Merl Elote Rotating Craft Sighting near Dulce
In 1997 the director of the Jicarilla Game and Fish Department, Merl Elote, witnessed a craft approximately twenty-three metres in diameter bearing a single bright light, hovering and slowly rotating. Two weeks earlier his relatives had experienced a similar encounter during which their truck's speakers blared static.
Background
The Sighting
In 1997, Merl Elote — director of the Jicarilla Apache Nation's Game and Fish Department — observed a large circular craft at close range in the area around Dulce, New Mexico. He estimated its diameter at roughly seventy-five feet, noted a single extremely bright light, and reported that the object hovered in place while slowly rotating on its vertical axis.
The Earlier Family Encounter
Two weeks before Elote's own sighting, relatives of his had had a similar experience in the same region. During their encounter, the speakers of their pickup truck suddenly began blaring loud static, as if an extremely strong radio-frequency source was nearby. The effect ceased when the object departed.
Significance
Coulthart uses the Elote accounts, together with the Velarde and Davis/Gomez reports, to build a picture of a cluster of 1997 close-encounter incidents in the Dulce area witnessed by trusted tribal officials and ranchers — people whose livelihoods depended on sober observation of their own land.