Henry Rifle Forums

Anyone have any ideas to share on good tactics for rabbit hunting? I’m in the PNW and we have eastern cottontails (those I just need to shoot at home to get) and snowshoe hares. I’m thinking more about the hares. I see lots of tracks when I’m driving my snowcat, but that’s at night and we can only hunt an hour before sunrise to an hour past sunset. What are the ssh’s daytime habits?

Red,

This may or may not be helpful. Here in MO we have a good conservation dept (MDC) that has training classes on hunting different game, firearms, habitats, where to hunt, etc. You might check yours out...looks like you could have two resources in support of either Blaine or Whiterock.

I hope to do some rabbit hunting before rabbit season ends here next February, which will also be my first experience hunting this small game. So I've read some MDC info and did take one rabbit hunting class offered by them. We have two primary rabbit types here: Eastern Cottontail and Swamp. Don't know anything about your ssh.

Here are two examples from the rabbit web pages from the MDC. They state that rabbit hunting is "simple," and doesn't take much equipment or lots of prep. I always like the simple stuff!

https://huntfish.mdc.mo.gov/hunting-tra ... ng-started

https://huntfish.mdc.mo.gov/hunting-tra ... ety-health

At the "health" link, the MDC provided info about a rabbit disease (tularemia) which happens in Eastern Cottontails. I think that's an important read; it was new to me for sure.

If nothing else, this info might give you a couple of ideas on where to look for info about the rabbit population in the PNW. Have a great hunting season.

PT7

Redthies wrote:Anyone have any ideas to share on good tactics for rabbit hunting? I’m in the PNW and we have eastern cottontails (those I just need to shoot at home to get) and snowshoe hares. I’m thinking more about the hares. I see lots of tracks when I’m driving my snowcat, but that’s at night and we can only hunt an hour before sunrise to an hour past sunset. What are the ssh’s daytime habits?

Thanks PT7. I’ll give them a read. I’ve seen swamp rabbits (Steve Rinella does a hunt on one of his Meat Eater episodes). Those things are BIG! I’d heard about the cottontail disease but it had slipped my mind. Snowshoe hares are the native species up in the mountains around here. I see them a lot in the summer, but they have a decided advantage when the snow flies!

We have both species in our north woods, but I very seldom see Snowshoes or even Cottontails out in daytime and I'm out in the woods on a daily basis. They both hole up very tight by day, up here, possibly because we have a lot of predators in our woods, compared to farm country. Definitely tended to see more Cottontails by day when living in farm country.

I think I'd do the same old find the heavy brush and you'll find rabbits technique I used to use, backing the day.

Despite the fact that rabbit season never closes in Fla, I have never shot one, mostly due to fears stated in second link. There are plenty of them around right now, though. Don't know if it's related to the squirrel population being way down. We have some owls on the property; saw one flying with a dead squirrel last week down the driveway. The rabbits might be too heavy for the owls, cause they just sit out in the open; don't know...........

I haven't thought about rabbit hunting in many, many years .... do you have access to a few beagles .. .. I quickly learned back in the mid '60's when I hunted in the Western NC mountains with my Grandfather that without dogs you end up doing a great deal of walking and end up with few rabbits to show for it .... for our hunts we'd turn the dogs loose in a field and let them work .... when they'd jump one we'd amble over to that general location as we listened to the dogs run .... beautiful music indeed .. .. inevitably the rabbit would make a large circle and end up back in the area where the dogs had jumped him .... we'd shoot the rabbit, gather up the dogs and move on across the field .... lots of good memories, thanks for reviving them