occurred in Colorado back in the mid-70s. He said the cow's carcasses were completely drained of blood, and organs were removed with surgical-like precision. No tracks of humans or predators were found around the mutilation sites. Perhaps the strangest thing was the coyotes and other scavengers wouldn't touch the mutilated carcasses.
Things that make you go "hmmm......?"
Matt
In this case, I'm guessing it was a poisoning. Perhaps someone dumped some used antifreeze into the deer's water source. I've read that only a few tablespoons will kill a deer sized animal.
Matt
Regardless of cause for both to die within feet of each other is strange even lead battery and antifreeze isn't instant they would likely die at different times and apart
If both deer were poisoned at the same time, and the doe was hot when she died first, it's plausible that the buck stuck around until he died too. The rut was still on when this happened, after all. I'm still seeing rutting activity around my place.
Matt
No EHD here. Matt, that's my theory too. The water source is a spring that comes out of the ground way back in the foothills on their property and flows downstream through a narrow canyon. There are only a couple neighboring ranches within many miles, and they are very responsible stewards. This is a super remote part of CO right on the WY border. No chance of antifreeeze contamination. We now think they may have found something toxic in some old dump on one of the other big ranches around, made their way to John's place, the doe died first with the buck tending her. She had a bloody stool when she expired. The buck had no sign of anything wrong.
The rancher where I deer hunt on the plains had a mutilated bull on his place back then with the same M.O. you describe, when the mutilations were taking place out there. Never did solve that riddle either.
Fairly fast acting poison sounds the likely culprit. Are there any small mining claims from years ago in the area. Old stored explosives' leach or cyanide leach? Homestead, trapper's, or miners dump site?
Strange you mention the cattle mutilations from the '70's. I was living in Canmore Alberta then and we had a spate of it. There was a FSR that ran through some remote country and had cattle grazing tenures along it. There were several cases of the mutilations, certain parts gone and some organs, all removed with some expert precision. I think it was 1977. I used to drive that road fairly regularly for hunting and fishing, in a very distinct old GMC panel van. The investigation must have been on going for some time, because I got a call from the RCMP in the early '80's, after I'd moved to BC. They tracked me down and asked a few questions about me being in the area during that time. Someone (likely a rancher) must have recorded my plate number.
Still a mystery as far as I know and common thought was some type of cult. All the cattle found were close to the road.
Lightning does not require clouds to generate. Not sure the physics behind it but two fast merging temperature fronts colliding will generate it anywhere. My brother was struck (nearly killed him) many years ago along the front range with out a single cloud in the sky..... no lie!! Kip
The two deer probably corner crossed and died from the stress of being charged with trespass.
I was once mountain biking on an old logging road. Saw an elk in front of me so I stopped, it lay down rolled around and appeared to be wallowing. Was a cow though, which I thought a little odd. It rolled around, raised and lowered its head, then finally laid still. And didn't move. I waited. Finally I crept closer and it was laid flat on its side, no mud or any other reason to have been "wallowing". I tossed a stick, then a rock, then a bigger stick. Then I poked it. Dead. I looked all around, rolled it over, no sign of any wound or injury. Due to fear of some sort of poison as well as fear of getting in trouble for it, I didn't salvage the backstraps or anything. Never knew what had caused it to die. It was definitely a young cow maybe 1.5+ years old, looked healthy and certainly hadn't died of old age.
We have found at least 2 Antelope dead over the years on a ranch I hunt on and never saw any sign of any injury on them and they were fresh. Never did check back on them to see if anything ate them.
Seems like the suspicious conditions would have warranted having the lab test for cause of death, in case there's something bigger going on that they need to address sooner rather than later.
Grey ghost- those cattle mutilation were easily explained when a few military guys started talking decades later. Apparently, NM and CO were host to underground nuclear charges set by the gov't in some of the earliest attempts at fracking. They had an elite group of guys in special helicopters that were engineered for quiet operations similar to what the SEALS use. Their objective was to take "samples" periodically from those fracking areas to test for radiation. Those samples were organs from readily available domestic livestock living off the very land that was contaminated. Sad thing is, the ranchers who lost all those livestock were never compensated and many went to their graves thinking aliens did it.
Marvin, we don't know what sort of tests they are doing. The CO took the heads for testing. My friend hasn't heard anything back.
Thorton, would that explain the same occurrences in central Alberta in the later seventies?
Do you have any links to that theory? I'm curious now that it's been brought up.
I, too, would enjoy reading any links you have Thorton. If it truly was some sort of special military operation, they did one helluva job covering up their tracks. How did they explain the fact that scavengers would not touch the freshly mutilated carcasses? And why were the carcasses and mutilation sites completely void of blood?
Matt
Sounds like a 2am talk show.
“ And why were the carcasses and mutilation sites completely void of blood?”
