Nearly 200 cows disappeared. The case remains cold

OLATHE, Colorado – The first report was filed just before Thanksgiving. Twenty-nine cows and calves, a rancher told a state agriculture official, hadn’t come home.

One week later, three more reports from three other owners: 46, 38 and 31 head of cattle, all gone. Three days after that, rancher Kelly Burch also alerted authorities. She had counted her herd and come up 43 animals short.

“I have this cow, but not this calf. Or I have this calf, but not this cow,” said Burch, whose family has run cattle on the same swath of public land for 106 years. “Something’s not adding up here.”

All 187 missing bovines had spent the warmer months grazing thousands of acres on the high Uncompahgre Plateau, rugged country where some animals always fall victim to predators, illness or weather. But never this many and not without leaving lots of carcasses behind. Also unusual: The vast majority were calves.

Ranchers and local authorities suspected they might have a modern-day case of cattle rustling on their hands.

The disappearances in the fall set off an unprecedented state investigation spurred by Colorado’s governor and involving sheriffs, a multiagency task force, search planes, a $10,000 reward and a bull rider turned cowboy who has scouted the area on horseback. The effort cast a spotlight on an enduring way of life in Colorado’s more conservative Western Slope, where cattle bulk up in wild forests and canyonlands before eventually being sold to feed Americans’ appetites for burgers and steaks.

Months later, with much of the possible crime scene still blanketed in snow, the case remains mostly cold.

Lost livestock isn’t unheard of in this agricultural area famed for its sweet corn. But “nothing, nothing of this magnitude at all,” said Chuck Searcy, an administrative sergeant for the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office who is leading the investigation.

Searcy spent the winter fielding tips about suspicious characters and even theories about alien abduction. He has ruled out insurance fraud. He is convinced it’s at least partially a theft case, probably carried out by someone deeply familiar with the area and knowledgeable about the industry. “Say you get a little heifer calf and you breed her and she has five babies for you,” Searcy said. “Now what is her value?”

A lot, officials note. Drought and other pressures have caused the U.S. herd to steadily shrink since 2019, while consumer demand for beef is at a near-record high. The combination has sent cattle prices soaring. At market, the 187 missing cattle could fetch $400,000, maybe more.

Even so, the particulars are puzzling. No semitrailer could reach the hardscrabble, unpaved altitude where these cattle were spread, the kind of range even experienced ranch hands don’t know by heart. Typically, mother cows separated from their calves would show distress. A mass die-off, perhaps from poison weeds, would produce bodies.

“It’s a mystery,” said Janie VanWinkle, a former Colorado Cattlemen’s Association president whose herd grazes north of here. “A big one.”

The missing animals were reported to local brand inspectors, who play a key role in Colorado, known as a “brand state.” Branding is not obligatory, but livestock owners who do it must register their brands with the state’s Agriculture Department. Any sale or movement of cattle over 75 miles or to another state requires a review by one of the 63 inspectors to verify ownership. (According to Brand Commissioner Todd Inglee, inspectors have also been asked to certify ownership of dinosaur bones and a camel.)

In the lower 48, all states from the Rockies west are brand states. But most to the east are not, meaning they do not require proof of ownership to sell livestock. “Once you get past those borders, they’re pretty much gone,” Inglee said.

Colorado’s inspectors also investigate possible thefts, which began to spike in 2022; last year, 475 cattle were reported missing or stolen in 57 cases. But prosecutions have often taken a back seat to crimes against humans, Inglee said.

This time is “a new game,” Inglee said, thanks to attention from Gov. Jared Polis (D), who has called the case a rural matter of public safety. “We are committed to holding cattle rustlers accountable,” Polis said in his State of the State address in January.

A task force was formed. Led by Inglee, it includes the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, officials from the federal Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, state police, local law enforcement and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which dispatched a plane in search of cows or clues.

“It’s nice to have representation for little Western Colorado,” said Searcy, whose office is a five-hour drive from the capital, Denver. “Let’s just call it like it is: A lot of times, it feels like it’s a completely different state, whether it’s political views, whether it’s just way of life.”

