Just a couple of quick points on my own take on cattle mutilations......

1. Forget about these as being from predators. Most of the stories/investigations/research in fact almost all begins with farmers and ranchers. I'm am not one but count many friends and relatives who are. They have seen many carcasses caused by all variations of coyotes, wild dogs, wolves, bears, cougars and occasionally people. They are used to these incidents and recognize them. They get freaked out when carcasses appear to be far from the norm, with things like small precision laser-like cuts, all blood drained from the body, no blood at all on the ground, only specific organs/glands removed, no tracks of any kind apart from the herd around the carcass, and others MM mentioned above.

2. There is evidence of these mutilations going back many decades, even before 1900.

3. It appears army equipment has been deliberately left behind at some sites to confuse the issue.

4. At most times cows can be bought fairly cheaply, so for the army or some corporation to divert personnel and obtain specialized equipment such as medium lift helicopters and partake in illegal activity just to steal and especially RETURN cows just does not make sense in any way. There can be no logical sense in any economic or any other way for it. If they want to test for mad cow they can just go to any ranch any time and take samples, practically, if they have some decent cause for suspicion. Anyway, many of these cases happened in the 1960's and 1970's before anyone had heard of mad cow or at least before people started worrying about it. The only reason the army would have to do it would be to discredit genuine ET mutilations, thus I believe both have happened, but probably more of the latter.