Part VI. THE GAME

Chapter 15. Rabbit Hunting

The cottontail rabbit is our most universal game. There isn't a state in the Union in which he isn't hunted. Farm boy with his single barrel mail order shotgun, sportsman with his imported, expensive double, they all go for cottontail rabbit hunting. He is an excellent target taken in front of beagles or basset hounds. He is a good target for riflemen still hunting with a .22 rifle. The number of rabbits killed each season reaches astronomical proportions.

Some are taken rabbit hunting; many are taken when out-doorsmen are hunting other game. One very good hunter of my acquaintance, while he will not shoot rabbit when hunting deer, always considers it a good omen when he jumps a few cottontails. If they are found out in the open at this time, very likely deer also will be outside the heavier cover. Like deer they have a propensity for feeding early mornings and late evenings. Again, like deer, they have the happy faculty of spending the day where they can soak up the late season warmth.

To find good rabbit hunting, like deer hunting, you must relate your game to the best available forage and cover condi­tions. This was indirectly touched upon in Chapter 2, Basic Hunting. It is re-emphasized here because of its importance. Obviously, no game stays in inhospitable cover by preference. The lush browse and the warm, storm sheltered range always prove more attractive.

If you find cover where frost lingers long after the sun has touched other sections with warmth, if you find cover which has scant browse, it is not good rabbit territory, nor good for any other game for that matter. The lush, overgrown, abandoned hill pastures, full of blackberry, short shrubs, clover, grass, wild cherry and sweet briar all indicate good hunting, for it adds up to warmth during the growing season and warmth during the late autumn when storms plaster the less sheltered sections with snow and sleet.

Cottontails are always plentiful in such cover. They are seldom found far from it unless pushed out by predators or heavy hunting. Good cover and game go together.

Ever hike through cottontail cover after the first fall of snow? Better yet, have you ever walked across snow sheltered fields during a full autumn moon when the light makes the entire cover a place of silver and shadow? If you have done this, you will be amused by the ludicrous antics, the downright enjoyment cottontail rabbits seem to get from this first fall of soft snow. They play, running in circle, leaping over bushes, chasing each other—dark shadows scurrying over the gleaming snow so fast your eyes can scarcely follow them.

Next morning the maze of tracks, apparently without rhyme or reason, testifies to the high revel they held during the night. Next morning, too, if you like to still hunt rabbit, developing skills which will make whitetail deer comparatively easy, you will find a very challenging quarry in these rabbits around the marge of those openings where they played during the full moon.

Work the edge of any hill, flat and high river bottom. Watch the cover for exit trails. Watch for sheltered places where any natural object cancels out winddrift, such as logs, stumps, rock ledges or slight rises in the ground. These are the places cottontails select for their forms. They snooze away the time between feeding periods or other activity in these sheltered spots.

Your best gun for this type of still hunting is a .22 rim fire rifle, using high speed hallow point bullets. This rifle should be a direct understudy of your big game rifle in action, stocking and sight.

Shots should be taken at the head, if your game is at rest. If you flush one and must take a running shot, then the aiming point should be the shoulder section, just the same as it will be on running deer.

The most essential gift a rabbit hunter can have is ability to see his quarry under almost impossible circumstances of cover and lighting. A cottontail blends in with about any back­ground. And, until your eyes are trained to see properly, they are about the most inconspicious game you ever hunted. After­wards, when you have trained yourself, and acute observation is habitual, you will marvel how easily they are separated from their backgrounds. This ability to see will not only pay off in the small game field, but is also one of your most valuable assets in big game hunting.

Close observation is a matter of seeing in detail. It is more mind training than eye-sight. It has its foundation in keen curiosity, wanting to know what game and game sign have to tell you—from cottontail to moose. A skilled rabbit hunter, like all skilled hunters regardless of the game, is constantly evaluat­ing cover, tracks and weather. He is relating these to the prob­able reaction of the game. He is reading a very interesting narrative of his game activity for the past twenty-four hours.

Still hunting cottontails with a rifle is only one phase of this sport. When we include Jackrabbit and snowshoe rabbit, the field for still hunting is much expanded. Still hunting jack-rabbit has many of the elements of mule deer hunting in it. Still hunting snowshoe rabbit requires plenty of good whitetail deer technique.

The snowshoe rabbit is more a creature of the big woods, the heavy cover sections, where you would normally hunt deer. Quite often he is found on the same range as whitetail deer. And in the mountains of the West he is found in the same cover as mule deer.

