Shooting – and – fishing dot com

Rabbits in a garden can be a minor catastrophe. I don’t mind a little bit of veg disappearing, and my wife can spare some of her flowers; the lawn they are welcome to keep short; but it doesn’t work like this! 

Bunnies have a habit of breeding - the smaller they are, the easier to control!

Young rabbits are much less cautious than their parents. This is nature’s way of feeding predators; breed lots, breed idiots and breed more! 

 

I love having rabbits in the garden, it gives my pointers something to practice on right outside the back door. The problem is, if you don’t have a cat or a whippet, or regular fox visitors then the occasional visitor can all too quickly become a plague.

 

If absolute control of the population is your aim, then midwinter is the time to kill rabbits; the number of litters below ground will be at a minimum and they can be ferreted and shot; the less alert and the plain unlucky rabbits will have been taken by foxes, badgers, buzzards and stoats and weasels. With the numbers at a natural low, your attempts will be much more effective.

 

If, like me, you consider the rabbit is good eating and don’t mind swapping a bit of veg in return for a few young rabbits, then late Summer and Autumn are good times. You can select the three quarters grown ones for eating, knowing that they will not have litters to leave underground to die.

 

If you find you have two or three does breeding close to your garden it becomes a more challenging situation; I find it quite difficult to shoot very young rabbits, but it is fairer on the rabbits than being orphaned at a very young age. In this case, I generally aim to identify the doe when she has young rabbits outside and eating, and then cull her.

Baby rabbits are just to cute to shoot; but the rabbit holes on these slopes create a hazard when the cattle run

 

Baby rabbits are just to cute to shoot; but the rabbit holes on these slopes create a hazard when the cattle run. 

 

The air rifle in each case must be accurate at the range you are using it. If you imagine the rabbit above with a one pence coin between his eye and the base of his ear; and a two pence coin just below the line of the top leg, and about a third of the way up the body, then you have the killing points to aim for. Don’t take the shot unless you can hit within these areas. A full power (12 ft Ibs) air rifle with a decent telescopic sight will be sufficient at this range, whatever that may be.

If you can sit patiently towards dusk, rabbits will often present an opportunity for an air rifleman

 

The head shot will be instant, dropping the rabbit on the spot, often without a twitch. The heart and lung shot can take 10 seconds before the rabbit stops; but it is a larger target. I have had rabbits run thirty or forty yards before dropping stone dead from a lung shot, completely bled out. This is obviously a consideration if you have close neighbours; I well remember shooting pigeons on the allotment at the back of my Dad’s house and having to ask the neighbour if I could have my pigeon back! In these more politically correct day and age, you will not be popular (unless they don’t like rabbits either; or they like eating them!). 

I was born in Knowle West, Bristol in September 1956; my Dad was in Egypt thanks to the Suez Crisis; Mum was staying with her parents.

My earliest memories were of the flat in Bellamy Avenue that I lived in for nearly ten years from the age of eighteen months; the gardens were full of cabbages, potatoes and onions; my Dad’s parents lived in the second block down. My love of gardening started there, growing crocuses in the wooden boxes beer bottles came in; my love of shooting as well; lining up green caterpillars on the post and rail fence for my Dad to shoot off with the air rifle. It was an incredibly effective way of getting kids to keep pests down.

An incredibly old man in the middle flats kept flowers. The first time a bee stung me was when I caught it on one of his sedum; should have stuck to butterflies. Most others grew veg.

My Grandad’s garden was split between veg and a row of wire crosses where the unlucky tortoises my uncles Jack and Albert stole for me from Pet’s Paradise were eventually buried. A third uncle Colin kept pigeons in one of the sheds. He would have me clean the pigeons out in return for ownership of one of the pigeons. Then he would add conditions; ‘clean my feet’ being the worst. The bugger is coming to visit this June.

I remember seeing two men walk openly along the street with an uncovered shotgun and two rabbits. My first hunting experiences were in the flats at Bellamy Avenue. The bins were stood in the porch, and if the lids were left off sparrows and starlings would sooner or later fly in. Then we could stalk along the front of the flat, jump in front of the porch and they would fly into the window where you had a sporting chance of catching one.

Day old baby sparrows and starlings would appear every year and be eagerly sought and kept in boxes with straw and fed bread. They were doomed when they fell from the nest, but the love of all things natural was born during this period of trying to save their lives.

Jack took me river fishing at Pensford; I think this was before the bridge was washed away in floods. The fish ended up in the bath at home.

Dad used to shoot the air rifle along the corridor of the house. The gun was top of the range at the time; a .22 BSA Airsporter. The quality of the workmanship was phenomenal, and it was the rifle I learned to shoot with, but not until we moved to Bourchier Gardens.

My Mum’s Mum died before I was old enough to remember her. Her Dad I do remember; he kept chickens in the back yard with rabbits in hutches; he had an aviary that he populated with finches; he had traps that caught birds; and he kept pigeons that he caught during his job as a pigeon catcher for Bristol City Council. The rest of the garden was like a scrap yard. I would cycle over on a weekend and he would kill a couple of pigeons for me; I would take them home, cut out the breasts and fry them. Never really gave a thought to what I was eating.

He had two dogs that I remember; Prince and another one that ran across the road and got safely to the other side; there was a lot of shouting at him because he’d nearly got run over; he did when he ran back to see what the fuss was about.