“Not One Drop of Blood,” a documentary examining mysterious cattle mutilations in rural Harney County in Oregon, will premiere in Boise, Idaho, at FIlmfort during the Treefort Film Festival March 26-30.

The 82-minute film is directed by filmmakers Jackson Devereux and Lachlan Hinton, and produced by Anna King, a reporter for Northwest Public Broadcasting, a member station of National Public Radio. King wrote about five purebred prime bulls found drained of blood, their sexual organs removed precisely, in 2019. ​​

Since the 1970s, thousands of killings and mutilations of cattle have happened across the U.S., according to FBI records.

There have been other cases since that 2019 incident, King said. “And there are no more answers than there was then.”

A $25,000 reward for information has never been collected, King said.

“It signals how tough these rural cases are,” she said. “Just like when rural theft happens on a farm, of metal or valuables, equipment … They’re out in the middle of nowhere. The sheriffs are strapped with domestic violence and other kinds of human calls they’ve got to attend to. Some of these cases are an hour to two hours out from any local jurisdiction. It’s just really tough.”

‘Meaningful relationships’

The story has a lot of “shock factor” when first hearing about it, Devereux said.

But he and Hinton, filmmakers originally from Australia, who now reside in New York City, had not heard very much about southeastern Oregon.

They were intrigued by the idea of documenting a community “unreported” within the U.S., “in an area where cattle outnumber people 14 to one,” Devereux said.

Devereux, Hinton and King worked on the film for three years, visiting the rural community for one to two weeks every season, to show the passing of time and the work that goes into maintaining livestock.

“Spending three years there gave us the advantage of building meaningful relationships in the community,” Devereux said. “Part of our agreement with Anna was that she would bring us into this world if we respected it.”

King grew up on a small ranch in western Washington, was in 4-H and attended state and county fairs.

“I had to feed the cattle before I went to school on the bus,” she said. “We were the first people picked up on the bus, just about, and the last people dropped off. An hour ride to school.”

Other programs have not treated the case with the same honesty and “earnestness” that the filmmakers prefer, Devereux said.

“We knew we wanted to keep a low profile to earn these intimate moments with the participants in our film,” he said.

“I think they really captured a lot of the poetry of rural life,” King said.

‘Massively misunderstood’

Devereux came away from filming with “so much respect” for the ranchers.

“The livestock business is massively misunderstood,” he said. “The families we worked with are some of the people we should look up to most in our country.”

“All of our food takes such care and tending,” King said. “From the time that calf drops in the snow to the time it’s ready for sale, it’s not just an animal to these folks. This is really their livelihood, and they care about these beings.”

“I’m glad to have made this time capsule where it’s looking at the folks that are staying in this business despite its maybe not being lucrative,” Devereux said.

Accurate portrayal

The filmmakers plan to screen “Not One Drop of Blood” at other festivals. They also intend to eventually hold a screening in the eastern Oregon community, as well as other Northwest locations and agricultural “hot beds” throughout the U.S..

The documentary does not arrive at a conclusion of the mystery. There are several theories, “and there are some wild ones,” Devereux said.

Rather than stir the pot, he wanted to do an accurate portrayal of a rural community grappling with the case, and the limitations that exist in solving it.

“We are hoping that we are providing evidence for it to be taken as a serious issue,” he said.