Rabbit hunting

“ It certainly has every element of rational outdoor recreation. It ministers to the most exhilarating and healthful exercise; it furnishes saving relief from care and overwork; it is free from wantonness and inexcusable destruction of animal life, and, if luck favors, it gives play to innocent but gratifying self-conceit.
Let us remember, however, that if rabbit hunting is to be a manly outdoor recreation, entirely free from [Pg 161] meanness, and a sport in which a true hunter can indulge without shame, the little cotton-tail must in all circumstances be given a fair chance for his life. ”

“ They refuse to be exterminated. Half of them annually outwit all their enemies—smart as they are; they avoid death by hunger and cold, and they go on breeding in defiance of wild men, beasts and birds. Is it not wonderful— the mentality of the gray rabbit? Again we say—the wild animal must think or die.
In recognizing man's protection and friendship, the rabbit is as quick on the draw as the gray squirrel. In our Zoological Park where we constantly kill hunting cats in order that our little wild neighbors, the rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks may live, the rabbits live literally in our midst. ”

“ My father is a harness-maker, and I help him morning and evening, before and after school, and at night I read Young People. I saw in No. 24 a little letter from Joseph D. asking how to tame wild rabbits. My brother was out hunting one day, and his dog caught a rabbit by the leg. The leg was broken, so my brother took some pine splinters and cut them into pieces about two inches long and a quarter of an inch wide, and bound them round the leg, and it got well. He tamed the rabbit by reaching his hand into the cage where he kept it, and rubbing it gently. ”

“ So the other little boy put on his bark moccasins, and they took their strings of corn-cakes and bows and arrows, and started off as fast as they could. Well, they went off among the hills at the foot of Thunder Mountain. It was only a little while ere they struck a rabbit trail, and the first arrow they shot killed the rabbit. So they kept on hunting until they had a large number of rabbits and began to get tired. ”

“ Now when you shoot the game, pick it up and wait until your dog comes, then show it to him, but never let him eat one, for if you only cripple one he will catch and eat it. Teach him in the start to hold game until you come to him. Now to get him to start to hunt another rabbit may be your trouble. He may want to stay with you and try to steal your rabbit. ”

“ But the hunter raised his bow and shot Deer. He carried the deer meat back to his wigwam.
The shade of Deer at once went to the council of birds and animals. He told Rabbit all about it.
Rabbit said, “I told you that you could not eat people. You see how it is? Now you will have to live on grass and twigs.”
And so they do, even to this day.
[Pg 128]
HOW RABBIT SNARED THE SUN Biloxi
RABBIT and his grandmother lived in a wigwam. Rabbit used to go hunting every day, very early in the morning. But no matter how early he went, a person leaving long footprints had passed along ahead of him. ”

“ The ermine is one of the smallest of all hunters, but it can throw an enemy off the scent by diving under snow. The rabbit is one of the most helpless of all hunted things, but it can take cover from foes of the air under thorny brush, and run fast enough to outwind the breath of a pursuer, and double back quick enough to send a harrying eagle flopping head over heels on the ground, and simulate the stillness of inanimate objects surrounding it so truly that the passer-by can scarcely distinguish the balls of fawn fur from the russet bark of a log. ”

“ There is the rifled nest of a poor grouse—eggs sucked, or chickens murdered, the nest fouled so that it emits the stench of a skunk, or the mother hen lying dead from a wound in her throat. There is the frightened rabbit loping across the fields in the wildest, wobbliest, most woe-begone leaps, trying to shake something off that is clinging to his throat till over he tumbles—the prey of a hunter that is barely the size of rabbit's paw. There is the water-rat flitting across the rocks in blind terror, regardless of the watching trapper, caring only to reach safety—water—water! ”

“ Often a rabbit-chase comes to an end in a few minutes, that is to say, when the rabbit succeeds after a few hot lengths of running, in ducking into the underbrush and hiding, or in throwing his pursuer off his trail by means of feints and quick double turns, so that the four-legged hunter, sorely puzzled and uncertain, jumps hither and thither, whilst I shout bloodthirsty advice to him and with frantic gesticulations of my cane try to point out to him the direction in which I saw the rabbit escape. ”

