Rabbit Info

[Bella]

There are some places that I see cottontail rabbits when I am bird hunting. Often they are well within shotgun range. Now a few questions about rabbit hunting.

I have heard that it is unsafe to eat wild rabbit before the freeze. We are no where near that yet. Is there any truth to this?

I have eaten domestic rabbit and I really like. How similar is wild rabbit to domestic rabbit in taste and preparation?

Jackrabbits are.even more common around here. I have always heard they are no good to eat. If you shoot one leave there for the scavengers. Is jackrabbit really that inedible?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

[T. O'Heir]

"...unsafe to eat wild rabbit before the freeze..." Nonsense. Look at the hunting myths post with the huge picture. Eating game meat and its taste has to do with how it's handled in the field. Mostly about how fast it gets cooled and into a refrigerator or freezer. High temperatures shortens that time.
Wild game has a lot less fat than domestic anything, including rabbits. Mind you, Bugs doesn't have much fat in him to start with and he's not very big either. Jacks tend to have much tougher meat than a cotton tail. Likely due to their much faster speed, but that's a guess.

[Erno86]

Google: Warbles or Warble flies.

Some warble larvae might be under the skin of a rabbit or squirrel, before the first frost, but once the meat is skinned the meat should be safe to eat. There is one other parasite grub that does penetrate the meat, but I don't know it's name.

Warble larvae can infect humans, by burrowing under the skin.

[Chuck Dye]

When I was a kid hunting cottontails and jacks in southern California we were warned about tularemia and told to reject any lagomorph that had a spotted liver. After many dozens of the critters killed, dressed without gloves, cooked and eaten, none of us ever had any difficulties. Check with the local fish & game office where you hunt. I'd be surprised if they have much to say but it cannot hurt to ask.

(Run a recipe search on hasenpfeffer.)

[huntinaz]

Jacks are good, I'm not sure how the rumor started that they were inedible.

[Sure Shot Mc Gee]

My family ate rabbit all winter long. At least one supper every week could be counted on. I 65 yrs later still get the urge to stew or fry cook up a few every now and then. Kinda like a White Castle craving i.e. {eat one or two and your craving is done gone for another year.} Funny thing: my father would never let his son's harvest one before they were turning or turned white. Pops use to say something about tick infested in the Spring & having skin boils thru the Summer that were seen occasionally in their handling. Then there was some other goofy thing wrong with them in the summer. Some sort of serious disease that could be past on to humans. But I don't recall what its called.
Ate a neighbors fat old tame rabbit that was older than me I think at the time. Fried up nice but was like chewing on door knob verses the good eating snowshoes in those earlier times.
Only seen one jack rabbit in my life. And it was on the lickety-split being chased by two rather BIG dogs across a open bean field which those two dogs found it a loosing battle in trying keep up with the White Flash out front. I mean, that was a fastest long distance running bunny I ever seen.

[Crazy Carl]

The "not before the first freeze" is based on the cold killing off the last of the species infected with Francisella tularensis, a microorganism you definitely do NOT want to infect you. I suppose you could mitigate the risk by wearing gloves when dressing them, hand sanitization, etc., but I'd prefer not to risk it myself.

That said, rabbit, whether fried or stewed, is up there among my favorite critters to eat.

[reloader28]

Just check the liver and make sure there are no spots.

[Scorch]

I have shot and eaten rabbits at different times of the year. If the weather is warm, I skin and gut them right away, when the weather is cooler you can wait until you are done hunting.

One nice thing about waiting until the first freeze is that bunnies will sit on the sunny side of a thorny patch to warm up, and since the ground is white, they will stand out quite nicely so you can make those head shots.

Jacks are OK, depends mostly on what they have been eating. Out in sagebrush country, they will taste about like sagebrush. But around alfalfa or grain, they are quite edible. They are a hare, and hare is very good to eat. And yes, they can cover ground at an amazing pace!

[TimSr]

A lot of people hunt rabbits in places where it never freezes.

I lived in So. California in the 80's. I shot and ate lots of cottentails and jacks of the desert variety that never saw a frost in their lifetime. What they eat makes a huge difference in how they taste. Ohio cottentails taste much, much better than desert sage eaters. The sage eaters aren't bad, but not nearly as good. Desert jacks are darker and stronger tasting meat than cottentails. I was less than ethusiastic about eating them, and probably left 2/3 of them for desert critter chow. They are edible, but mostly regarded as a varmint. I'd suggest at least trying one.

I used to raise domestic rabbits and ate a lot of them. Ohio wild cottentails are really good, but domestic rabbits taste much better.

[10-96]

I thought all jacks were the same right up until the Army sent me to Lackland AFB in San Antonio. Those things are freakin huge! I always wondered what they fed those frankenbunnies down there.

And I always heard different stories about the tuleremiaosis or whatever it's called, along with "Only eat the wild one's in the -ber months", and "Only after the first frost", "first freeze", "first hard freeze".

And, 1+ one domestic rabbits having a better taste than wild ones. I never tried a jack- but what the heck, once I get the whole disease and freeze thing figured out I just might.

[TATER]

Wolves, Warbles or Botfly Larva… I guess it has to do with where your from.
10-96, That’s close to what I was taught, I was always told “Only Months with an R” same as oysters.