How to find 180 cows: Inside the investigation of Western Slope ranchers’ missing cattle 

From early June to mid-October, Gayle Ware surveys 30,000 acres of remote and rocky national forest land by horseback, traveling east to west across four sprawling pastures west of Hotchkiss. 

As the sun falls, she hunkers down in a barebones cabin lit by propane-powered lights along Leroux Creek, at the edge of Grand Mesa National Forest. 

Her main job: to keep eyes on the nearly 2,450 cattle, owned by 10 different Western Slope ranchers, grazing in the high county. She keeps a close watch on the one gravel road into the permit area, taking note of any suspicious behavior or people towing horse trailers. 

But still, the land is vast.

“If you think about 30,000 acres — and this is not wide open country, this is hilly, mountainous, rough terrain — there’s no way you’re gonna cover every inch of it,” said Ware, who has been taking care of the cattle along Leroux Creek for the past decade. 

“One person, covering 7,000 acres a day. It’s not possible,” she said. “It’s just not possible.”

When taking cows off the mountain earlier this fall, Ware counted the herd and realized 41 calves were missing. Her guess is 18 died from lightning, predators or toxic weeds — many of the threats cattle face while grazing at 8,000 feet of elevation. 

But there’s been no sign of the 23 others — as if they vanished into thin air. 

“This is the first year in 10 years that we’ve had this kind of loss,” Ware said, who plans to double down on her watch by installing cameras along the permit lines, riding the boundary fences every other day, looking for tracks and any indication of a fence being pushed over to move cattle. 

“So they definitely got one over on me,” she said.

Ware is just one of several ranchers on the Western Slope who saw their cattle counts drop this fall as they took them off their summer pastures, instilling fears of cattle rustling as missing cattle reports continued to flow in. As of Dec. 19, at least 187 head — mostly calves — have been reported to the state’s brand inspection division as missing or stolen in the area. 

A task force, made up of investigators across several counties, state and federal agencies, is looking into who or what could be to blame for the cows’ mysterious disappearances, totalling $300,000 to $400,000 in losses for Western Slope ranchers.

“I think that these cattle were definitely taken off this permit and sold,” Ware said, asking for people to keep their eyes and ears open for any clues.

“Because somebody, somewhere knows something.”

Vetting all the leads

Anytime a cow disappears, you start to wonder.

Did a calf wander off with its mother and get lost in the sprawling hills across the plateau? 

Maybe a car hit one while speeding down a dirt road, or it fell prey to a mountain lion, wolf or bear. Did small bands of rustlers plot to pick them off in fours and sixes throughout the summer months? 

Aliens, are you out there?

For now, investigators are looking at all leads (some perhaps more seriously than others), Colorado State Brand Commissioner Todd Inglee said. 

For two hours on a recent Wednesday morning, Inglee sat down with more than 20 officials from Montrose and San Miguel sheriff’s offices and representatives from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to talk through the missing cattle reports and consider theories to explain their disappearance.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials were there to look at what potential predators are in the area, Inglee said. Officers from Colorado State Patrol, who are the “eyes of the highway,” were also there. 

Then, about 20 local ranchers came into the room and they talked for two more hours, Inglee said.

“It’s really early, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen this large of a pool of resources that have been offered to us. It’s been a great thing to see,” he said.

“But again, it’s just still really early and it seems like everybody wants answers faster than we can generate them. I think it just takes time to vet all the leads.”

State brand inspectors received the first complaint of missing cattle in the area Nov. 24, when 26 calves and three cows were reported missing in Montrose County. They were last seen grazing on U.S. Forest Service lands along Divide Road, which runs up the Uncompahgre Plateau.

More reports flowed in as ranchers checked their herds coming off the mountain. 

On Dec. 1, three more ranchers reported their calves were gone: 46, 31 and 38.

On Dec. 4, a fifth owner reported 18 cows and 25 calves missing along the plateau, about 25 miles southwest of Montrose.

All of the missing cattle were branded, under the , with a distinct mark that could turn out to be a valuable clue in this case. 

“That’s their permanent ownership mark. It’s kind of like their return address,” Inglee said.

Within 24 hours, notices with the brands of the missing cattle were sent to law enforcement agencies across the state, sale barns, auction markets and authorities in neighboring states to be on the lookout.

High demand, low supply

About 80% of the work by Colorado’s Brand Inspection Division is preventive — making sure crimes like cattle theft and livestock cruelty don’t happen.

any livestock — cattle, calves, horses, donkeys and burros — to be inspected any time there is a change in ownership, if cattle are transported more than 75 miles from home place, or if they are going out of state, regardless of the distance. 

Before traveling out of state, an owner must show a brand certificate — paperwork with the owner’s name and the cattle’s brand — along with an inspection report from a veterinarian showing that the cattle are healthy to travel.

Colorado brand inspectors work closely with Utah and New Mexico, where there are also strict, mandatory brand laws and their inspectors are “top notch,” Inglee said. 

But neighboring states like don’t have mandatory brand inspection laws, meaning if cattle are brought to a market there, officials don’t require any paperwork proving ownership. In Oklahoma, producers with the state.

“The lack of those mandatory brand laws, it’s not as easy to catch people that have cattle that they don’t own,” Inglee said. 

“It’s like, man, if we can keep them away from that Kansas border or away from the Oklahoma border, that helps us out a lot.”

Missing and stolen cattle reports often mirror trends in the cattle market, Inglee said. A spike in reports came after the pandemic, when high, while producers struggled to raise cattle because of rising costs and drought, Inglee said. 

