Easter Bunny Shoot

[Art Eatman]

If no hunters existed, the mortality rate among quail and doves is roughly 80% each year. As I understand it, the Passenger Pigeon ran more toward 90% each year.

The demise was due to two factors: First, deforestation that created what we now call "farmland". (Where do you think all that early-American walnut furniture came from?) Ohio, Indiana, that general area. Next, market hunters who would go to roost-trees at night and club the birds in vast numbers--wagonloads--for sale to hotels and other restaurants for commercial sale for food. Thus loss of habitat coupled with over-harvest led to extinction.

Bison: The near-extinction was due in large part to official U.S. Government policy: Destroy the commissary of the Plains Indians. In essence, starve the Indians into submission. This paralleled the slaughter of Plains Indians' horses in such places as Palo Duro Canyon in Texas; that act greatly reduced mobility.

In neither species was any sort of controlled sport hunting involved. "Controlled" as we have it today, with laws brought about almost exclusively by the sport hunters themselves.

Art

"Those who don't know history will presume to lecture to those who do."

[mikejonestkd]

Death from afar,

I can offer my services and rifle to the cause, As long as the rabbits are put to good use then there should be no problem ethically.

[M Jager]

Art,

IIRC, the best guess estimates on mourning doves is 70% mortality first year then around 50% for following years. Can't think what qual are offhand.

Matt

[kingudaroad]

I think it's very amusing that someone who not only has no interest in hunting, and even feels that hunting is unethical would choose to post his ideas in a forum titled HUNTING.

I know you tried to welcome his opinion Art, but it seems a little trollish to me.

I bet if there was a forum titled "Redneck Hunting", he would be lurking around there also.

[NedreckSavant]

My new favorite quote...

I am seriously going to have to give some thought to vacationing to n.z. sometime...I remember letting my friends drive my big lifted truck while I hung on for dear life in the back, and thinking to myself, I sure wish I had a gun and thousands of things to shoot at. Has anyone else also given thought to the skills that shooting moving targets gives you? Unless you plan upon being a peaceable man your entire life...but what about the nimble zomies?!

Seriously though, I had some qualms about varmint hunting and leaving the carcass of something you really don't want to eat, but it seems that by 'recycling' your 'used' bunnies into dogfood, everything is as it should be, and the cycle continues. If anything, they have a better reason to hunt than most of us.

And who picks up the thousands of bunnies? the shooters or your 'squires'?

And finally, I'd only wish for one thing at a bunny hunt like that...a street sweeper!

[psycho nut]

If I could afford it I would love to come down there and help you out. And who does pick up all of the rabbits, there's a lot of 'em.

[jonutarr]

Lead you are truly an ignoramus and have no idea how ecosystem work

Maybe you should step on a plane and come down here to Australia or New Zealand and find out the destruction to the native wildlife and the natural land

take the Bilby for one of many examples:

The Bilby has gone from being a very prolific animal in Australia, once covering more than 70% of the mainland, to near extinction and surviving on the edges of Australia's great arid regions
Reasons for decline include:-
1) Introduced rabbits, cats and foxes took over the land the Bilbys used to inhabit
2) Feral cats and foxes hunted and eat Bilbys
3) Hunting first by Aboriginals for food, and then Europeans for the pelts
4) Eating poison put down to control the ballooning population growth of the feral rabbit
http://home.iprimus.com.au/readman/bilby.htm

Introducing foreign predators is the dumbest thing ive read on this forum
they cute animals are on the brink of extinction because of ignorance like yours,

Wake up and see people like DFA are the real greenies

And if us hunters dont stick together this will be the only rabbit shooting available to us:
lol

[Art Eatman]

kingudaroad, I guess my problem comes from my engineering background and training:

FIRST: Learn the facts as best as I can. (Doesnt' mean perfection; e.g., 80% vs. 70%; I wouldn't argue either way.)

THEN: Draw conclusions and form opinions.

By the time you get to be my age, the majority of conclusions come from direct observation, not from what other people have said. Those other people just may not have a clue what they're talking about. Ergo, a leadcounsel's sincere but mistaken opinions.

Sincerity, repetition and db level do not combine to create Truth.

Art

[Death from Afar]

Wow, I didnt realise that this thread would spark so much interest.

Firstly, my mate Grant posted some pictures on his web blog ( which is mainly right wing political stuff, but if you scroll down about 1/3 of the way you will see the rabbits) Oddly, Grant is a defence lawyer (!!) which means that he should be my naturall enemy, but hes a top man. ( just bought one of the new laminated 870's, nice)

http://www.nzpundit.com/

OK, so how does the whole thing work? Well, the shoot lasts for 24 hours. At the start of the day the areas on which you are shooting are drawn by ballot. This is the one bit you have no control over- if you get a good block you will shoot well, get a bad one and you may only get 200 rabbits, which would be a real blow. So, to an extent its luck of the draw.

