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The rabbit habit is hard to break




The end of the chase.Larry Woody/Wilson Post

The end of the chase.Larry Woody/Wilson Post

I bagged my first bunny at age 10, and it wasn’t exactly a Hemingway hunt.

I sneaked up on the buck-toothed bandit as it munched beans in my grandma’s garden and popped it with my little .410 scattergun.

We had delicious hasenpfeffer for supper. It seemed fair; the rabbit ate our veggies and we ate the rabbit.

(Old joke: “Waiter, there’s a hare in my soup!”)

A lot of fur has flown since then, and another rabbit season is underway. Troops of Elmer Fudds are on the march, beating the bushes in pursuit of cottontails.

Rabbit hunting, like everything else nowadays, is more complicated than it used to be. As kids, we simply moseyed over to a nearby field or old orchard, kicked brush piles and fence rows, and out bounced the bunnies.

Nowadays old fields and orchards are hard to find. Rabbit habitat (rabbit-tat?) is vanishing. You can’t hunt cottontails on golf courses and in shopping malls.

But it was fun while it lasted.

My favorite time to hunt was on a morning after a snowfall. Rabbits fed in fields overnight, and you could find their tracks in the fresh snow. Just follow the dotted line.

Like all hunting, tracking rabbits in the snow wasn’t just about rabbits. There’s nothing more silent than a snow-smothered woods, cedars bowed, the breathless hush broken only by the crack of a frozen limb or the distant caw of a cranky crow.

It was like hunting in a Christmas card.

Later on, a buddy acquired some beagles – what we called “rabbit dogs” — and we didn’t need snow to trail our quarry. The frisky little pooches did the tracking, wet noses sniffing the ground as they scurried to and fro, ears flopping and tails wagging like windshield wipers.

When one of the dogs picked up a scent it would throw back its head and howl: “I got one! Let’s go!”

The rest of the pack would join in, and off they’d romp, yelping and baying. Some rabbit hunters go mainly to listen to the beagle music; the rabbits are just an excuse.

When a rabbit is jumped it will generally circle back, and you can follow its progress by the chorus of the hounds. As the baying gets closer and closer, the little band of Fudds assume port-arms and get ready.

And suddenly here it comes.

The cottontail – which gets its name from its (duh!) cotton-like tail – comes bouncing through the saw-briars and brambles, zigging and zagging, and guns start popping.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Just ask the greyhounds that chase mechanical rabbits around dog tracks. Have you ever seen them catch one?

But sometimes the rabbit zigs when it should have zagged, and the chase is over. The exhausted beagles trot up, panting and tongues lolling, and jostle for congratulatory ear scratches and tummy rubs.

It’s a special outdoors moment.

Rabbit hunters grow old, but rabbit hunting never does.

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