The bloodless calf (10 March 1997)
NIDS said an 84-pound calf, tagged by the ranch manager, was found 45 minutes later in daylight with its body cavity empty and no blood on the animal or the ground.
1997 CE · 40.26, -109.89 · status: account
The account
Colm Kelleher described it as the opening incident of the NIDS study, with a vet and staff on site within hours. He also described large animals with glowing eyes that seemed unharmed by bullets, orbs that cameras failed to record, and equipment found with its wiring torn apart.
The sceptical view
The account comes from the investigators themselves, with no independent necropsy published. Ordinary predators and scavengers are the usual explanation for 'mutilations', and a former BAASS team member later said of a similar case that it was probably just coyotes.
The researched reading
A striking claim whose strength depends entirely on a timeline reported by the investigators themselves. Ordinary predation explains most mutilations, and nothing was checked independently.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A known natural phenomenon | 38% | Field studies of ‘mutilations’ find predators, scavengers and bloating produce smooth-edged wounds, missing soft tissue and little visible blood, since blood pools and clots after death. A carcass opened by coyotes and birds fits most features. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 14% | The investigators were primed to see the ranch as anomalous; time estimates and the impression of ‘no blood’ are the kind of details memory reshapes. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 12% | If the 45-minute daylight timeline is accurate, scavenging that fast and that clean would be hard to explain, which leaves a real if modest share open. |
| Undetermined | 11% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Something known, misidentified | 10% | If the tag or timeline was mistaken, an animal that died earlier could have been taken for the calf seen 45 minutes before. |
| Secret human technology | 8% | Some writers link mutilations to covert sampling programmes, but there is no evidence of such activity here. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | The account comes only from NIDS, with no independent necropsy; human interference with the carcass, or an embellished report, cannot be excluded. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 2% | No unusual natural process is suggested by the evidence. |
Official position: No official investigation; the case is known only from NIDS researchers Colm Kelleher and George Knapp.