Our team was mainly Army dudes, or lawyers. A few guys had done the hard yards in Iraq and Afghanistan , so were pretty switched on.

There then tends to be a bit of a "gumball Rally" as everyone races out to their assigned areas, where you meet with the Farmer, and get the lay of the land. A good recce is invaluable. During the day most of the shooting tends to be on foot, with the dead rabbits put in piles for collecting later on. ATV's and Quads are great at this stage.

At night, everyone is shooting from pimped out "mad Max" type vehicles- 4WD trucks being the vehicle of choice. A key bit of gear is the "cage" on the back, which is noramlly welded steel which gives the shooters something to hang on to, a place to stash ammo, spare magazines, thermos, cigars and all the other shooting gear. We worked on 5 men per vehicle ( one of teams key rules is - no chicks) a driver, a spotlighter, 2 shooters, and a picker upper, normally armed with a portbale spotlight and a .22 if a finishing shot is needed. Everyone rotates through the roles, because weirdly driving and working the light is as much fun as shooting- chasing a rabbit a 60 miles and hour across fields with everyone blazing away is so much fun it should be illegal. Probably is in some states.

By about 6am you are asking yourslef "why do i do this to myself every year?" but then the sun comes up and its alright. Normally you go back to foot patrols.

The weapons we used are- Ruger 10/22's are a must have. Loaded with subsonic ammo and silencers during the day, and stingers at night, they are great for those long range shots. In our truck one gun ruled them all- the Remington 870. I had an 870 P ( The "hose of death") which was useless outside 10 yards, but ideal for those moving shots at close range, and my 870 wingmaster with a full choke, and there were two other 870 Magnum express. You will see that from the photo- just some of the guns we had were ( from left to right- Remington 1100, a Saiga 12 gauge with red dot, a ruger 10/22, a benelli, another 10/22, the hose of death and i think another 10/22)

We used 32 gram loads of Fiocchi # 4 during the day, and 36 gram loads of #5 at night, which got a bit painfull by the fouth case.

Needless to say, we would be delighted to host any of you chaps over here.

[Art Eatman]

that's a large scale version of what I and some buddies did as kids. We were around 14 years or so.

My grandfather had a 1935 Dodge sedan. The headlights were on nacelles, not faired into the fenders. Great for a kid to straddle and hook bootheels into the front bumper.

We'd drive around the pastures with flashlights and .22s, shooting rabbits.

Y'all are just sorta "upscale", way down yonder in Noo Zealand. "The only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys."

Bedtime, here. Nighty-bye,

Art

[Death from Afar]

Old Lead Counsel has gone rather quiet on this one....

[FirstFreedom]

Sincerity, repetition and db level do not combine to create Truth.

Aww, that is a classic quote there from Art. I might have to make that my sig.

DFA, do you have any more pictures besides that one (though that one is impressive).

For the record, I think that leadcounsel's viewpoint/paradigm/way of thinking is demented. And he think that mine/ours is. No one is necessarily right or wrong, IMO.

[NRA4life]

This whole thread harkens me back to yesteryear when I hunted snowshoe hare in Northern Wisconsin. We'd get 15-20 of us together with a pack of beagles and kill 200+ in a good weekend. .22 was the weapon of choice. We'd go through several hundred rounds or more apiece. Great fun. We had so much meat, we'd bone them out and grind it into hamburger.

[calvinike]

Let me see...

Leadcounsel thinks it would be OK to introduce a non-native predator and kill thousands of rabbits. But it is wrong for people to do it? What am I missing?

[Art Eatman]

Guys like counsel aren't Bad Guys. The problem for many is that they don't know what they don't know. I've always felt very lucky that the "just accidental" aspects of my various jobs had me spending four years brain-picking on a bunch of wildlife biologist from such diverse entities as Texas Parks & Wildlfe, USF&WS and the National Marine Fisheries. I don't know the Latin names, but I learned a bunch about inter-relationships in various ecosystems. And, of course, growing up around farming and ranching and some sixty + years of ratting around the outdoors.

Doesn't make me any big deal; I've just had the good luck to be where I was when I was.

So, learning the facts before forming the opinions has made life easy. It's kept me from looking the fool in front of folks who knew a heckuva lot more than I did.

Sometimes...

Art

[Death from Afar]

DFA, do you have any more pictures besides that one (though that one is impressive).

I'll get my mate to add a few more. Wait out...