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Overrun with Jack Rabbits

T

Triangle Bar

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 24, 2008
Messages
1,282
Location
S. Central Colorado
We've been blessed with about 24" of snow so far and with the horrible wind that came a few days after it has taken a while to get plowed out everywhere. I had been hauling from another stack and hadn't bothered to plow out to this stack. I had no idea the rabbits had been working this hard but I guess with everything else buried they don't have anything else to eat. It's just hard to see 'em eating $240/ton hay. :cry:

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The entire hay yard is littered with rabbit pellets. It looks like there was a whole herd of sheep in there.

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This is the only bale that has all the twine chewed through but I'm hoping I can re-tie it enough to get it loaded.

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Sorry, no photos of the rabbits they are to fast for this camera cowboy but you can see 'em running away through the sagebrush, just dozens and dozens of them.

I guess I better get to bed it is going to be a long day tomorrow trying to get all those bottom bales loaded on the kenworth. I guess I'll re-stack the rest on top of a bottom row of oat hay bales until I can get the rest trucked out of there.
 
Rabbits can sure raise hell with a haystack. Years ago (Like 1920) a man named Charlie Redd had a big ranch in S.E. Utah and the rabbits were tearing up the haystacks. He had a hired man build traps and every morning he'd go kill that trapped rabbits. Then they skinned them and fed them to their hogs. Come spring, the hired man bought a new pickup with the rabbit hide money. :D Hope you can find a way to run them off or ya may want to buy some hogs. :wink:
 
We had rabbits the last 3 or 4 years (at least I thought so till I saw your pictures), but this year the coyotes are back, and rabbit populations are declining. Our Coyotes were real mangey, but are having better pelts again this year. You've got a problem over there.
 
I tie up a couple good dogs with long leads. They eat good. Just make sure a herd of elk can't get at them. They will stomp and kill dogs.
 
WOW, incredible what they did! That hay looks beautiful. Your rabbits have good taste. We don't have many rabbits of either species.

A few years ago coming back from Belle Fourche SD to Bowman, ND we say a whole corral full of jack rabbits. It was really odd. When we stopped to check it out a little closer they skedaddled. We walked over to the corrals and there was a lot of corn on the ground. That's what the jack rabbits were after. I'd not seen that many jack rabbits for a long, long time, especially that close together.
 
Shortgrass said:
We had rabbits the last 3 or 4 years (at least I thought so till I saw your pictures), but this year the coyotes are back, and rabbit populations are declining. Our Coyotes were real mangey, but are having better pelts again this year. You've got a problem over there.
Click to expand...

Yep- maybe there is a good side to having so many coyotes in the country... I see that furs are really up in price this year... I wonder if anyone is paying anything for rabbits :???:

Every year here they have a local bunny hunt...50-60 teams of contestants pay entry fees and the winners getting the most between 6PM and midnight divides up the pot.... I think a couple of the local waterholes throw in some added money... Some years the winning team gets 70-100 rabbits... The last couple of years the numbers have been way down...

$240 Ton hay... I hear some of the locals with lots of hay crying because they can't sell any... An ad I saw on FB a couple of days ago they had lowered the price to $60 Ton...Said it was good grass/alfalfa hay- but they had so much they needed to move and needed some income- with no demand....
 
Wow, sorry about your luck, I've never seen that. When I was in Scotland in 1991 the folks we stayed with had rabbits there that would clean off a pasture in a matter of weeks if they didn't hunt them. Of course there the only predator was a fox and most people shoot or trap them first so the rabbit population was a real problem. They had a full time "Game Keeper" hired, and he took us kids out at night shooting rabbits. We had old land rover type vehicles with spot lights on top, and .22's with silencers so as not to disturb the neighbors - small farm country with everyone in close proximity to each other. It was a blast though, and we must have shot a hundred or more each night and never made a dent. Little buggers freeze stiff when you shine a light in their eyes.
 
Oldtimer said:
Shortgrass said:
We had rabbits the last 3 or 4 years (at least I thought so till I saw your pictures), but this year the coyotes are back, and rabbit populations are declining. Our Coyotes were real mangey, but are having better pelts again this year. You've got a problem over there.
Click to expand...

Yep- maybe there is a good side to having so many coyotes in the country... I see that furs are really up in price this year... I wonder if anyone is paying anything for rabbits :???:

Every year here they have a local bunny hunt...50-60 teams of contestants pay entry fees and the winners getting the most between 6PM and midnight divides up the pot.... I think a couple of the local waterholes throw in some added money... Some years the winning team gets 70-100 rabbits... The last couple of years the numbers have been way down...

$240 Ton hay... I hear some of the locals with lots of hay crying because they can't sell any... An ad I saw on FB a couple of days ago they had lowered the price to $60 Ton...Said it was good grass/alfalfa hay- but they had so much they needed to move and needed some income- with no demand....
Click to expand...

Isn't there a law against shooting in the dark using a spot light? :?

What about be sure of your target and beyond?
 
Oh man that's bad wildlife can sure take its share of feed. We don't have rabbit problems but have our share of deer and elk that cause problems didn't think of rabbits causing damage. Could do with some of that good hay here if wasn't such a long haul.
 
That's a lot of damage for sure. I remember the Snowshoe Hares getting that thick years ago. They would eat into the round bales all around the bale yard until the bales fell over, and start again. You never saw a tree on the ground with the bark on it either, they would just be shiny white.
They used to call the Alcan Hwy the fur lined highway, and I could believe the stories of trucks spinning out on the hills because of all the road kill bunnies.
Hope they don't eat you out of house and home TB
 
PureCountry said:
Wow, sorry about your luck, I've never seen that. When I was in Scotland in 1991 the folks we stayed with had rabbits there that would clean off a pasture in a matter of weeks if they didn't hunt them. Of course there the only predator was a fox and most people shoot or trap them first so the rabbit population was a real problem. They had a full time "Game Keeper" hired, and he took us kids out at night shooting rabbits. We had old land rover type vehicles with spot lights on top, and .22's with silencers so as not to disturb the neighbors - small farm country with everyone in close proximity to each other. It was a blast though, and we must have shot a hundred or more each night and never made a dent. Little buggers freeze stiff when you shine a light in their eyes.
Click to expand...
As a kid here in East Mont we spotlighted jack rabbits at night. Sold the whole frozen rabbits for 50cents. A couple of good shots and a driver could get 25-30 in just a short evening. It was just what we did but have'nt had many around these last 15 --20 years. They are coyotes favorite food and we are overloaded with them. We do not have many natural trees here and rabbits love little trees so my Dad and crew shot rabbits out of the kitchen windows all winter long trying to save the shelterbelt.
 
Well we got those bales re-tied and loaded and then unloaded at the dairy this evening without breaking one. :o Not sure how we managed that one. It sure made for a funny looking load.

The use of artificial light while hunting is illegal but probably could get some sort of variance considering this kind of damage.

I appreciate the offer but Gcreek and others need to keep those wolves far away up in that north country. The darn coyotes are bad enough. I had to exact some vengeance on a pack that killed a fawn right here in the yard. The old AR-15 whacked two of the three in short order.
 

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