Origional Copy: https://www.hjnews.com/news/to-this-day-cattle-mutilations-of-1970s-shrouded-in-mystery/article_d1de7591-a20d-536e-a1f2-5be217b65993.html

The unmarked airplane had just landed at the Logan-Cache Airport when a man wearing shiny, tin foil-like coveralls rushed up to the aircraft and loaded a suitcase into the plane.

Immediately after picking up its cargo, the fixed-wing craft started moving again, preparing to take off. In the pilot?s way, however, was a Cache County Sheriff?s Deputy in his patrol car, driving down the runway in an attempt to stop the plane from leaving the ground.

It was 1976, and a cadre of sheriff?s deputies led by former Sheriff Darius Carter had been staking out the airport in an attempt to figure out what had been happening every time multiple unmarked helicopters and an airplane entered the valley, leaving reports of mutilated cattle in their wake.


News of cattle mutilations was common in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Farmers in communities throughout the United States seemed to have their own stories about finding their cows either dead or severely maimed with little explanation. Theories ranged from alien abductions to what many, including Carter, believe were tests by the U.S. Government on the levels of radiation in animals.

Cache County was more or less at the forefront of the issue in 1976 when Carter and his boys famously made their stand, culminating in the episode at the airport.

BThere certainly was something to it but I sure don?t know exactly what,C Carter, the sheriff from 1970 to 78, said. BI?m guessing it had something to do with the government, definitely, and they were trying to find out if those cows had radiation built up.C

Farmers were getting extremely frustrated about what was happening to their cattle, and for a time, Carter and other Cache officials had the support of the Utah State Veterinarian that the mutilated animals were the handiwork of humans.

But at some point, that support was lost. All of a sudden, Carter remembers, the State Vet and everyone else except his office, the Cache County Attorney?s Office and the farmers changed their story.

BThey were emphatic that it was slices and mutilations and then, all of a sudden out of the clear blue sky, (they said) it was animals and predators (killing the cows,)C Carter said. BNobody else would stand up; they all changed their minds and went to the other side.C

The new official word from the State Vet and anyone else with a say was that the cows were being killed by coyotes and picked on by magpies.


Carter and his boys didn?t buy it.

BI?ve cut out a lot of meat in my day, just cut with a knife and then to think that this was a magpie and a coyote … A coyote rips, it doesn?t slice, and a magpie picks,C Carter said. BYou could see on the sides there were slices, knife slices.C

Moreover, Carter remembered from his previous days as an X-ray technician that radiation accumulates in the eyes and sex organs of animals. In most cases of the mutilated cattle, Carter said, the animals were missing their eyes and sex organs.

BI don?t know how anybody could have ever determined that to be a predator or a magpie, but they all of a sudden changed their mind and said that?s what it was,C Carter said.

Recognizing that the cattle mutilations in his county were typically preceded by helicopter sightings the night before, and having heard similar reports from the sheriff?s office in Rich County, Cache deputies staked out the airport one night.

In a 2001 interview with the National Institute for Discovery Science, a former Cache County Sheriff?s deputy, identified as BWitness 1,C described the confrontation at the airport.

There, after the man in the shiny coveralls loaded the suitcase into the plane, Witness 1 confronted another man who had just jumped out of the pilot side of one of the Huey helicopters.

BI asked to see some identification,C Witness 1 said, according to a transcript of the NIDS interview. BHe said, >I have none.? … I looked at the helicopters and they were dark, either dark, dark green or black. No identifying markings at all. This man had no … was in military fatigues with no … identification, no insignia of rank or unit. He didn?t even have a helmet. So I reached out and touched him on … you know, just below, on the chest and ran my fingers down the button line to feel for dog tags. There weren?t any dog tags.C


At that time, Witness 1 said, two other helicopters in the air began making what Witness 1 believed to be a beginning gun pass.

BI can?t prove this, but I had a … I knew that if I attempted to physically arrest that man, I think they?d a killed us both right there, right on the spot with the same mental attitude that the pilot had that ran … my patrol car off a runway.C

Realizing he didn?t have any evidence to arrest the man, the deputy tried to do some Bquick thinking.C

BI told the man that I was talking to exactly what happened. I told him about the mutilations in Rich County, told him he?d been spotted there, told him about the mutilations here, told him he?d been spotted here, told him we had riders out and in all three counties with high-powered rifles and that sooner or later we would get a shot at his helicopter and we intend to bring you down, sir, if this mutilation … action does not stop,C Witness 1 said. BHe looked at me and smiled a little bit. And then he said, >May I go?? And I had nothing to hold him on and like I say, you know, I wasn?t holding the high card in that deal. So I said, >Yeah.?C

The man got back into his helicopter, took off, and flew off to the west.

After that encounter, at least for the next five or six years, the cattle mutilations in the region stopped.

BIf we?d have had probable cause to hold the guy, we probably could have stopped him,C Sheriff Carter said, remembered the 1976 incident.

Later in 1976, apparently inspired by how Cache County handled the situation, one of Carter?s National Sheriff?s Association colleagues in Texas started organizing armed patrols and closely monitoring the unmarked helicopters that were seen in his region. Soon after, mutilations there also ceased.


It?s now been 32 years since the 1976 encounter at the airport, and although Carter said he believes that radiation experiments were behind the entire controversy, he said he?ll probably never know for sure.

BIt was just a great big government cover-up is what it was,C he said.

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