vintage Rabbit gunning
 

Kathy G. is going through her family stuff and came up with this “After the Rabbit Hunt” tableau. Her grand-father would have been hunting with his brothers on the family’s farm property in Dorchester, New Hampshire, circa 1920.

What did they raise on the farm, Rabbits ?

I would have enjoyed being on a hunt like that...great photo....charlie

Families, anyway.

Subsistence farming in a family that included six boys and two girls.

Here is a photo of Herbert, rounding out their diet with what I would guess were Smallmouth Bass.

Yep, they look like smallies.





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Great photos! Always nice to glimpse the past through the viewfinder of a family camera.

I've had just one day like that with rabbits in my lifetime. During a very high rabbit year here in Alaska a friend and I went out to harvest trapping bait and shot 52 hares in 2 hrs with Winchester pump .22's and were still surrounded by them in every direction. Only reason we quit was running outa bullets! His very aged black lab had the time of his life retrieving every single hare - that part of it alone made the day worthwhile in spades. He was in heaven! How many dogs get to make 52 retrieves in a day?!

Richard that was some rabbit hunt....that had to be the best rabbit hunt ever...reckon how many rabbits if you had more shells...charlie

Kathy raises the right questions, though. Shortly after she produced the photo she wondered: Whatever happened to those guns?

52 retrieves for a dove dog would be fairly commonplace, especially early in the season and if you are the only guy in the party with a dog.

I live fairly close to Dorchester, NH. NH back in the mid 1800's was 90% cleared for farming. Now it is 90% forested. When that picture was taken it was growing back to forested and great habitat for snowshoe hares, our native "rabbits" if you will. We have always had Cottontail Rabbits, a true rabbit in the central to southern part of the state but they are endangered now. Not many snowshoe hares now south of the white mountains due to habitat degradation. Those hares would have been shot in the fall before they turned pure white for winter.