Fact is, while waiting for the annual migration of mule deer in the western foothills, I have spent plenty of time still hunt­ing snowshoe rabbit with my big game rifle, full powered loads, taking nothing but head shots. Usually, my best hunting would be along the jackpine thickets where bitterbrush and other low growing shrubs afforded plenty of lush feed and shelter. Late evening, at about the time you might expect deer to be on the move, or feeding, I would ease along the creek bottom, watch­ing the open hillsides above me for snowshoe rabbit. This was early enough in the season that they still wore their brownish-grey coats, and were not as well camouflaged as they would be later in the snow when they were completly dressed in white. Invariably, within a short hunt from camp, I would get some shooting.

Later, when the mule deer were on the move, pouring out of their high summer ranges, the very places where I hunted snowshoe rabbit would be favored by those old grey faced bucks as stop-over points in their migrations. The reason for this being the favorable nature of the cover—food, concealing shelter, and warmth.

Still hunting jackrabbit in the more open ranges has prob­ably taught more western hunters how to hit running deer than any other type of game. Get a jack running across a sagebrush flat, his long ears layed back, darting in and out of the sage­brush, and if you nail him consistently with your rifle, all other shooting at moving targets will seem comparatively easy.

Another good point about this rangy member of the rabbit family is that there is no closed season on him. Want to put in a summer vacation brushing up on your shooting techniques? Just about any western, or mid-western ranch can accommodate you, especially if it is devoted to the raising of alfalfa hay or grain.

Best of rabbit hunting, however, is shooting cottontail or snowshoe rabbit in front of hounds. This phase of hunting is an art within itself.

Hunt a life-time with hounds, your quarry rabbit, and still you will not come up with all the answers. The combination of rabbit and hound certainly doesn't lend itself to over simpli­fication. Even the problem of what type hound to use for this sport divides rabbit hunters into two distinct camps. There are those who want a fast hound, something which, as they con­tend, will make their quarry break cover. But, says your ex­ponent of the slow hounds, your fast dog will ground a rabbit too quickly for best sport. Push a cottontail closely with a pack of fast dogs and it is away to his burrow without farther ado.

A hunter cannot be neutral in this hound controversy and still be a dyed in the wool rabbit hunter. There is no middle ground. I am a slow hound man, myself, just as I am a slow hunter by nature, regardless of the type of game. A slow hound man has just two breeds of dogs in mind as suitable for rabbit hunting, Bassets and Beagles. Aside from the practical nature of this selection, there are aesthetic ones as well. Ever hear a Beagle belling across a wooded valley, the echoes full in the hemlocks? Ever hear a good chop mouthed Basset with a cottontail or snowshoe rabbit out front? Here is music to set your heart to dancing.

Here is something else, too. Just the right amount of speed to keep your quarry moving, without the compelling necessity of taking to earth.

When you put a trained Basset or Beagle down, watch the way he starts to work. In many ways this is the best part of your hunt. Those maze of rabbit tracks are eventually worked out; the exit trails from the openings are found. Then a tenative, mellow bay floats out of the thickets. Silence. Another mellow note, sincere and reassuring. Then he is in full cry, joined by his pack mate, if you are hunting two dogs.

If you have worked close with your dogs, watching the small lanes and openings to either side of the thickets, ten chances to one you are going to get an extra dividend of shooting. Cottontails will be flushed which your hounds are not trailing.

But this one they have jumped. Notice how straight away from his home cover he is running? Notice how he draws out the hounds? Intentional or otherwise, he is leading your dogs away from a fair concentration of his kind. But it is only for the moment.

Now is the time to plan your strategy. Move forward to the first opening the chase has crossed. Wait here. When that cottontail has unlimbered a bit he will circle. Those slow hounds, as persistent as tax collectors, are going to keep him on the move, and eventually the chase will end up on the home grounds. If you have selected a good position, and have the patience to wait it out, you will get a shot.

Snowshoe rabbits and cottontails have the same well defined trails as deer, and they are used for the same purpose. There are foraging trails through the lush browse; there are escape trails leading away from their forms, trails leading from one favored section of cover to another.

Their response to hunting is very similar to deer also, especi­ally cottontail. Jump one in this section today, and tomorrow you have a fine chance for a repeat performance. Find a section well populated with cottontail or snowshoe rabbits this fall, and it is a fine place to return next autumn when the rabbit season opens.

Rabbits are the one game which will respond to the best you can put into a hunt, running them with hounds or still hunting them with a .22 rifle. To be successful hunting rabbits you must use plenty of woodcraft, plenty of shooting skill. There should be just as much pride in bagging a mess of cot­tontail or snowshoe rabbits as there is in downing an elk, for both types of hunting levy equally on your ability as a woods­man and hunter. And while you hunt the former, you are get­ting wonderful training for hunting the latter.