Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Jackrabbit.

Not good light, and it was good at hiding.

I miss going jackrabbit hunting!

It's rare to see them anymore. They used to be plentiful. That's been forty or more years.

Love shooting a few jack rabbits. Neat animals and not as many around as their once was.

Coyotes have decimated them around here.

We dont shoot them anymore.


They dont hurt anything. We were hell on em in highschool though.

It's been a long time since I have seen one in these parts, lots of cotton tails though.

I remember back in the 60s, in Richard's and my area of operation, you couldn't shoot an arrow in the air without it coming down and hitting a jack rabbit. When pheasant hunting, it was like following the Running of the Bulls in front of us some days. Then one morning, we woke up, and they were all gone.

We used to hunt them a lot around El Paso. There seemed to be a population cycle, and they would become very prolific suddenly and remain so for a couple of years, then the numbers would taper off and the cycle seemed to repeat over 7 to 12 years or so. There were nights my uncle and I would shoot around 100 of them, sometimes only a half dozen or so. They were really easy when we'd catch them out in the alfalfa after a cut!

I still make it a point to go out in the rapidly diminishing open desert when I visit El Paso. Four or five years ago I'd sometimes see NONE at all, but the last couple of years has been better. Fun times.

They may not damage certain crops very much, but imagine a 160 acre alfalfa field being eaten by 300 to 500 jackrabbits or even more all night long, night after night. Of course we never actually counted them, but I don't think that's too outlandish a guess.

There's some ranchers in desert climates that may disagree with you.

Some study stated that 30 jackrabbits eat what one cow grazes in a day's time.

I've seen populations in NM vary greatly, but years of seeing literally hundreds in a day's time at the ranch tells me they could be right.

They have had a cycle of boom or bust around here.

I have been here for over 40 years and every 5 or so years when boom gets here it sure is fun.

We don't mess with them when they are bust.

Have to leave some for seed.

I’ve never shot one. When my dad and uncles were kids they were pretty plentiful, when Grandad was a kid there were millions. By the time I came around they were gone except for small pockets. We had a bunch that lived in our yard and dad put them off limits for shooting. Some years we’d see up to 20 in the headlights when we came up the drive, some years just 3 or 4. Now there’s none. I did see one a few months ago a couple miles south of my folks’ place but they aren’t plentiful by any stretch.

I shot 1 while dove hunting in 1982 when we were on the way back to the truck. Haven’t seen one in years. They still got the ones with little antlers in Wyoming?

A jack rabbit sighting is rare now days, for sure. They were a lot of fun to shoot back in the day though!

I’ve seen pics from the 1930s in western Ks. They would get dozens of people, surround a piece of property and drive hundreds of Jack rabbits into a snow fence enclosure. Then they would club them. My grandparents participated in those rabbit drives. Fast forward to the mid/late 1960s, it was not difficult for me as a high school kid to go out on a weekend afternoon in west central Kansas and shoot 10 maybe more. If there was lots of snow on the ground, shooting 20 or more was very doable. In the winter we killed them, saved them and sold to mink farms. We got 25 cents per jack.
Fast forward to the 2000s, if I hunted real hard for a day, I might not even see one, if I was very lucky, I might get a couple. I’ve not shot one in 20+ years.

We are about at the low point of the approximate 7 year cycle. Some scattered low spots in the desert around here with young mesquite have several with some quail, otherwise they are both in short supply. The rabbits have about stripped all the bark of the small mesquite, resembling where a buck polished his rack.

I found one area west of Jal, NM, thanks to Sandbilly, in Jan about 1x2 miles that had a lot of quail and cottontails and Jack's. You could not step without stepping on rabbit pills.

Some areas near there had a decent number of quail and rabbits.

An old rancher told me a few years ago if you had rabbits, you would have quail. Since then, I have found he is correct.

I will add, if you drive in the desert in the fall and winter and only see a rare hawk, the quail hunting is bad in that area. Sometimes 3miles farther if you see a lot, start hunting.

Sept 2017 was going to be the greatest year of quail populations in many years around here. In fall of 2016 Carlsbad area astounded old ranchers with more quail than many said they had ever seen in their lifetime and they were still building up here. They started coming back here in 2014 and were fairly good in 2015 and in 2016 after being gone in about 3 years and with no rabbits.

An old rancher patient told me in late Sept or early Oct '17 I would have to come out as he had never seen so many quail in his life. I dove hunted west of Andrews in Sept and early Oct and quail and rabbits were everywhere.

The doves were scarce and there are less and less every year since about 1995. Its getting hard to find good dove hunting in West Texas unless a rancher has planted a sunflower patch.

A wet cool front hit in mid Oct 17 and lasted a week with mist, clouds, mild rains and pretty cool weather.
Quail opened about Nov 6 and by then there were essentially NO QUAIL OR RABBITS. I mean a day of hitting low brushy areas with a bird dog flushed 2 quail and 2 cottontails.

There was flu going around then iirc. I called the old rancher south of there 35 miles and he said he didnt even have a house covey since the Oct cool spell rain. Said he had seen this happen a few times before in his 83 years. He said they stand in the rain beak up and drown. I've heard people say turkeys will do the same. I dont believe that's it. They may stand beak up but something killed the rabbits too. I think a cold or flu virus or other cause of pneumonia.

I grew up in SE Colorado in the early '60's, when we experienced a huge spike in the jackrabbit population. At night, they would congregate in our hay fields by the thousands. We would shoot them with headlights and spotlights at night, and during the day, practice our skills with our .22's on running rabbits. I got so good at killing them on the run that I rarely missed. There was no way to drive at night without killing a few on the roads. Then, the inevitable happened- an outbreak of Tularemia swept thru the population. You could hear the screams of dying rabbits everywhere, and in short order, there were none to be found.

Isn't Tularemia the women's basketball coach at UCONN?

They are good practice for big game hunting....