Phineas Pope: Across the nation, cattle mutilation has been puzzling ranchers and law enforcement for decades. Earlier this year we talked with filmmakers, Jackson Devereux and Lachlan Hinton, who brought this mystery to light through the documentary, Not One Drop of Blood, which premiered at Filmfort in Boise this past March.
The film was elected best documentary feature of the 2025 Local Sightings Film Festival and is now set to be screened in Burns, Oregon and Richland, Washington. Senior correspondent Anna King was a producer on the film and joins me now.
Anna, remind us what the premise was for this film? What's happening to cattle?
Anna King: Down in Southeast Oregon and across America, there are cattle, and even other animals like elk and deer, that are being mysteriously mutilated. There are parts of them that are precisely removed — the tongue, the sexual organs, even the blood is missing out of these animals. It's creepy and it's weird, and most often there are no tracks or signs of who did this and no sign of the animal thrashing or struggling, so it's just really odd, Finn.
Pope: How did you decide that cattle mutilation was something you were gonna report on?
King: I was sitting in my home office and I was reading a newspaper article. It was kind of deep in the newspaper, and basically, several bulls had been killed at Silvies Valley Ranch in southeast Oregon. I thought, “Man, that's strange.” And then I just kept thinking about it, and I knew a lot of the families down there and the ranchers.
And I'd been to Silvies Ranch before and I just had to see what was going on. And so I rallied up my equipment and got in a truck and headed down there.
Pope: And then flash forward to this film. You, Jackson Devereux and Lachlan Hinton. What did you learn throughout this process? What kind of people did you talk to?
King: Finn, we talked to all sorts of people. We talked to ranchers who have had killings on their property. We spoke to veterinarians. We spoke to Native Americans from the Burns Paiute tribe. We spoke to movie owners, cinema and business people. We talked to cowboys — we even talked to a Haitian-born cowgirl living outside of remote Juntura, Oregon.
Pope: Last time we talked about some of the different theories of how this mutilation is occurring — from other animals to something maybe supernatural. But it seems from most of the people you talk to, it's likely a result of human activity. Has anything changed since we talked eight months ago? Any new developments?
King: I would just say that this is kind of one of those "choose your own adventure" type stories. Everyone has their own theory. We've had letters from people who have had more mutilations on their properties since our film came out. We've also learned about people's theories and long writings that have been sent our way. And we even had one person send us a self-published book. Until somebody can catch somebody red-handed or something red-handed, it's gonna be hard to know what it is.
Pope: "Not One Drop of Blood" is coming to the Northwest again. When and where can people see this?
King: People can watch it in Burns, Oregon, at the Desert Historic Theatre on Oct. 21 at 6:00 p.m. This is an event that will bring the film back to the community where we filmed and where the base of our operations was, so it's really a special showing.
A day later, people can watch it on the big screen with Dolby Atmos sound and reclining seats at the Fairchild Cinemas Queensgate theater in Richland, Washington on Oct. 22 at 7:00 p.m.
