Sometime around 1880 someone living on San Juan Island released a pair of domesticated European rabbits into the wild, it wasn’t too long before the rabbits infested that island and others in the archipelago. 80 some years later, Earl, Beezer, Joe and I rode the ferry to the main island on a Friday night and spent Saturday shooting as many as we could.
I had shot jackrabbits before, and spent many hours hunting the delicious cottontail, but this would be my first and last experience shooting these prolific, if illegal, aliens.
I drove, of course, because I was the only one of the four with my own car, even if it wasn’t much of a car. It was a 1961 Rambler American wagon; robin-egg blue with “three on the tree”. I called it my blue lunch bucket.
I was also the only one with a shotgun, or really a gun of any kind, so I brought it and my Springfield .22 semi-automatic that I would lend to Earl who promised to kill all his rabbits – even those on the run – with headshots. He didn’t realize how empty that promise was.
Someone had told us about these rabbit hunting resorts on the island. There were really nothing more than farms in the summer that, once the crops were in, became profit centers by charging rabbit hunters 8 bucks a day and by renting firearms to those who didn’t have their own but had a bloodlust to shoot bunnies. You could also sleep in these resorts but the local hotel was cheaper and reminiscent of the hotel in Gunsmoke – except there was no Miss Kitty or dancing girls by any other name.
When we departed the ferry it was snowing and there was a good cover of snow on the ground – the better to track rabbits, as though that might be necessary in the morning. After we checked in, Joe and I decided to take a drive out into the country-side and see what things looked like in the dark. Earl and Beezer wanted to go to bed and watch one of the two channels on the black and white TV that came complimentary with the room. It had rabbit ears for an antenna – which was quite appropriate.
As we drove around the country roads in the dark, with big fluffy flakes of snow falling hypnotically, we happened upon a rabbit in the road, himself hypnotized by the headlights of the Rambler.
I was pretty sure what I did next was illegal. It certainly was everywhere else I had ever hunted, but I determined to “kiw dat wabbit”! I got out of the car, pulled the .12 ga. from the back and shot him dead. I threw his carcass in the back of the car, noting that his eyes were open… staring at me with a look that said something like “What the hell?!?”
There were no sirens or anything so we drove back to the hotel and went to bed.
In the morning we had breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. I don’t remember the meal but I am sure it was wonderful. Afterwards, we headed to the resort we had contacted earlier in the week where the farmer rented a .20 ga. and a .12 ga. to Joe and Beezer and pointed to a field that promised to have a lot of rabbits.
The field was some 50 yards from the house but we didn’t walk six feet before a rabbit took off from some clump of grass toward that very field. Earl raised the Springfield so I didn’t shoot. He shot 4 times and watched the rabbit bound away. I made some crack about a headshot and he flipped me the Earl bird which is a lot like the real bird only rather than extending the middle finger, he used his ring finger. He believed it to be similar to saying “shoot” instead of “shit” but I am pretty sure his take on that translated well to people who didn’t know him.
The next rabbit that got up, I shot… I put the fellow in my game pouch and walked on.
Tracking was completely unnecessary and useless anyway. There was no snow where there was no track. The rabbits were running everywhere.
After four or five misses, Earl finally killed a rabbit. It was just my luck that he actually did shoot it in the head. He said “There, now I have the hang of this rifle!” He killed two more rabbits but neither of them with headshots.
Beezer and Joe, with their rented shotguns, were killing almost as many as they missed and we were all having a great time until Earl came up with his “idea”.
On one side of the field that was a wash that dead-ended against a small hill. Earl suggested we walk in an arched line with he and I in the middle and Beezer and Joe slightly in front of us on the ends. He believed we could herd the bunnies into the arroyo and slaughter them like so many fish in a barrel. Foolishly, I agreed.
As we walked a rabbit took off but it did not follow Earl’s plan. It ran directly for Beezer and I screamed “NO” as I saw Earl raise the .22. I screamed too late.
It was not a head shot – fortunately. It was a leg shot; only it wasn’t the rabbit’s leg that took the lead, but Beezer’s. Earl hit him square in the fattest part of Beezer’s thigh. Beezer, being a distance runner, however, didn’t have much fat on his thigh or anywhere else., but he did, as it turns out, have active and healthy tear ducts.
