Who is training the rabbits???

[filzee]

Went out for a walk round yesterday with my shooting buddy to zero the HMR in and to have a look at a few of the pheasant pens.

 

When finished thought we would have a quick drive round and see if we could bag a bunny or two.

Now the bunnys are hardly ever about during the evening as they tend to all come out at night but we managed to spot a few in various fields.

 

My question is this;

 

Who the hell is going out and training the rabbits to always sit in the one area of the field where we can't shoot???

 

5 different fields, 5 different rabbits, 5 areas where we can't safely shoot !

 

Anywhere else on the field and they would have been fed to the HMR but it wasn't to be.

 

I just don't know how they do it.

 

I'm not going to risk safety because of it, but im just bamboozled by them.

 

Thanks

 

Phil

[Michaeli]

I supose over time watching there mates all of a sudden drop dead they might learn

 

Or they could be going to rabbit school and learning about firearms saftey therefore know were to sit so not to be fed with bullets.

[stubby]

so those places need a few fenn traps set up

[KFC]

You could use a 12ftlb air rifle but they have a new curriculum that teaches them hop out behind you and then back in again before you can swing round. They've also learned to sit for ages with a branch or plant obscuring the kill zone and then hop off again the minute you glance at something else

[malkiserow]

You could use a 12ftlb air rifle but they have a new curriculum that teaches them hop out behind you and then back in again before you can swing round. They've also learned to sit for ages with a branch or plant obscuring the kill zone and then hop off again the minute you glance at something else

 

Like the TV ad with the pandas and the photographer

[filzee]

I don't own traps.

 

They are just really starting to wind me up.

 

Its also seems like the fox's are learning from the rabbits as they sit in unshoot-able as well.

 

Rabbits and Fox's working together??

 

Could this be the shooting Apocalypse

[Gimlet]

I've got several places like that. Its what happens when you shoot the same ground heavily. You can never shoot everything so you get left with a hard core of switched-on survivors who are wise to shooting. They don't know what guns and bullets are and they may not know its a human who's responsible, but they know that the crack of that HMR means exploding heads and they learn that a particular spot is too hot to handle and so they move on. Ideally, when you've hammered a colony through the growing season you want to leave the stragglers alone then go in with the ferrets in the winter and mop them up. Unfortunately on my ground the collapse of livestock farming has meant that a lot of grazing land and most of the hedges have become so neglected that they're beyond ferreting, so I end up playing a game of cat and mouse. They know the places where they get picked off and they know where they get left in peace, and that's where you find them. When a group turn up in a new spot virtually overnight I know they're probably smart ones I've displaced from somewhere else. I know for sure when I shoot one and the lot vanish instantly and for good.

In these situations, the .22 with NV has been a godsend. No noise and no visual clues baffles them enough to allow me several visits to clean them up. If you've got some that are completey unshootable try to get them ferreted over the winter. Don't worry about wiping out a colony, it will soon repopulate with new blood but you'll have got rid of those survivors and weeded out their good genes which makes future control much less frustrating.