The Rabbit Hunt
My cousins and I had a tradition of hunting jack rabbits the day after Christmas. If memory serves me correctly, this hunt occurred in 1988, or was it 89. Well it doesn't really matter. It could have been 1987 for all I remember. The day started out really slow. The first three or four places we tried had no rabbits or sign anywhere. There was a foot or two of fresh snow on the ground so sign was easy to spot from a distance. There were six of us on this hunt. Five of us were using center fire rifles, the other had a borrowed Ruger 10/22. This trip was about to become the most fantastic rabbit hunt any of us has had before or since.
As we rounded a bend in the road, I saw the hillside was covered with rabbit tracks. This hillside was about three hundred yards long, and about forty or fifty yards wide. Unfortunately the land was privately owned, and it was posted. NO TRESPASSING. Bummer. On the other side of the hill was a corral full of cattle, and the hay stack next to it was shaped like a mushroom. The rabbits were destroying it. There was a rancher there feeding the cows. I stopped and asked the rancher if we could hunt this hillside and maybe help him out a bit with the rabbit problem. His response was something like "Please, kill them all!!" We told him that we would be happy to try.
As we started pushing the hillside, we were amazed at how many rabbits were there. Rabbits were running every where. The longest shot that we were taking was maybe 30 yards. There was at least three rabbits in view at all times. We didn't miss much at all. My best guess was that we had a 90 percent hit rate. I shot so much and so fast that the barrel on my 243 was smoking. I brushed it with my arm and it blistered the skin. I'm pretty sure that I destroyed the barrel on this gun in this one outing. The five guys with the rifles each had about 100 rounds when we started pushing this hillside. By the time we reached the end of the hill we were all out of ammo. I have no idea how many rounds the one with the 10/22 shot. We didn't miss much. My best estimate was 450+ rabbits in less that 45 minutes. The snow had a red haze to it when we were done. There wasn't much white left. Rabbit hunting has never been the same since The Rabbit Hunt.
"The Rabbit Hunt" -> Date Last Updated 02-25-2007
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