Earl was sorry, of course, but Beezer promised to extract revenge just as soon as he could walk again and all this as we carried him, two-armed basket-style, to the Rambler. Joe returned the guns to the farmer and asked where we might find a doctor to treat a minor gunshot wound. The farmer, hoping to avoid liability, told us to get the hell off his property.
We drove into town and found a little office with a shingle announcing there was an MD somewhere inside.
I suppose times are different now because the old Doc did not call the sheriff. He merely extracted the lead and bandaged up our buddy. He told him to see his family doctor when he got back to Seattle.
As we got back into the car for the trip home, I counted the rabbits we were taking home to eat. Of the dozens we shot, we kept eight but it was the first; the one I shot by the light of my car, what was the most troubling. Being left in the car all night in the dead of winter, froze his eyes open. When I counted him in the eight, he was still staring at me; but his message had changed. It was the same, cold stare that Beezer gave Earl all the way home; a stare that promised revenge. I tried to shake off the eerie feeling because, clearly, this rabbit was too dead to be having any thoughts at all.
After I dropped Beezer off at his house and listened to his father call me all kinds of names, as though I had been the shooter, I dropped off the other two and went home where I skinned and butchered the rabbits. I remember it was not nearly as easy as doing the same thing to cottontails. I hoped, at least, that they would taste as good as cottontails.
A few weeks later, after Beezer was released from being severely grounded and his father had forgiven me as the instigator of it all, I removed the rabbits from the family freezer, thawed them for my mother to cook, and invited the hunting party over for a feast.
The rabbit wasn’t as good as cottontail, but it wasn’t terrible either. We all ate with gusto until all was devoured save two forequarters and two hindquarters… one rabbit.
Later that night, after my friends had departed and my stomach stretched, I decided to eat the leftover rabbit. I took one bite and noticed it tasted differently than had the others. It was both gamier and sour at the same time. I tried another bite that proved to be the same so I threw the rest out.
Along about midnight I ran to the toilet and barfed my guts out. I repeated that process every 15 minutes until the next morning when my dad took me to the emergency room. After the poking, prodding and interrogation, food poisoning was the diagnoses and the prognosis was that I would probably live.
It took a week to completely recover and the same amount of time for me to remember the curse of the jacklighted rabbit.
I had shot jackrabbits before, and spent many hours hunting the delicious cottontail, but this would be my first and last experience shooting these prolific, if illegal, aliens.
I drove, of course, because I was the only one of the four with my own car, even if it wasn’t much of a car. It was a 1961 Rambler American wagon; robin-egg blue with “three on the tree”. I called it my blue lunch bucket.
I was also the only one with a shotgun, or really a gun of any kind, so I brought it and my Springfield .22 semi-automatic that I would lend to Earl who promised to kill all his rabbits – even those on the run – with headshots. He didn’t realize how empty that promise was.
Someone had told us about these rabbit hunting resorts on the island. There were really nothing more than farms in the summer that, once the crops were in, became profit centers by charging rabbit hunters 8 bucks a day and by renting firearms to those who didn’t have their own but had a bloodlust to shoot bunnies. You could also sleep in these resorts but the local hotel was cheaper and reminiscent of the hotel in Gunsmoke – except there was no Miss Kitty or dancing girls by any other name.
When we departed the ferry it was snowing and there was a good cover of snow on the ground – the better to track rabbits, as though that might be necessary in the morning. After we checked in, Joe and I decided to take a drive out into the country-side and see what things looked like in the dark. Earl and Beezer wanted to go to bed and watch one of the two channels on the black and white TV that came complimentary with the room. It had rabbit ears for an antenna – which was quite appropriate.
As we drove around the country roads in the dark, with big fluffy flakes of snow falling hypnotically, we happened upon a rabbit in the road, himself hypnotized by the headlights of the Rambler.
I was pretty sure what I did next was illegal. It certainly was everywhere else I had ever hunted, but I determined to “kiw dat wabbit”! I got out of the car, pulled the .12 ga. from the back and shot him dead. I threw his carcass in the back of the car, noting that his eyes were open… staring at me with a look that said something like “What the hell?!?”
There were no sirens or anything so we drove back to the hotel and went to bed.
In the morning we had breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. I don’t remember the meal but I am sure it was wonderful. Afterwards, we headed to the resort we had contacted earlier in the week where the farmer rented a .20 ga. and a .12 ga. to Joe and Beezer and pointed to a field that promised to have a lot of rabbits.
