[outdoors]
Rascally Rabbits
A chance encounter brings memories of bunny games BY DENNIS SMITH
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One morning last winter, the thermometer on our little indoor weather station read 2 degrees below zero. There was an inch of sparkling new snow blanketing everything in sight and the air outside was so cold and sharp, my nostrils pinched shut with every breath as I picked my way cautiously down the driveway to get the morning paper. On my way back up the drive, I saw the bunny tracks. They came from the neighbor’s juniper patch across the street and led into a similar thick hedge in our yard and onto our front lawn. The bunny sat there a few feet away, hunkered down, ears laid back, legs pulled tight up under its belly, its little nose twitching nervously this way and that, contemplating, I suppose, whether it should squirt back into the tangled security of the junipers or wait out the funny looking giant in the red plaid pajamas and camouflage stocking cap. It chose the latter. Tough little bugger, I thought, to be out prancing about in this cold. It occurred to me that if I’d been 13 years old and back in the little Catskill mountain town where I grew up, I probably would have been doing a bit of prancing myself. Prancing with anticipation at the prospects of another frosty morning rabbit hunt with my brother, my dad, our two little beagle hounds, Queenie and Thor, and Belle, our mournful-voiced basset hound. Instead, I headed for the coffeepot, the fireplace and the editorial page of the local paper. But the little bunny had worked its magic, and I soon found myself recalling some of those rabbit hunts from years gone by. We’d stalk neighborhood woodlots, briar patches and slash piles in hopes of “kicking up” a rabbit. As soon as one flushed, we’d put one of our short-legged hounds on its track and then sit back and listen to the hilarity of a hare and hound escapade unfold. More
often than not, the rabbit would play for a while and then dive down a convenient hole when it tired of the game. I sometimes think the rabbits had as much fun at confounding the hounds as the dogs had chasing them in the first place. They were happy times for sure, occasionally followed by a family dinner of southernfried rabbit, mashed potatoes with country gravy and cornbread. Today I know of few people in Colorado who hunt rabbits with any degree of seriousness, and almost none of them use trailing hounds. Hunters here concentrate on big game and waterfowl. Of those who pursue small or upland game, most focus on turkeys, doves and pheasants, while a relative few hunt dusky grouse, bobwhite quail or sage grouse. Still fewer hunt rabbits. In fact, the only dedicated rabbit hunters I know in Colorado are the neighborhood foxes. And I find it especially amusing that they employ many of the same tactics we did back in the day: They stalk the tangled shrubs and field edges in hopes of flushing a bunny from protective cover, then trail it by scent until they lose the trail or capture the little bugger and either eat it on the spot or bring it home to their pups for dinner. The only part they’re missing is the mashed potatoes, gravy and cornbread.
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