Interesting comments... as to the gunshot question, the wave of '75 began with around six cases over toward Saguache Park, Cochetopa Pass & Gunnison and then moved into the SLV.
From my book The Mysterious Valley pages 135-136
Initial Reports - August, 1975
The initial unexplained livestock deaths of the SLV flap period of 1975 through 1978, appears to have begun in northwestern Saguache County, at the foot of Cochetopa Pass, at the western edge of Saguache Park. There had been no publicized reports since 1970 in the SLV, and these early unpublicized reports in August 1975 occurred during a two-week period when several others were filed from over the Continental Divide in Gunnison County.
Several Saguache and Gunnison County ranchers reported mutilations during the first week of August and investigating Saguache County deputy, Gene Gray, was convinced there was "something unnatural" about the condition of the cows and steers reported as "mutilated." He took photographs and interviewed them but no one had noticed anything else unusual. There was talk of unknown helicopters sighted but, initially, they weren't directly tied to the Cochetopa outbreak. Gray doesn't recall the exact dates of those initial reports but he remembers they were during the first week of August.
To my knowledge, SLV residents were never informed about these initial reports from the local press, although mutilation and mystery helicopter reports may have leaked out from the Gunnison and the Front Range areas through regional media. Here are some of those incident that never made the papers:
The Loman family has a secluded ranch just west of the town of La Garita, on the western side of the north-central portion of the SLV. The night of August 7, he remembered hearing his dogs barking around 3:00 a.m. The following morning he went out early to feed his horses and noticed his daughter's palomino show horse lying in the pasture several hundred yards from the house. The rear end appeared to have been "burned-off," the horse's lips and eyes had been removed and a thick, black, tar-like substance ringed the upper body incision areas.
Photographs of the horse, 20 years later, appear to show a horse dead for many days, although Loman had seen it alive the night before. Gray investigated and took photographs that morning. "I knew after that one, that something really weird was going on," Gray recalls. "There's just no way that animal should have looked like that."
The following week, helicopters were spotted and reported near "mutilation" sites in Gunnison County. A rancher saw an unmarked helicopter hovering over a hog in Gunnison County, that he "chased off." A hog allegedly turned up missing from a neighboring ranch. On August 21, 1975, Tom Adams (who happened to be visiting the San Luis Valley with research associate, Gary Massey) wrote of the following experience:
"Leaving the (Gunnison County) sheriff's office after discussing mutilation investigations with Deputy David Ellis, Project Stigma investigators Tom Adams and Gary Massey drove south toward
Saguache County [Not knowing that between six or seven cases had been reported two weeks before on this exact stretch of] State Highway 114. Nearing the county line, they observed
a small helicopter--of the Hughes 'Cayuse' type--flying west-southwest across the highway toward the Powderhorn--Los Pinosarea, where a cattle mutilation had occurred earlier in the week.
The helicopter was filmed on Super-8 movie film as it passed out of sight over a ridge. The distance was too great to discern details."
I couldn't help but wonder if rumors of "mutilations" in neighboring counties contributed to perceptions of ensuing SLV activity. The Saguache Crescent editors earlier assertion rang in my ears, "We only write about good news."
With much fanfare, during the last week of August 1975, all hell appeared to have broken loose in the valley. Or so the headlines read. The Friday, August 29, 1975 Courier screamed "Five More (SLV) Cattle Are Mutilated." I could find no reference to earlier cases but this much is known: two cows were discovered "mutilated" in the mountains west of Antonito, and an additional three animals were discovered near Fox Creek. All five animals were discovered on August 26, 1975.
A bull belonging to Max Brady from Manassa, had been shot and the tail and an ear had been removed. Another bull owned by rancher Farron Layton had been shot and the tongue reportedly removed with a "sharp instrument." The third animal "had been shot but was not mutilated." According to the Courier, "vandals" were blamed. For me, this was the first instance of a "mutilation" involving a a firearm!
The fourth and fifth were discovered west of La Jara. A steer, owned by Jim Braiden was "missing the tail, tongue, penis, and right ear," and the animal had reportedly been drained of blood before being "mutilated with a sharp instrument." These first reports during August were confined to the western side of the valley. I noted the words "sharp instrument" constantly appearing in Miles Porter's mutiulation articles of 1975. Several days later, a calf was reported "mutilated" to Conejos County officials. They concluded that it occurred Tuesday night, September 2. A white-faced 400 lb. calf owned by Ed Shawcroft was found missing it's "tongue, ear, genitals and tail."To the east, in Costilla County, Deputy John Lobato and Sheriff Sandoval both told Miles Porter IV of seeing helicopters flying in the area where a "mutilated" cow was later found. Dr. Joseph Vigil reported a UAD on his ranch south of San Luis on September 3.
Helicopters were seen by Costilla County officers the next thee nights. Sandoval said that early Thursday morning he saw what he believed to be a "helicopter with a red light fly south into New Mexico."
On September 5, rancher John Catalano reported to the Alamosa County Sheriff, the discovery of a dead calf on his ranch south of Alamosa. News sleuth Miles Porter was dispatched to the scene. To his untrained eye, "The black heifer calf had definitely been cut in the removal of its left ear, and some internal sexual organs. The calf had been dead about two weeks." He couldn't have surmised that the rotting animal "had definitely been cut," with no veterinarian pathology training, two-weeks after the animal's death.
Later that same Friday, Ted Carpenter, foreman of the Medano Ranch, found a yearling steer laying on its left side, missing its downside ear and tongue and a suspicious heel print was found near the carcass. The first thing I check is if any downside organs have been removed. Unlike many of reports from the fall of 1975 that noted only upside organs being removed, this report differed. These were the first known reports in Alamosa County since the 1968 "mutilations" of two steers on the Zapata Ranch.
Saturday, September 6, unknown helicopters were reported near three cases in Park County, 45 miles north of the SLV.
page 108
[excerpt from an interview w/ Costilla County rancher Emilio Lobato, Jr. about the 1975 mute wave:]
Lobato lost an incredible 49 head in two weeks. "Seventeen we found dead at the ranch, 10 were mutilated and at that time we already had people there 24 hours a day, and all they (the perpetrators) were doing was shooting them (cows). Prior to that time, they had already taken the rest. The reason why we found out they were taking them somewhere else because they'd call the sheriff, Sandoval, and they told him that they had found some cows over at the Rio Grande that were 'mutilated.' They called in the Brand Inspector and they found that they had my brand on them." (The Rio Grande River is over 30 miles west of his Chama Canyon ranch.)
"So who do you feel is doing the 'mutilations?'"
"I feel that the first 'mutilation,' I can't give you an explanation for it, because it wasn't the same people. But I think that [influential rancher John] Taylor had a lot of push with the government.
1st: The SLV is arguably the most pristine environment in the lower 48 states. Because of its altitude (avg 7300 above sea-level) and isolation there is no measurable pollution to speak of, so wouldn't these cattle make for perfect control samples to establish baseline data against which other cattle sampling from other regions could be measured? Good question about dairy cattle not usually being targeted. There have been cases of dairy cows found mutilated, but the one fact that I find most intriguing is that (to my knowledge) there has never been a brahma cow, bull or steer mutilation case. I guess they may be considered truly as "sacred cows" just as they are in India where not a single case of cattle mutilation has ever been reported (again, to my knowledge).