“ Over and over they go, bounding and bouncing, snapping from their marvelous hind legs as if shot from a spring-trap. It is the greatest jumping exhibition that you will ever see. To have such legs as these is the next best thing to having wings.
Right in the thick of the fun sounds a sharp thump! thump! Every rabbit "freezes." It is the stamp of an old buck, the call, Danger! danger! He has heard a twig break in the woods, or has seen a soft, shadowy thing cross the moon.
As motionless as stumps squat the rabbits, stiff with the tenseness of every ready muscle. They listen. ”

“ On the fifth morning, if the hunt be for rabbits, the men and women of the village prepare to join in the chase by first having their heads bathed 119in yucca suds and then donning their best apparel; only men hunt for the larger game. Rabbits are hunted on horseback with rabbit sticks; deer, on foot and with the rifle in preference to the arrow. ”

“ The rabbit has its wild enemies, ever watchful, ever close on its trail. The hawk, the mink, the weasel, the fox, the lynx, and others are rabbit hunters. Besides his quick hearing, and his swiftness, Br'er Rabbit has a wonderful power of becoming invisible. His nondescript colour, combined with his ability to "freeze," serve him as well as a cloak of darkness. The cotton-tail rabbit is commonest in the Middle and Southern states, while his bigger cousin, the varying hare, overlaps the rabbit's territory in the colder parts, and takes his place in the most Northern states. ”

“ The rabbits (pretty innocent little creatures I had thought them, as I gazed at their representatives of white canton flannel, solidly stuffed, with such charming eyes of pink beads) girded all my young trees and killed them before I dreamed of such mischief, nibbled at every tender sprout, every swelling bud, were so agile that they could not be captured, and became such a maddening nuisance that I hired a boy to take them away. I fully understand the recent excitement of the Australians over the rabbit scourge which threatened to devastate their land. ”

“ Snow-shoe rabbits were plentiful and wherever their runways led in and out of the scrub-spruce and fir covers, there those furred assassins of the forest, the fox and the lynx, the fisher and the marten, were sure to make their hunting-grounds. ”

“ If the hungry hunter happened to be a mink or a weasel he could crawl in after them and kill them.
The bunnies did not try to dig their own holes. They were really hares, though they were so much like rabbits, who were true burrowers. Once in the woods the bravest bunny saw a true rabbit. This rabbit had a family of little ones in a deep burrow. They had been born blind and naked, but the little hares had been born with their eyes open and fur on their bodies. True rabbits were brought to America from across the sea. ”

“ But the quadrennial sacred rabbit hunt, the hunt with the koko or gods, is in an important part a phallic rite. Upon its proper performance and the correct stage-managing of the Chakwena, the Rabbit Huntress, depend the plentifulness of rabbits and of humans. Four days before the time set for the hunt a single rabbit is killed and its blood smeared on the legs of the Chakwena—to be rubbed off in the hunt against the plants she brushes through. For failure to catch a rabbit in the chase, four times a man or a “god” is struck, once on each arm and each leg. ”

“ The food of the rabbit consists of grasses, bark, leaves, bulbs, young twigs, buds, berries and the like, and of cultivated vegetables of all kinds, when opportunity favors. When surprised in the woods it manifests its alarm by violently striking the ground with its feet, causing the peculiar sound so often noticed at their first jump. The animal is fond of pursuing a beaten path in the woods, and is often snared at such places. Its enemies, beside man, are the lynx, and other carnivorous animals, hawks, owls, and even the domestic cat. ”

“ In a year of scarcity of fruits, when the fisher has to depend on his own adroitness in securing his food, I have read the signs and seen where one has been very persistent in running down a rabbit, the chase being up and down, in and out, until bunny was overtaken, killed and eaten. ”

