RAEFORD — Imagine waking up to find your pets had been poisoned. That's what happened to a Hoke County man. While he doesn't know who did it, he thinks he knows why.

Farmer Luther Camp found eight of his cows dead or dying last Friday. He's lived on his Hoke County farm for more than a decade without any trouble. That was until he wrote an editorial letter to his local newspaper.

Luther Camp knows almost all of his cows by name. Now eight of those cows are dead, buried in freshly dug dirt. They were apparently poisoned. Camp's wife found them Friday morning.

"She come running in the house and said 'we've got cows dead and dying down there,'" Camp explained. "I said 'you've got to be kidding' and she said 'no, I'm not.'"

Near Camp's fence, just off the road that goes by his home, he noticed feed mixed with what appeared to be poison. Investigators contacted the state veterinarian hospital.

"They told him that whatever killed those cows that quick, within let's say two steps out there three feet out there, was highly toxic," Camp said, "and they had best get a toxic waste disposal team out here to pick up the remains of the stuff."

Several weeks ago, Camp wrote an editorial to the local newspaper criticizing Sheriff's candidate Jim Davis. Camp believes someone angry with him about the letter killed his cows.

"If you're mad at me, why not come talk to me?" asked Camp. "Why not be a man and come talk to me like a man? Don't kill the cows because they don't know why you're killing them."