Quote:
Are you sure you were hitting it, I know that seems like a stupid question when your 2 inches away but if your nervous and fumbling like it seems like you were at least doing a bit of its possible? At that range I would expect the pellet to exit the rabbit on the other side. Even if the hide stopped it, I would expect the trauma from that alone enough to kill it.
Rabbits are such fragile animals, it doesn't take much to kill an adult rabbit. Far less to kill a baby rabbit. They have even thinner skin than an adult, with how torn up you described this one it couldn't have half as much blood as it started with in it. I would think any damage to the brain or vital organs would have killed it quicker than it would a normal baby rabbit.
|
I did some investigating and recovered 2 of the pellets and studied the indentations left by the pellets on my deck. Here is a closeup picture of the deck where I fired at the rabbit and the two recovered pellets. Its not clearly visible in the pics but you can see all three indentations have gray fur embedded in them. It has rained here since then but the two lower indents have no blood in them. The top indent has a tiny speck. My guess is these pellets did not penetrate the body but only compressed it violently. I'm almost positive I hit it with all three shots as I observed this compression and the jerking of the body. As you say the trauma of that should have been enough.
Don't ask me how its possible but even with half the rabbits skin and fur chewed off there was very little bleeding before I shot it.