For Burch, that life revolves around cattle. Her 400-head herd departs her Olathe ranch in early June for the 80,000-acre allotment of her federal grazing permit. The cows are always eager, she said: They line up at her southern gate, ready to trudge 20 miles up the plateau.

Burch and her teenage sons – aided by their cattle dogs and horses – keep loose tabs on the herd all summer, often sleeping in a nearby wooden cabin built by her ancestors in 1939. When the first snowflakes fall, she said, the cows know it’s time to go home.

As she and the other ranchers do every year, Burch chartered a helicopter in early December to fly over the terrain and peer down into dark canyons for stragglers. She and her older son spotted just one elk and one coyote.

Bears might have gotten some of her missing cattle. But she suspects many were lost to thieves who plucked off a few one night, a few another.

Whatever the explanation, it was a “kick in the gut.” Burch sells animals each January, bringing in her sole annual paycheck. This year, it was 20% to 30% smaller, she said. Her insurance policy does not cover theft or disappearance.

She holds out hope a culprit will be nabbed – and punished. “They don’t realize that they’re taking it from my kids; they’re taking the food off my table,” she said. “Back in the day, they would have been hung.”

The case has raised the alarm at sale barns across Colorado. At one of the busiest, Centennial Livestock Auction in Fort Collins, the brands of the missing cattle are posted on the bulletin board of inspector Jesse Phillips’ office. Ahead of a morning cattle auction on a sleeting March morning, he and two other inspectors gingerly moved massive bovines around slatted pens, making sure the brands on their hides matched those on their paperwork.

“With the cattle prices the way they are now, there’s just crazy, stupid money,” said Phillips, a district supervisor. “I am super, hyperaware of anything that comes through that’s not branded or whatever because there’s just too much money.”

Out in Montrose County, Searcy is hoping the sheriff might let him purchase a horse to use for exploring the plateau once the snow melts. Any tire tracks will most likely be lost to moisture, any carcasses to predators or bugs. But Searcy figures he might come across a makeshift corral or some other sign. And maybe someone will talk.

“Without evidence, that’s probably our biggest hope,” he said.

In the meantime, the case got a break of sorts. Tony Mendes, a former pro bull rider, found 17 of the missing cattle.

Mendes lives in a neighboring county, and these days, he cobbles together a living helping on ranches, working at a sales barn and operating as a backcountry cowboy. He takes that title seriously.

“My real passion my whole life was being able to gather and catch cattle that nobody else could get,” said Mendes, who grew up in Reno. “A challenge junkie, I guess you could say.”

Over the past few years, he has scoured the plateau for feral cattle, the descendants of animals that never made it home. The state wants them gone, fearing they will spread disease to ranchers’ herds. Mendes said he has found about 100, which he has been able to sell.

When he heard about the reward in the case of the missing 187, offered by the Uncompahgre Cattlemen’s Association and the Rangeland Users Association, Mendes had a new mission. Logging several 20-mile days on horseback, he found two groups in mid-January and another in mid-February. All of the animals belonged to two ranchers who had filed reports.

Mendes suspects many more cattle are out there, perhaps unable to descend from cliffs or unwilling because a low-snow year has left enough to eat. A large-scale theft would require a “mastermind,” in his view.

“I’m thinking, ‘Man, is there cattle thieves in my country, or is it just lazy cowboys?’ ” he said. “I’m not wanting to point fingers or bad-mouth anyone, but I think it’s a bunch of things going on.”

He went looking for more bovines a few weeks ago, bouncing in an off-road vehicle up a steep dirt trail studded with sizable rocks and craters. At the top of Winter Mesa, one finger of the plateau, he had placed a game camera near large tires where water collects, and it captured four black cows drinking there days before. If he laid eyes on them, Mendes planned to come back with his horse and dogs to push them down to the flatlands. Cattle tracks surrounded the tires, though they weren’t fresh. Mendes surveyed the hillsides’ tawny slopes, patches of pinyon-juniper and a deep canyon.

“There could be cattle right now in them clear-cuts over there, and how can you get to them?” he said. “That sagebrush down there could be holding cattle all day long.”

He continued searching for a few hours more, jostling up and down another mesa. A herd of mule deer appeared at one point.

But not a single cow.