Rampant Rabbits Michael D. Faw Rabbits are among the most common of varmint animals across much of the country.
ave you hunted rabbits lately? If not, then maybe it’s time to take notes, make plans, stock up on ammunition, and begin your pursuit of Br’er Rabbit. Once considered as a species
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hunted by poor families for a quick and easy meal, or simply as a reason for a group of family members or friends to get together and go hunting, today there’s another reason many hunters pursue rabbits. Rabbits are destructive, and in the right habitat, rabbits are plen- tiful and pests. In fact, they can “breed like rabbits” and quickly eat and gnaw their way onto, or to the top of, the un- welcome list.
First, nearly any farm with an orchard, or a commercial nursery with trees and shrubs for sale, will tell you that rabbits have a desire to gnaw bark
in the winter for a meal. That gnawin’ – evidenced by a barkless ring around small trees about six to twelve inches above the ground – can girdle and kill young trees or make them far less valu- able because of scars. Thus, these sites are some of the first places you should seek out when looking for problem rab- bits to plink.
Next, any place with cleared land and tall stump and brush piles prob- ably will also harbor a huge number of rabbits. One brush pile – about the size of a small house – in the center of a re- cently cleared Indiana farm field where I hunted once must have held more than two dozen rabbits. When our small group of hunters unleashed the beagles there one afternoon and circled around, rabbits ran and hunters shot more than a dozen in less than an hour.
Another place with a dislike for rabbits are hobby farms and pick-your- own growers, or nearly any farm with rows of blackberries, blueberries and other briars and bushes grown for fruit. Rabbits have been known to devour entire blueberry bushes overnight and this means lost dollars, a big problem, and a place for a varmint hunter to be- come a solution to a problem. You can find these type farms through the local agriculture department’s “pick your own” publications.
In fact, one of the recent places I gained permission to hunt rabbits was a blueberry farm that I visited to pick blueberries. A casual conversation with the owner soon turned to talk about farm pests and I expressed an interest in helping him. That was followed up with an agreement and I marked my
Find evidence of rabbits in the area and very likely a hunter will soon find the critters somewhere nearby.
www.varminthunter.org Page 171
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