COTTONTAILS
 

No quail left so the best small game hunting now is rabbit. But we don't know how long that will last with idiots proposing that one can't run dogs (all breeds) unless you have 1000 acres. Hunting with a cousin and his grandson it is usually an all Parker day (unless I change). We killed five in a half day Saturday; all we feel like hunting in our advanced days but we had chases all the time in the worst thicket you have ever seen. My cousin skins them as they are killed so one is being skinned in the first photo of three and finally two came to me after the first three killed by them. Parkers went 5 for 6, a good average.
Top to bottom: 12 Trojan, 16 DHE, 20 Trojan. All with open chokes in the right barrel. 2nd photo my two with the cylinder choke of the DHE 16,

One really has to rethink gun mount when moving from flushing quail to bounding rabbits. I don't shoot at rabbits enough to be any good at it. Looks like you guys did yourselves proud. Do you fry them at the truck as guys in the Ozarks do?

Thanks for posting. It's a snowy day here in North Missouri, and our rabbit season runs to the middle of February. You've given me some inspiration!

Garry,

No we soak them in salt water before cooking so not at the truck. My cousin who owns the dogs started skinning them as they were killed so one does not have to do it when he gets home. The plastic bags from retailers are good for something. I wear gloves so I don't get bloody and I still have a fear of disease from them for I have known a person who got "rabbit fever" and spent time in the hospital very sick.

My Father always warned us not to shoot at rabbits as it would give the dogs bad habits.

My only rabbit hunting experience was opening weekend 1972 in Southern California where the Naval Infantry provided us swabbies with a wonderful hunting preserve (aka Camp Pendleton). We were allowed eight per day but the three of us didn't want to be game hogs and only took 68. One of the guys had struck a deal with the Philippine Stewards at Miramar Naval Air Station. We took eight and sold them 60. I've always wondered if they ate the rabbits themselves or fed them to the officers.

I remember my first cottontail from my 12th birthday in January of 1960.
Here is an excerpt from my yet-unpublished book.

I have rarely hunted rabbits exclusively, most often they have been a nice addition to the game bag when hunting pheasants, grouse and woodcock. And, as Dave says, never have I shot at a rabbit while hunting with a dog. It really can spoil a good bird dog, nevermind how dangerous it can be for the dog. My cousin in Ohio shot his own dog while rabbit hunting. He saw it streaking through the tall grass and thinking it was the rabbit, he fired, critically wounding it. I can’t even imagine how terrible it must have been for him to administer that second shot relieving him of the pain and agony...


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The only dogs that a rabbit should be shot in front of are beagles. My dad always kept them and I have spent many cold, frosty mornings afield listening to hounds chasing them thru the river bottoms and fields of the South.

Over the last year, having lost all of his older dogs, my cousin has put together the most motley looking pack of five beagles one could ever see. No uniformity of size or color; voices that go from a hound to a squeal. There is Tiny with her high pitch, and Ruby and G.P. named after his parents. But we have been into lots of rabbits lately, jumping twelve in one day and this had made them into a great pack.

On the other hand my wife worked for a "Beagler." With a pack of thirty dogs all the same size, the same speed, the same coloring, and the same voices. No rabbits are killed as a group of like minded folks follow the hunt master. Dogs that don't fit in are culled. I've got one given to me when I wanted a lone rabbit dog to hunt with. I could never catch the fool and he barks at me constantly to this day. He now sleeps all day in our bed and my wife won't let him out of the house for fear he will run off. Worthless to me but she loves him (it now).

On shooting rabbits in front of bird (quail) dogs, we all did it. It probably goes back to the depression and trying to survive. It never seemed to affect the dogs, and often they would track down a wounded rabbit you hit and bring him back to hand. They stood rabbits in the bed just like it was a bob white.

Nice assortment of rabbit guns Jerry.

Beagles are the dog for the job Reggie.

I cut my hunting teeth on rabbits behind beagles using a Savage 311 which I still have to this day. Every once in a while the dogs would flush quail. Talk about a rabbit hole involving SxS's and birds. We used to hunt where now sits BWI international airport. Now, if you showed up in that area with a shotgun the swat team would be on top of you. I'm not a big fan of progress.

I find it funny how people think about dogs. Growing up my uncles had "treeing hounds". They primarily hunted squirrels during the day and opossum at night because raccoons were supposedly scarce in the day. Well the coonhunters swore that hunting squirrels with coonhounds would ruin a good coon hound. And the foxhunters who ran dogs at night claimed that hunting rabbits with foxhounds would ruin a good fox hound.

I always kind of thought that a good treeing dog would tree anything and a good running dog could "run" anything and a good pointing dog would point anything (preferably flying things).

When I was a kid, and growing up without a living grandfather, we "adopted" and older former Texas League ball player and then trapper by the name of Wilbur Davis as a stand in. He was a noted coon hunter in the area (peninsular Virginia), and my brother and I loved his coon hounds. I especially loved "Stupid," a black and tan variant of some sort. Stupid would go squirrel hunting with me all the time. I remember Wilbur lamenting to my mother, "Miz Gawden, that boy done ruint my dawg!" I always saw his wink to her when he said this. At his death, his wife said he wanted me to have Stupid. We had no place to keep him where we lived, and so I had to turn him down. I still think about that every now and then.

I won't let my dogs chase rabbits, but if they point them on a slow day (and we have many in 21st Century Missouri), I just tell them "bunny!" and they know not to chase. If I would shoot rabbits over my dogs, and if I could shoot bucks over their points (not to mention turkeys), I'd be eating rabbit stew at every meal, and would be in the Boone and Crockett record book several times over.

Sorry to ramble, but Jerry's bunny hunt got me to thinking. Thanks, Jerry!