Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game The Rabbit Hunter

Enjoy!!!


Mike

Very nice! Thanks for sharing!

RH

Good stuff, Thanks for sharing.

I was driving today looking over the country and thought I haven’t seen a small game hunter in the woods yet this year. Everybody chasing inches of antler I guess. The older I get the more I appreciate small game for what it is. No one ever gets pizzed because you shot a rabbit that they had been watching on a game camera all year from a neighboring property.

Gotta dig out my low brass 4’s, it’s December, now how about a little snow!

I have seen the video above before. It is excellent, really captures the spirit of chasing bunnies behind a pack of beagles. Here is another pretty good one...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0b8JoMheYm4&t=580s

MOGC

Thanks that is a dandy!

Mike

I saw the first video just last week!! Awesome story. I have three beagles and can't wait to get out tomorrow and Sunday and run snowshoe hare. Been looking forward to it all week!!!

MOGC, I watched your video today. Thanks for the link!! Another excellent video

I grew up with beagles and bunnies. I walked many a mile as a sprout along with dad and grandpa listening to the little hounds push rabbits in oblong paths. I had a Winchester Steelbuilt M37 single shot 20 gauge, dad used a Belgian Auto Five Sweet Sixteen and grandpa was a Winchester M12 guy. It seemed that dad and grandpa couldn't miss. I on the other hand wasn't as tuned in on the little brown blurs.

I also saw the video for the first time last week and thought it was a great video. Mr. Rodney seemed like a dandy guy!
Me and two of my boys were out just last Friday and had a wonderful hunt with good weather.
My dad was a rabbit hunter and I was raised with beagles so as a result I’ve had beagles and rabbit hunted all of my life. It was the only type of hunting my father did as he got older.
My boys have all grown up with it and three of them are out rabbit hunting this morning. It’s a great way to spend time with friends & family.

Cool guy, cool video. Thanks for sharing.

Great video.

This brings back many fond memories of the 1950s. We only had rabbits and squirrels since the deer had been poached out during the Great Depression. Now that I'm in my 70s I have been thinking of small game hunting again. Great video!

BTW, does anyone remember the old Bill Boatman company? We always bought our dog collars and hunting stuff from him.

I sure did enjoy that. Thanks.

A beautiful pack and one high class guy. It will be a sad sad day when he can't do it no more.

Thanks for putting this up.

Thanks for sharing

Takes me back to my teens, when we hunted LA swamprabbits with beagles. I started out with a 12 ga. M-12, then a M-37 .410. Finally got a T/C .410 pistol. Rabbits aren't hard to kill.

We would skin them in the woods, wash them in a drain or bayou, put them in bread wrapper sacks in our hunting vests. Several swampers and you were packing a load.

This was in Red River bottom land hardwoods. Mom made a great rabbit gumbo and when we got back to the house, she'd feed us in front of a roaring fire. Great memories on cold Saturdays.

Rabbit gun with my custom walnut grips. Factory grip had sharp edges, not real comfortable to shoot 3" shells. Wore the pistol in this Lawrence holster.

DF

A pack of beagles and a 20 gauge are about the most fun things in the world.

Nice setup Dirtfarmer

This is what I use for Cottontails. .410 Encore with 10" barrel

For hare, I bust out the 20 guage.

I have a pack of three females. They come from the Patch line. the smallest is 14.5 inches, the other two are 17". I like the tall hound for the deep snow we hunt hare in. I also like the looks of a taller houndy looking dog

One of the taller ones

I like your rig better.

That looks like fun.

DF

Growing up, my friend had a beagle that would chase rabbits and an occasional pheasant and we had a ball hunting with that dog. We could only hunt the mornings usually because by that time the damned dog would have found a deer and we would need to spend the rest of the day trying to catch the dog. As much fun as that was hunting with a hound, pulp wood logging is big business here and the aspen cut over areas would regenerate really thickly and all those little trees meant a snowshoe hare food extravaganza. A 4wd vehicle and some buddies with .22's still hunting through those slashings was about as much fun as a guy could have on a snow covered winters day. A black eyeball would be about all you would see those things blended in so well with their surroundings.

If you care to hear more about Charles Rodney, Ben O’Brien talked to him two separate times on his podcast, The Hunting Collective.

Very cool and inspiring video. Thanks for sharing. I know this thread is a little old, but I felt it appropriate to comment because yesterday I harvested my first rabbit in maybe 2 decades. I hunt mostly big-game, and when I've had the opportunity to take a rabbit I've either passed or gave a kid the shot. I eat my share of junk like the rest of America, but I'm trying to push more toward eating as nature intended and I'm grateful that this rabbit will make its way to my table.

Cottontails are just fun and really excellent to eat! I've never gone "just rabbit hunting"--always was hunting quail or chukars out West or grouse and phez in the NYS and the Midwest. But rabbits kept me from getting skunked on some of those bird hunts and I always took them as "targets of opportunity," much to the amusement of my purist bird hunter buddies.

