We've had an explosion of cottontail rabbits the past year or so.
Now that we don't have a dog around, the little insolent bastids don't even run from you.
They'll let you get 6ft. away before hopping a few times and going back to eating.

They're asking for a little 5mm Blue Streak action.

I'd normally not worry too much about them, but they got through my orchard fence and girdled some of my fruit trees.

That 5mm's bad medicine on those damned lettuce munchers. Good little gun. I love mine!

Same here, woodchucks too. Buggers are everywhere.

They've exploded around here too! Hardy ever saw one around here but now they're everywhere!
We've now got a lot more hawks around now feeding on them and the grey squirrels...

elkhunternm has experience at exploding rabbits.

Our local variety is much smaller than those you have in the east. They really aren't worth hunting. In the last couple weeks, our cat has managed to smuggle 3 dead ones into the house.

Couple of weeks ago I watched one build her nest right in the middle of our back yard! We had to put our Shorthair down a few months ago, now the rabbits and squirrels have gotten brave. Well I've got some bad news for them, there's a new sheriff in town. You need one of these too Mark...

He uses a little peashooter.....

same here

they are everywhere. but I suspect by end of summer they will be thinned out quite well.

I don't mind them though, they can eat my grass as much as they want.

Lots of them around here, too. Little desert cottontails, though, they don't eat much and aren't much to eat.

45/70 works on them too.

Wow. Instant rabbit stew!

That will do the job. The neighbors all want to borrow mine.

Our cat used to clean 'em out when they were little. Used to leave either a hind foot or the heart on the back step. He lived to be 20, slowed down, and a fox got him.

We our first ever cottontail move in under my shed last summer, I didn't think it would survive the winter with the eagles, hawks, coyotes, etc. The little bugger did and we have a bunch more rabbits this summer. They don't bother much around here, at least a lot less than ground squirrels and deer.

They explode every spring around here. Fall and winter they move into the thick stuff and make me work to put them in the freezer. Eastern cottontails are good eating!

Oh Damn! Don't do that t ome Al!
We are trying the dogless routine around here now that the daughter moved her dog to Milwaukee.
A lot of travel is in the forecst for the next few years, so a dog is out. And I keep repeating it...I will not get a dog, I will not get a dog....
A friend of mine has a 12 wk. Weimaraner pup that I dare not look at. I'll be really scarce around his place till she has a new home.

Why waste ammo? I've killed many cottontails using a wrist rocket and marbles.

I don't own a wrist rocket.
The 5mm Sheridan was my first firearm.
Dad didn't believe in BB guns, so I got a Blue Streak for my 7th birthday.

I saw a cottontail explode when my brother shot it with his 8 X 57 Mauser.

Or this ........

I hear that Weimaraners especially like to ride in vehicles, so the extensive travel is not going to be a problem... Ha! :-)

You need to get that puppy!

John (an enabler in Sweden)

Nice shot. I haven't used a blow gun in years. I do hunt with a slingshot, but I'm not killing local rabbits. Instead, I am trapping them, and releasing them on my hunting property.
We had a blizzard here back in '76 or '78 that killed off @90% of the local rabbits. We had no open seasons for 10 years, and still have far fewer rabbit than we used to.
Snow shoe hares are being reintroduced, and protected, and some folks are breeding thier own eating rabbits.

I have noticed the same on my homestead, more rabbits than usual, they seem to be everywhere this year! I am hopeful for a productive season this winter.

More rabbits than usual, still not enough of them to start eating them though.

Rabbit over fire makes a fine meal.

I remember back in the 1970's when there was an explosion of rabbits in Mud Lake Idaho. We would go there on the weekends. If I recall, I think that I toasted 300+ in one day when I was a kid.

Was a lot of fun.

It wasn't just Mud Lake. It was all across so. Idaho. A rancher I knew back then took a photo of the rabbits around a hay stack. He had it enlarged and started counting, putting a black dot on each one. He gave it up at around 3000 and he was a long way from finished. They'd eat through the bottom bales on a haystack until it fell over. Those were jack rabbits, though, not cottontails. They crashed the next winter and have never come back even remotely close to those numbers, at least not here.

I don't see many woodchucks at all these days in New England!

Your profile shows you in NY where I used to hunt chucks. I shot a lot of chucks around Millerton NY decades ago.

You sure there are chucks there?

6'? Oh hell yeah! I was thinking one of those gun show blow guns...


DMc : )

Cottontails have roughly a 10 year cycle, snowshoes about 13. It can vary a couple years either way, depending on weather, predators, forage, how hard they crash, and maybe some other factors.

So wait a couple, protect your orchard and ornamental trees meanwhile, shoot the crap out of them, and you will be fine.

I always found interesting that a couple Canadian studies have shown that the number one predator on snowshoe hare babies under the age of 2 weeks is the little red pine squirrel.

One difference, (there are several) between hares and rabbits, is that rabbits keep their babies all in one nest, at first, while snowshoes stash their several babies singly in different locations. Dunno about Jacks. Those are hares also, right?

Slingshot.

The lost art....




Dave

No dog mark?
WTF?

That Blue Streak and skillet/pot will solve your problem.

I think elkhunternm explodes rabbits.

We have a lot of whitetail jack rabbits around here which are often mistaken for snowshoes. The mistake is so common that many people who've lived in the high desert all their lives don't even know there is a whitetailed jack. They think they're all snowshoes which don't live here at all. Whitetails live at higher elevations than blacktail jacks and turn white in the winter, which blacktails don't. Of course jacks are hares but I've never heard the term 'jack hare'.
Another difference between rabbits & hares is that hares have a 2 week longer gestation than rabbits so the young are born more fully developed. Rabbits are born naked and with their eyes closed while hares are born fully haired and with the eyes open. Hares are ready to leave the nest much sooner than rabbits. With some exceptions, rabbits nest in a burrow while hares just make a form, which is just a depression under a bush or something, to give birth.

I shoot them with my bow. Its quiet

We had a bunch around here the last couple of years, and they kept getting into my high tunnel and eating the crops in there. I'd wait until it got dark, take a light and a shotgun, and go kill a couple. After about a dozen bit the dust, they quit getting in there.

We were hiking in the hills north of Vernal, Ut. and spotted movement under some Junipers. I put my glasses on it and spotted the largest rabbit I have ever seen in the wild. I thought it might be a Snowshoe but when I looked it up it was a Whitetail Jack. I would bet they are better eating than Blacktails.


mike r

Where's the like button on this thing?

The differences between rabbits and hares are interesting. Did not know that. It has been my observation there is an inverse relationship between predators and rabbits. Probably applies to other prey animals as well but I have mostly noticed it with rabbits. As the population of predators increases, the population of rabbits decreases and vice versa. They never to seem to reach equilibrium but always changing and balance out over the long run.

The top pic is a whitetailed jack and the bottom is a snowshoe. Other than ear length and the black tips on the jack's ears, they look very much alike. Their ranges often overlap so it's not hard to mix them up.

Use a 22cal but use shorts.

We have 'em by the car load in my neighborhood as well. They are often squished by cars and wind up as food for the Magpies.

If one ventures into my backyard and one of my dogs isn't handy, my recurve does a fine job of sticking 'em to the turf using Red Feather Talon small game heads.

Yeah, they blow up real good when you chuck the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch at 'em.

Nahh, not right now 'bender.

There's going to be too much travel for a few years since I've recently retired.

Since this thread started, the Blue Streak has accounted for 4 of the fuzzy vandals.

Boy, a good young beagle would be in 7th Heaven running all those bunnies. I sure miss hunting rabbits over a good beagle.