The by the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed the since 1952, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. 

With a high demand for beef and a low supply of cattle, the price for cattle surged. It also drove theft. 

Market forecasts predict cattle prices will remain high until at least 2027, Inglee said, adding that the inflated costs usually go through a 10-year cycle before dipping again. 

In 2022, Colorado’s Brand Inspection Division received 85 reports of missing cattle, which included 598 head of cattle and 12 horses, Inglee said. Last year, there were 61 reports, consisting of 595 head of cattle and 15 horses. 

“We don’t have 2024 compiled yet,” Inglee said, “but it’s safe to say that the number of cattle is definitely going to be high, just like the last two years.”

“It just doesn’t add up”

Bryce Klaseen, who is part of Ware’s pool, said his family’s multigenerational farm noticed they were down 15 calves Oct. 15, when they started taking cattle off the mountain. They confirmed that number two months later when they took them one-by-one to get vaccinated.

“Every time they come through a chute, we have a list. So we know exactly how many calves went up and we know exactly how many calves came home and are in our dry lot right now,” Klaseen said.

His mother contacted the Delta County Sheriff’s Office on Dec. 12 to report the heifers and steers missing. The black calves, about 6 to 9 months old and between 700 and 800 pounds, carry a $20,000 price tag, he said.

They determined two calves died on the mountain after finding their carcasses, but the other 13 are “totally and completely unaccounted for,” he said. 

It’s not unusual for a cow or two out of a herd of hundreds to go missing. But for Klaseen, the ratio of calves to cows missing in his family’s herd, and no pairs, suggests something more suspicious. 

“It just doesn’t add up, the numbers there, for death loss,” he said. 

Ware also doesn’t buy that predators are behind the missing cattle. 

“We have enough bear activity up there that if I don’t find a calf in the first couple of days that has died, those bears absolutely clean that carcass up and you may not find it,” Ware said. 

Bears will often eat the bones, especially of calves which are softer, and leave the hide to find. 

As far as wolves go, Sgt. Chuck Searcy with the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office said wolves haven’t been reported in the area. But even if they were to blame, he would expect to find more carcasses.

“We’re being told that they’re not here and I have no reason to think they are,” Searcy said. “But there have been people who say they have seen them through the years and so I can’t discredit that either.”

Cattle rustling, not a thing of the past 

While there may not be wild shootouts between cowboys and cattle rustlers as portrayed in the old Western movies, cattle rustling — a crime that has plagued ranchers for centuries — is not a thing of the past.

“People are still stealing livestock,” Inglee said. “It has not gone away over the years, just the dollar value has probably been one of the things that have changed and the ease of transportation.”

But not many cases have been to trial.

“We’ve made many attempts, but a lot of times when you are trying to work with county law enforcement, who are dealing with increase in murders, drug cartel activity, and other really serious two-legged-creature crimes, it’s hard to get space on their dockets for four-legged-creature crimes,” Inglee said. He’s also seen hesitancy from officers who are less familiar with the crimes.

Since becoming brand commissioner in February, Inglee and brand supervisors and inspectors have been reaching out to law enforcement agencies and district attorneys to answer questions about brand laws, hold training sessions and guide them through unfamiliar crimes. He said he’s seen “strides” and some prosecutions. 

Last month, a 37-year-old man from Larimer County pleaded guilty to shooting at and killing livestock valued at more than $30,000 while he was riding a UTV on a property west of Fort Collins.

After neighbors reported Michael Hester’s shooting spree, deputies found seven dead cows and an eighth that had been critically injured and was later euthanized, according to the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office. 

Hester is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 31 for three counts of aggravated cruelty to animals and three counts of animal theft, court records show. Under the plea deal, 12 other charges were dropped.

He could face two to six years in prison and an additional $500,000 in fines for each charge, said Kylie Massman, a spokesperson for the 8th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. Hester also to the owners, she said. 

In June, a judge found a Weld County man not guilty of wrongful branding, animal theft and lying to a brand inspector, all felonies. 

The man was accused of buying 34 head of calves from a producer last June and hauled them to rodeos throughout the summer, using them as roping calves, Rachel Gabel of The Fence Post Magazine wrote . He didn’t have a permit through the brand office, didn’t pay for the calves and then branded them with his brand, which signified he owned them, before trying to sell the calves, Gabel wrote.

In other states, cattle rustlers have turned to sophisticated schemes. In Washington, for example, a cattle rancher swindled Tyson Foods out of $244 million by creating a “ghost herd” of 265,000 head of cattle and charging for their purchase, feed and care. Cody Easterday was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 for the heist that spanned four years, according to . 

In North Carolina, a man pleaded guilty last August to conspiracy in a $1 million cattle theft scheme, where he and his co-conspirator wrote fraudulent checks to buy more than 3,000 head of cattle at livestock markets and transported the cattle out of state before the markets realized the checks were worthless, . 

For ranchers like Klaseen, cattle theft isn’t like someone stealing a car or shoplifting from a store. Ranchers invest years into breeding and raising calves before any cattle is sold. 

“If all 13 of those calves were mine, I’d have to sell all my cows and I’d be out of the cow business just like these poor guys down here in Montrose County that are missing all of theirs,” Klaseen said.

“We’re already struggling enough to survive as farmers and ranchers. To deal with the massive loss of calves, it’s insane.”

Colorado officials are asking anyone with information about missing cattle to call the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office at 970-249-9110.

Type of Story: News

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.