The field was some 50 yards from the house but we didn’t walk six feet before a rabbit took off from some clump of grass toward that very field. Earl raised the Springfield so I didn’t shoot. He shot 4 times and watched the rabbit bound away. I made some crack about a headshot and he flipped me the Earl bird which is a lot like the real bird only rather than extending the middle finger, he used his ring finger. He believed it to be similar to saying “shoot” instead of “shit” but I am pretty sure his take on that translated well to people who didn’t know him.
The next rabbit that got up, I shot… I put the fellow in my game pouch and walked on.
Tracking was completely unnecessary and useless anyway. There was no snow where there was no track. The rabbits were running everywhere.
After four or five misses, Earl finally killed a rabbit. It was just my luck that he actually did shoot it in the head. He said “There, now I have the hang of this rifle!” He killed two more rabbits but neither of them with headshots.
Beezer and Joe, with their rented shotguns, were killing almost as many as they missed and we were all having a great time until Earl came up with his “idea”.
On one side of the field that was a wash that dead-ended against a small hill. Earl suggested we walk in an arched line with he and I in the middle and Beezer and Joe slightly in front of us on the ends. He believed we could herd the bunnies into the arroyo and slaughter them like so many fish in a barrel. Foolishly, I agreed.
As we walked a rabbit took off but it did not follow Earl’s plan. It ran directly for Beezer and I screamed “NO” as I saw Earl raise the .22. I screamed too late.
It was not a head shot – fortunately. It was a leg shot; only it wasn’t the rabbit’s leg that took the lead, but Beezer’s. Earl hit him square in the fattest part of Beezer’s thigh. Beezer, being a distance runner, however, didn’t have much fat on his thigh or anywhere else., but he did, as it turns out, have active and healthy tear ducts.
Earl was sorry, of course, but Beezer promised to extract revenge just as soon as he could walk again and all this as we carried him, two-armed basket-style, to the Rambler. Joe returned the guns to the farmer and asked where we might find a doctor to treat a minor gunshot wound. The farmer, hoping to avoid liability, told us to get the hell off his property.
We drove into town and found a little office with a shingle announcing there was an MD somewhere inside.
I suppose times are different now because the old Doc did not call the sheriff. He merely extracted the lead and bandaged up our buddy. He told him to see his family doctor when he got back to Seattle.
As we got back into the car for the trip home, I counted the rabbits we were taking home to eat. Of the dozens we shot, we kept eight but it was the first; the one I shot by the light of my car, what was the most troubling. Being left in the car all night in the dead of winter, froze his eyes open. When I counted him in the eight, he was still staring at me; but his message had changed. It was the same, cold stare that Beezer gave Earl all the way home; a stare that promised revenge. I tried to shake off the eerie feeling because, clearly, this rabbit was too dead to be having any thoughts at all.
After I dropped Beezer off at his house and listened to his father call me all kinds of names, as though I had been the shooter, I dropped off the other two and went home where I skinned and butchered the rabbits. I remember it was not nearly as easy as doing the same thing to cottontails. I hoped, at least, that they would taste as good as cottontails.
A few weeks later, after Beezer was released from being severely grounded and his father had forgiven me as the instigator of it all, I removed the rabbits from the family freezer, thawed them for my mother to cook, and invited the hunting party over for a feast.
The rabbit wasn’t as good as cottontail, but it wasn’t terrible either. We all ate with gusto until all was devoured save two forequarters and two hindquarters… one rabbit.
Later that night, after my friends had departed and my stomach stretched, I decided to eat the leftover rabbit. I took one bite and noticed it tasted differently than had the others. It was both gamier and sour at the same time. I tried another bite that proved to be the same so I threw the rest out.
Along about midnight I ran to the toilet and barfed my guts out. I repeated that process every 15 minutes until the next morning when my dad took me to the emergency room. After the poking, prodding and interrogation, food poisoning was the diagnoses and the prognosis was that I would probably live.
It took a week to completely recover and the same amount of time for me to remember the curse of the jacklighted rabbit.
Some lessons are harder to learn than others but this one was easy. I have never shot anything after dark since, nor have I hunted with Earl Dennis.
1 comment:
Hahahah
You really do have some morbid stories Dad. I just thought you should know that. ;-p
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