Despite the FBI's 1980 conclusion that cattle mutilations were attributable to natural causes, reports continued to flow in from across the Western United States and Canada throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The phenomenon's persistence in the face of official dismissal was itself remarkable — if the explanation were as simple as scavengers and decomposition, one might expect reports to diminish as ranchers became educated about natural processes. Instead, experienced cattlemen continued to insist that what they were finding was unlike normal predation or decomposition. Notable later incidents included a cluster of mutilations in Alberta, Canada in 1989-1990 and a wave of reports from eastern Oregon in 1993-1994.
Each new wave followed the established pattern: surgical-appearing incisions, organ removal, absence of blood, and no tracks or evidence of human presence. The continued reporting suggests either that ranchers consistently misinterpret natural scavenger damage despite decades of experience with livestock death, or that something genuinely anomalous continues to occur on the American range.