Utah Ranch Investigation Report (2010) – PURSUE Files

A 2010 BAASS field report on creature and orb sightings near Fort Duchesne, Utah, including interviews, instruments and the hair-analysis results that were widely reported as “raccoon”

⚠ Note on validity: This is a contractor’s field report built mostly on anecdotes. It states no conclusion about what the witnesses saw. The one hard result, a DNA test of hair samples, points to a domestic dog and a raccoon, not an unknown animal. Names are redacted.

Utah ranch, 2010
Cover page of the Utah ranch investigation report (DOW-UAP-D174). U.S. Department of War.
Document date	May 7, 2010 (abstract); two trips, Mar. 22–26 and Apr. 19–23, 2010
Location	Ranch and surrounding area near Fort Duchesne, Uintah Basin, Utah
Team	Four BAASS staff: two investigators and two scientists
Contractor	BAASS (for the Defense Intelligence Agency)
Released	Release 07 (Oct. 23, 2026)
Files	1 (PDF)
Previously public?	No — new in PURSUE Release 07
Official releaseContractor reportRedacted

Selected by the Department of War as one of the featured Release 07 documents, this report describes how a four-person BAASS team spent two trips in spring 2010 re-interviewing witnesses, setting trail cameras and sweeping a ranch near Fort Duchesne, Utah with portable instruments. The text does not use the name “Skinwalker Ranch,” but it covers the same area and circumstances described on our Skinwalker Ranch page; the separate November 2009 monthly report in this release does name the ranch (see the BAASS records page).^[1]

What the report says

By the abstract’s date, more than 25 people had been interviewed in person, including residents, ranchers, police officers, Native American community members and a wildlife official. Eleven separately interviewed people described a bipedal “dog-like” or “wolf-like” creature, orbs of light, or both. Other accounts include small hairy figures, a pterodactyl-like bird, “little people,” floating blue, white, red and golden balls of light, and a transparent rippling “portal” seen about twenty years earlier. One witness reported that a red ball of light came within about four inches of his face and left a brief numbness and warmth.^[1]

The instrument work is thin. Investigators logged two strong radio signals near 1.2 GHz on the mesa that had not been present the day before, in bands used for satellite navigation and radiolocation, and noted that their origin was unidentified and the satellite frequencies still needed checking. They photographed snow tracks that merged and appeared to pass through a barbed-wire fence, plotted witness sightings in Google Earth to find three “intersection points,” installed game cameras (the text does not say that any captured anything), and began a plant-growth and seed-germination experiment that was too new to show results. The report offers no firm conclusion and proposes more measurements and night watches.^[1]

The hair analysis

An appendix reports a laboratory’s DNA work on four hair samples. Three samples shared the same canine sequence, one found in roughly 10–14 percent of random dogs; an internal BAASS email argues they likely came from one ranch dog that resembled a control animal. A fourth hair, embedded in a red-stained rock from the mesa, matched a raccoon. News coverage has summarized this as a “raccoon” result; read closely, the fence hairs tied to a reported “Skinwalker” sighting matched a dog, and the raccoon hair came from the rock. Neither points to an unknown animal, and the email notes raccoons were seen near the homesteads, so the finding “would not be out of the ordinary.”^[1]

Analysis

The report is useful mainly as a record of method: how a funded contractor handled Skinwalker-type claims, what it measured, and what it did not find. It shows the same pattern as other BAASS records — many first-hand stories, little recorded data, and no physical evidence of anything unusual. The redaction of names and coordinates prevents independent follow-up.

The records

DOW-UAP-D174, Utah Ranch Investigation Report (April 2010)

Open DOW-UAP-D174 (PDF, 7.2 MB) → · original on war.gov

This document is an administrative, programmatic, or contractor-produced record related to the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)-administered program active from 2008 to 2012. AAWSAP’s official scope of work identified 12 technical research areas relating to potential aerospace threats over a time horizon of more than 40 years. As part of the broader program record, the file documents how AAWSAP was scoped, organized, tasked, funded, executed, or described at a particular point in time. This April 2010 Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) investigation report documents field deployments to a Utah property and surrounding communities during March and April 2010. The report states that BAASS personnel interviewed local residents, law enforcement officers, ranchers, business owners, and tribal community members about reported anomalous events; used handheld sensors to collect environmental measurements; planned plant-based biosensor experiments; and sought photographic, acoustic, and chemical evidence of purported anomalous phenomena. It also records extensive reported accounts involving “dog-like bipedal creatures,” orbs of light, “little people,” “prehistoric-looking” birds, among other phenomena, and states that BAASS intended to use interactive methods to attempt communication with the presumed source of reported anomalous activity.

Released files

PURSUE ID	Title	Incident	Type
DOW-UAP-D174	Utah Ranch Investigation Report, April 2010 (war.gov)	March, April 2010, Las Vegas, Nevada	PDF

References

^ U.S. Department of War (2026). PURSUE Release 07 (Oct. 23, 2026): DOW-UAP-D174, with official descriptions. war.gov/ufo.

Source: U.S. Department of War, PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters), war.gov/ufo. Official records are U.S. government works in the public domain; summaries and analysis on this page are by UFO UAP Wiki.