It's a mystery that started nine months ago. Now police are asking for your help to solve it: someone is using a high-powered rifle, targeting and killing cattle. It's a crime detectives in Tangipahoa Parish have never seen before in this area.

Off of a remote rural highway near Kentwood, the Tangipahoa Sheriff's Office is trying to solve the mystery.

"To date we have 28 head of cattle that have been shot and to define the time of day that they are being shot, we are suspecting that it's the evening hours." says Dawn Panepinto, the Tangipahoa Sheriff's public information officer.

Grazing on 680 acres of pasture land, 400 head of angus cattle are the targets, with more than two dozen randomly being shot one at a time.

The land is near a school, Chesbrough Elementary, but no children nearby have heard any shots.

Detectives say the landowner is very upset.

"He wishes this matter would come to an end he doesn't understand why this is going on," says Keith Womack, Tangipahoa detective. 

To make matters worse the cows, steer and bulls are being shot in a way where bullets are not retrievable and causes them to suffer a slow long death.

"They are shooting the animal in the gut, and when this happens it takes 2 to 3 days for the cattle to die, sometimes they die of infection, sometimes they bleed out," adds Panepinto. 

"If they was to hit a vital organ and the cow was to die, there, we may be able to get a line of site or something to where we could find a projectile," adds Womack.

Not only do these cattle represent the livelihood of a family and the people who work out here, but they say that they also bond with these animals and they say that they were especially distraught to find that some of the ones killed were expecting calves.

"Four of them for a fact, I know had baby calves in them. This last one the day before Thanksgiving had a baby calf in it," says a cattleman who does not want to be identified. 

He says it's upsetting to come to work with buzzards overhead waiting for the latest victim to die.

"It just tears you up inside to see that people would do that. If somebody was starving to death and we caught them shooting a cow and cutting a hind quarter off of them and we knew these people are hungry, we would given them the cow, you know, but not kill a cow," he says. 

Each head of cattle is worth from $500 to $3,000.

The shooter is using a high-caliber rifle, using only one bullet that enters and exits each cattle.

There is a reward of up to $11,000 for information. Call (985) 748-3332 and your tip can be anonymous.