Began with a Win Model 37 .410 which was too big for me when I was 8 but I never outgrew it, and still haven't at nearly 78! A .410 is the perfect rabbit gun, IMO. Not the perfect bird gun, but I accept the handicap at least once a season, and stick to the really close shots. (It'll kill quail clean at 25-30 yards if you point it in the right direction! But I cheated when I was about 12 and had my gunsmith mentor rechoke my 37 to IC....).

Gonna try my TC Contender G2 with a 26" custom MGM VR .410 barrel soon this season. (Love the two TCs you guys showed, but I need a little more shotgun to hang onto!).



Mike Armstrong aka Mesa

Great looking revolver AZ Southpaw. Is that a .32 mag?

.410 IS an awesome caliber for a rabbit gun Mesa. I also hunt hare horseback from time to time and carry a .410 lever action in the scabbard.

Hares were scarce where I lived near Troy. We found a few in the NYS side of the Green Mountains, but I never had my .410 with me and shot them with my regular bird gun, usually a double 20. I also shot one with a .25-20 while wandering around along the NY/VT border on snowshoes once.

Did kill a lot of jack rabbits in CA when I was a kid and later when I used to ranch-sit in grad school. They are hares and my .410 Winchester and the ranch owner's ancient Iver Johnson killed them just fine. Most Westerners don't eat them, but I have eaten young ones down in the "Other Californias" and they make great burrito stuffing--slow cook, add Mexican spices..

I KNEW those lever action .410s were good for something besides rattlers and "things that go bump in the night."

Mesa, I did not know you were a former NY'er. I hunt hare on the Tug Hill Plateau and the western ADK's. This picture was taken last Sunday. I was near Brantingham, just east of Lowville. I am planning on running the beagles in central VT in December. Near Bethel. I need to expand my hunting grounds further east in the ADK's

The lead dog isn't a beagle. He's a Black Mouth Cur that goes everywhere with me, even work so I can't leave him behind.

Roster
The lead dog in the picture is a black mouth cur? I've never seen a white one before just yellow.

Too cool...

You've gone to some trouble to set that up.

Looks like a lot of fun.

If we lived a bit closer, I'd come ride those roads with you. I love to hear the "music" when they hit a trail.

DF

Texczech, I think they refer it as fawn colored. A very light tan. Here is another picture of him.

Dirtfarmer,

It's a great way to hunt. I take very few rabbits or hare anymore. I'm more in it for the hounds. And my motto is.....dead rabbits don't leave tracks. Therefore I let them run to chase another day.

Make your way on up here and we'll cut the dogs loose.

Thanks, Robster. That Ruger Vaquero is chambered for .357 Mag. I built a light .357 "cowboy" load featuring a LRNFP. It's crazy accurate and I have been trying to find a way to use that revolver for more than just punching paper - which is another reason why I decided to take a shot at this rabbit. A shoulder shot did the trick without ripping the critter apart. In fact, I've seen 22lr HPs be more destructive to rabbits. I've got a new batch of loads ready to go and hope to put that Vaquero back to work soon!

And, I agree about the .410! When I was a kid I took my first rabbit and quail with a borrowed shotgun so-chambered. After shooting my 12ga. for all these years, part of me wouldn't mind finding my own .410.

That cur dog looks like a tough little customer! And the cowboy rig with the lever .410 is plain neat. (Unfortunately I gave up on horses when I left the ranch at 17, so I'm still in the infantry...).

Beagles are God's Gift. I've even hunted pheasants with them in Western Nebraska tall grass prairie where you almost never saw them until they brought a bird back. The rest of the time they were tracking phez along all the little wildlife tunnels down near the grass roots, runnin' along 'em like little heat seeking missiles. First thing that let you know where the hound was would be a bird launching out of the grass, which was so thick that it muffled the beagle music!

I suspect a lot of those phez got bit before they got hit, but I never could prove it with "forensic evidence" like beagle tooth marks on the drumsticks!

Fun thread, thanks for posting, you-all!

Good thread, Gents. I hunt the foothills of the Green Mountains with my kiddos (two still under age 10, one is 11, but no longer likes to come along - I’m too strict in the woods, I guess!), and have yet to see more than rabbit tracks. Bumped a grouse with them today, and we only left the woods with a single gray squirrel. I’d love to bag a few rabbits for the dinner table, some time - and a grouse!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I love rabbit hunting with beagles, grew up doing it all my life here in Alabama. We went last Thursday and had a great hunt, killed 4 swamp rabbits and had solid running from 6:30 til. 11:30. The dogs were tired by then. Robinhedd

My Pop a long time ago, it was what we could do when it was too bad to pour concrete. His favorite was to hunt the sloughs along the MS river for swampers.

My Pop a long time ago, it was what we could do when it was too bad to pour concrete. His favorite was to hunt the sloughs along the MS river for swampers.

Does anyone on here rabbit hunt with beagles, or know anyone here in Arizona that does??





Take care, Willie

With 10,325 looks. Figured I’d bump this one more time. Has anyone in Arizona tried the bunnies with beagles? If so, any good runs?




Take care, Willie