If the “Aliens” could figure it out, I suspect our SF guys could do as well… maybe just bleed them dry as sample collection…. and those guys ARE paid to be damned good at covering their tracks.
I don’t know about the scavengers other than that not all carcasses get scavenged.
I have always been an opened minded person, some say I am gullible at times... friend once told me his brother shot at a fast running doe and dropped her in her tracks... trouble is he never hit her, no entry or exit wound. They did their own butchering and found her heart basically blew up. Is that possible?
"I don’t know about the scavengers other than that not all carcasses get scavenged."
I've never seen a fresh carcass not get devoured in a matter of a few days, or even hours, in my neck of the woods. And I live in one of the counties that was hit hardest with the mutilations. The fact that *none* of the mutilated carcasses were scavenged is just bizarre to me. I felt like I was listening to an episode of the Twilight Zone when my neighbor was telling me the stories.
Matt
Sorry, but sitO has the best and most likely answer. It is even funnier because I know his knee jerk reaction would have been to blame it on baiting in Kansas. :)
Local knowledge beats the view from here!
Does seem like things like coyotes were a lot more thinned out 30-40 years ago than now…. “But ya gotta know the territory….”
Although I’m pretty sure I could keep coyotes off of a carcass almost indefinitely just by setting a few traps around it. ;)
Maybe there was some scent left behind?
Had a rancher buddy lose some cows to car batteries that were dumped in his pasture. Cows licked them and it killed them. Could be something like that.
The bovine corpses stunned the ranchers who found them. The animals’ ears, eyes, udders, anuses, sex organs and tongues had routinely been removed, seemingly with a sharp, clean instrument. Their carcasses had been drained of blood. No tracks or footprints were found in the immediate vicinity—nor were any of the usual opportunistic scavengers.
Between April and October of 1975, nearly 200 cases of cattle mutilation were reported in the state of Colorado alone. Far from being mere tabloid fodder, it had become a nationally recognized issue: That year, the Colorado Associated Press voted it the state’s number one story. Colorado’s then-senator Floyd Haskell asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to get involved.
Throughout the 1970s, cases had continued to mount throughout the American heartland. And in 1979—after thousands of reported cattle mutilations, causing millions of dollars of livestock losses—the FBI finally opened an investigation into a series of cases that had reportedly taken place on New Mexico’s Indian lands. Pressure came, in part, from a heated public symposium on the subject that had been convened by that state’s science-minded U.S. senator, Harrison Schmitt, who had a Ph.D in geology from Harvard and had walked on the moon as an Apollo 17 astronaut.
Ultimately, the FBI’s inquiry poured cold water on the idea that something strange was afoot. On January 15, 1980, the Bureau closed the investigation, putting out a statement saying that, “none of the reported cases has involved what appear to be mutilations by other than common predators.”
I wish I had the link. It was an informative channel that was actually talking about a guy who made it his life's work to prove alien's were at Roswell. The show did a side story on the explanation for the animal mutilations as it all tied in with the original story. The government was testing the livestock for radiation. They purposely put weird lights on the choppers and reduced the engine noise to throw off people who might see them. The operations were often done at night.
Paul,
My neighbor who had several cows mutilated said the FBI's conclusion was complete nonsense. He's been a rancher his entire life and has seen plenty of predator kills. His cows were not killed by predators. He's a crotchety old boy, but he's as honest as the day is long, so I believe him. He's not buying the military special ops theory, either.
Matt
Common theory in Alberta at the time was something cultish. I don't recall details of lack of blood or predation. And thinking back I was questioned at the time and several years later, so the file must have had some "cold case" attention.
The FBI's track record of honesty, transparency and accuracy hasn't been so hot after coming under investigative scrutiny. Why would anyone believe their professed conclusions about something so mysterious as mutilations, if they couldnt even get the simple Carter Page deal right?
Thanks for that bit of wisdom Jaquomo. Now I won't have to respond and get on some list.
Terry
Lou, I thought the FBI were the last of the non political Boy Scouts. But do a little digging and you learn they are just another greasy, political wing of the Govt. The leadership is more concerned with their power and protecting their political wing. Most in senior leadership are just politicians. It started well before 9/11. But got much worse after due to the heat they got for missing the signs.
When agents learned that they would get promoted for making busts. by infiltrating and pushing groups into acting on plots.
The FBI provides the funding and resources to act. They went from infiltrating and observing, to actually promoting and pushing groups into acting so they would be seen as breaking up these groups. Perfect example is the Michigan governor “kidnapping” most of that group were FBI agents the rest had no funding or resources until the FBI gave them that. and actually pushed them into acting. The “Ring leader” was a homeless guy with zero resources and reduced mental capacity.
The FBI is as dirty and corrupt as the rest of the 3 letter agencies.
Sorry for the rant. And derailing the thread. Couldn’t help myself:^))).
Back to happy peaceful thoughts. It’s Christmas time
