JOHN DAY — A mutilated bull mysteriously turned up dead at a ranch in Bear Valley last month with surgically removed body parts.

According to a Feb. 28 entry of the Oregon State Police log, a rancher called a John Day Wildlife Trooper to report a bull had been killed and mutilated on his ranch with its testicles, scrotum, tongue and lips precisely removed.

Mat Carter, a rancher from the Crown Cattle Company, said he reported the mutilation to the state’s wildlife trooper after discovering the dead bull roughly a quarter to half a mile from his house.

The cause of death is unknown.

When Carter found the bull, it had likely been dead a few days and was already decomposing. The 24-hour window during which an autopsy could have been performed on the body had passed.

According to Carter, there were no signs of vultures, coyotes or other scavengers around the bull.

“There’s no tracks, there’s no signs, there’s no nothing,” Carter said.

He said it is hard to imagine anyone would have come on to his property, killed a bull, drained its blood, and then cleanly cut out specific body parts.

According to Carter, with no evidence or leads to follow up on for law enforcement, the incident remains a mystery.

And this was not the first cow mutilation on his ranch, Carter said.

Several years ago, Carter said he was almost sure one of his cows had been mutilated. However, he said, there was no way to say with certainty because he did not get to it quickly enough before flies and other scavengers made it impossible to determine what happened.

He said a similar situation occurred in August, which is why he tries to inspect cattle deaths a little more closely when they occur.

Indeed, Carter’s situation is not unique. According to FBI records, since the 1970s, thousands of killings and mutilations of cattle have happened across the U.S. Last year Wheeler County had five cases while Harney County had four in four years, with the previous two occurring in May and June.

The cases, the data reports, are similar to Carter’s case.

A cow or bull is found dead in a remote area with no signs of how someone might have made it onto a property undetected. There are no footprints, tire tracks or fingerprints. There is very little — if any — spilled blood and no visible puncture wounds, bullets or strangulation marks.

The bizarre nature of the mutilation and lack of evidence makes it all the more baffling and frustrating for Carter.

Meanwhile, theories abound about who is behind the cow mutilations, be it aliens, demons or cults.

However, in the thousands of cases since the 1970s, no one has ever been caught.

For his part, Carter said he does not try to speculate on it, nor does he believe in UFOs or any other kind of strange phenomenon.

“It’s really odd, Carter said. “There’s no logical explanation.”