Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game How is the cottontail hunting this fall..

Had lots of bunnies spotted before Christmas... But with the holidays and then a bout with the flu, haven't had a chance to hunt them.. How are the rest of you doing?

I haven’t seen a single rabbit...

Any married ones?

No more rabbits in the woods, they’ve all moved to my yard....

Had two in the backyard today. The wife won't let me shoot them.

I see more in town than in the country! Definitely not enough to shoot!


Ken

Ain't that the truth. I think the dog catches more in the yard, than when I go hunting.

I can’t drive done my driveway without a few rabbits running in front of em. So I have to get creative to make it challenging. Single six .22lr and my recurve are the weapons of choice.

I haven't hunted rabbits in years so they are thicker than fleas on a dog most days. They disappear when the Missus gets tired of them eating her flowers and shrubs and orders me to thin them out. Not much different than what everyone else is experiencing.

Seems as the 'yote poputlation increases, rabbit sighting go down. At my deer camp, it's all hands on deck, snares, traps, etc. to work on 'yotes.

When I was a kid in the late '50's, a good bud had a bunch of good beagles, would come out from town to hunt swampers on our farm. I really liked that. I started using a 12 ga M-12, then a Win 37 .410, then a T/C Contender .410 pistol. Rabbits are easy to kill.

We'd skin them, put them in bread wrappers, drop them in our game bags. A few big swampers would make a hunting vest pretty heavy. We has a few cottontails, swampers were our game.

Mom would make rabbit gumbo, which was really good on a cold day after a hunt, a nice fire in the fireplace.

I still have my rabbit pistol. Made a walnut grip, didn't like the OEM version.

DF

We had a group of boys rabbit hunting down below us this morning. We heard several shots as the morning progressed. I love to hear the dogs working. We were squirrel hunting, and they clearly did better than we did.

The rabbit hunting is terrible here. Last year I walked 51.7 miles on the public ground and did not see a track. There are a few in the back 3 ac. of brush but have not shot one yet this year or last year. The year before , we got 7 in a 3 ac. parcel.

Yotes and other critters getting all of ours. Only ran two or three rabbits the other day covering about 150 acres. Used to, 10,20,25 rabbits were the norm for us. Not anymore. That being said, it maybe the dogs...but he runs them year round. Had a guy in north ga that would bring his down and we had some awesome hunts. But the party grew and grew and folks piling out of trucks that weren't invited. I put a stop to that and hadn't hunted with him since. One guy shot into a raft of ringnecks on a pond, out of season...but even if they weren't.... we were rabbit hunting, not duck hunting. I could have killed him.

Same here.

The only ones the hawks and owls can't seem to find are the ones that live under the shrubbery next to the house. We have 285 acres that we take great pains to manage for (the non-existent) small game. I wouldn't bet very much that I could go out in a fresh snow and find a rabbit or grouse track. Pheasants are a long lost memory...…………...

Coons are the worst. They get the whole nest in the summer months.

our bobwhites are long gone, rabbits are very scarce. use to see them in the headlights of car in the front yard at night. not so anymore. still some squirrels around.

we use to trap them rabbit boxes when i was kid. caught a lot of them around the corn fields. but they have gone on.

I got lots of them on the farm but they only show up at night and leave tracks in the snow. Seldom see one in the daylight.

I actually got one today in my woods in the back. It was warm, dark clouds and calm. I could have had two though I didn't get a rabbit last year but this spring and summer I trapped 15 coons and that helps a bunch.

That rabbit gumbo sounds good.I don't hunt rabbits anymore just real lucky to have a couple of friends who bring them over for me to cook had two dinners last month.My friends catch them sitting so most are head shots with 22's.I met another guy out here who uses a 17 cal.

With most of the farms turned into sub-divisions we don’t see many here. Most fun hunting I ever had was rabbits with a beagle.