“ There are times when rabbits get too numerous, and times when they are needed to eat, and times when you want to try your hand at taming a wild one. Under these circumstances it is legitimate sport to hunt or trap them. If damage is being done to crops in the spring we shall be forced to wage war against them in self-defence during their breeding season. Otherwise no sportsman would do it. If there is so little legitimate rabbit food in winter that they are driven to destroy fruit trees to get a little bark, then the inference is that there are too many rabbits. ”

“ As they close in on the rabbit, those nearest it throw their boomerangs, and whoever hits it is off in a moment to claim and pick up his game. If the rabbit is not already dead, it is at once dispatched by a blow with the hand, and then it is raised to the mouth, and the hunter inhales, believing he is taking in the spirit of the rabbit. ”

“ It is evident that the show-fight instinct cannot have been developed in Himalayan rabbits by means of natural selection, but it is no less evident that if it ever arose in wild rabbits it would be preserved and intensified by such means.
The following observation of my own on a previously unnoticed instinct displayed by wild rabbits is, I think, of sufficient interest to render. Most people are aware that if a rabbit is shot near the mouth of its burrow, the animal will employ the last remnant of its life in struggling into it. ”

“ This is a favourite spot from whence to get a shot at them, but the aim must be deadly, or the rabbit will escape though never so severely wounded. The holes are so numerous that he has never more than a yard to scramble, and as he goes down into the earth his own weight carries him on. If he can but live ten seconds after the lead strikes him, he will generally escape you. Watching patiently (without firing) , after the twilight has deepened into night presently you are aware of a longer, larger creature than a rabbit stealing out, seeming to travel close to the earth: it is a badger. ”

“ In this month, the brown-jacketed American hare, which our folk will persist in calling Rabbit—though it neither lives in warrens, nor burrows habitually under ground, and though it breeds not every month in the year, which are the true distinctive characteristics of the Rabbit—is in his prime of conditions, the leverets of the season, plump and well grown; and the old bucks and does, recruited after the breeding season, in high health and strength, and now legitimate food for gunpowder, legitimate quarry for the chase of the merry beagles. ”

“ Rag early learnt what some rabbits never learn at all, that 'hole-up' is not such a fine ruse as it seems; it may be the certain safety of a wise rabbit, but soon or late is a sure death-trap to a fool. A young rabbit always thinks of it first, an old rabbit never tries it till all others fail. It means escape from a man or dog, a fox or a bird of prey, but it means sudden death if the foe is a ferret, mink, skunk, or weasel.
There were but two ground-holes in the Swamp. ”

“ Shooting generally commences with picking out the young rabbits about the middle or towards the end of the hay harvest, according as the season is early or late. Some are shot by the farmers, who have the right to use a gun, earlier than this, while they still disport in the mowing grass. It requires experience and skill to select the young rabbit just fit for table from the old bucks, the does which may yet bring forth another litter, and those little bunnies that do not exceed the size of rats.
The grass conceals the body of the animal, and nothing is visible beyond the tips of the ears ”

“ He scrutinised with appraising care a big brown rabbit which came bounding in a leisurely fashion down the tote-road and sat up on his hindquarters near the stump, staring about with its mild, bulging eyes, and waving its long ears this way and that, to question every minutest wilderness sound; and he decided that the rabbit, for all its bulk and apparent vigour of limb, would not be a dangerous opponent. In fact, he thought of hopping down from his perch and putting the big innocent to flight, just to compensate himself for having had to flee from the fox. ”

“ The Rabbit lives in societies, and retires into burrows. It is not found on the open plain, but chooses for its home places where there are hillocks and woody banks. Like the Hare, the Rabbit has not a preference for day; but towards evening it comes forth and gambols about in the glades or nibbles the dewy herbage.
It has also, like the Hare, many enemies, and to escape them it takes refuge in its subterranean dwelling. As it has not the speed of the Hare, it would be rapidly overtaken by Dogs if it trusted to its powers of flight. ”