HUNTING
WILD RABBIT FOOD
Find Railroad Track and High-Voltage Bunnies
EDITOR’S NOTE: Large-scale farming has affected
rabbits in the South. Clearing vast tracts of woods
and swamps to plant agricultural crops has meant losing
much of the rabbits’ habitat. Even though the
hedge rows between these large fields have produced
outstanding rabbit hunting that season, in the past
few years, we’ve watched rabbit populations decline.
Rabbits, like all other wild species, must have a combination
of ample food and proper cover to survive. If an area
loses either one, bunnies just can’t flourish.
Throughout much of our region, farming practices have
changed. The small-plot family farm either has been
abandoned or replaced with big-field farms, which are
not conductive to rabbit hunting. So where can hunters
go to find plenty of bunnies? The answer’s
quite simple – anywhere you find an abundant food
source and cover to protect the rabbits. Let’s
see if we can define some rabbit-food hot spots and
learn how to hunt them.
Throughout much of the country, you’ll find abandoned
railroad tracks. Most of the time when builders make
railroad beds, they’ll build the tracks on some
type of mound above the surrounding ground level. In
many areas along the edges of these old, abandoned railroad
tracks, you’ll find briar and high grass thickets,
which rabbits dearly love. When I hunted with one of
my favorite rabbit-hunting buddies, Mel Stewart, we
found some outstanding beagle-dog bunny hunting along
an abandoned railroad track in the southern part of
my state. “John, I like to hunt railroad tracks
because a hunter can stand on the side of the roadbed,
look down in the cover and spot the bunnies when they
move,” Stewart told me. “Another hunter
can stand on the opposite side of that thick cover and
see the rabbits as they break to come out of the thicket.
My favorite railroad tracks to hunt are abandoned railroad
beds that go through farm country or that run along
the edges of creeks or parallel to old roads. If you
can identify one of these places that also has a clearing
on the opposite side of the roadbed, you usually can
discover plenty of bunnies.
If your dogs like to jump deer and run them, you can
quickly and easily get ahead of your dogs if you see
a whitetail instead of a cottontail, when hunting abandoned
railroad tracks. My dogs have the advantage of being
raised and trained to be deer-proof. When I rabbit hunt,
I don’t want to spend time catching up to dogs
that are chasing deer instead of rabbit hunting. I prefer
to devote all my time to chasing rabbits.” However,
if you plan to hunt railroad-track rabbits, make sure
the railroad tracks no longer carry trains on them,
and that no law in your state prohibits hunting a certain
distance from railroad tracks. Many states allow hunting
on the right-of-ways on the sides of abandoned railroad
tracks. But, the right-of-ways on the edge of railroad
tracks still in use can’t be hunted in most states.
Check with your state’s Department of Conservation.
Search For High-Voltage Bunnies:
You’ll often find some of the best rabbit hunting
ever along the right-of-ways with electrical power lines
over them. Because of the regular clearing of power
line right-of-ways, new growth of young grasses, close
to the ground that rabbits can feed on, appear under
these power lines. A large landowner in my state was
very reluctant to grant permission for hunters to hunt
his land. However, when I explained that all I wanted
to hunt was the power line right-of-ways,
I was granted permission, and had some superb rabbit
hunting all season long. Because right-of-ways are often
planted with grasses to keep down the growth of weeds,
they provide abundant habitat and food for the rabbit.
In many states, power line right-of-ways are planted
as greenfields for deer. In some states, these right-of-ways
are permitted to grow up with briars and brambles. But
in most states, power line right-of-ways provide hot-spots
for bunnies and the hunters who know how to hunt under
the high-voltage lines.
TOMORROW: USE HOT COUNTRY RABBIT
HUNTING TACTICS AND HUNT HIGH SPOTS AND PROTECTED PLACES
IN THE FLOODS
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