San Juan Island Hares?

[Goshawk]

It's been a very, very long time since I've heard anything about the hare hunting on the San Juan Islands.  Does that still exist or did they finally get wiped out?  Back in the late 60's the neighborhood "guys" would pack up for a weekend then come home with coolers full of cleaned hares.  One trip usually lasted a year for us. One year my dad brought one injured back home for a pet. It recovered but was never remotely tameable.   

[bhawley76]

The last time I was there the fox population I think had the rabbit population in check.

[luvmystang67]

This is my home.

When I was a kid (90s) we had MANY rabbits running around.  My first memories of shooting are sitting with data and an old single shot .22 and popping rabbits like it was a shooting gallery.  He said at the time it was nothing like his childhood (late 60s), but that it was still pretty fun and I know they were plentiful.

By the mid 90s they were in rapid decline, not due to fox.  Must have been some kind of disease.  I never saw a fox up there until probably 2000ish.  All of a sudden there were black fox everywhere.  Someone certainly brought them in, but nobody ever spoke of it.

Now days the population is normal.  It is higher out at American camp, but the days of thousands of rabbits running around San Juan Valley are over.  We see an occasional rabbit here or there, but nothing like the days you speak of.  Occasionally in the early 2000s a nearby neighbor would buy us shells and we'd take out 50 in a weekend (spurts of the good ol days), but I have no idea where you'd find that now as even then it was extremely rare.

They were a ton of fun for target practice though, never cared for eating them too much at the time.

[HUNTINCOUPLE]

Funny story my old man said during the 60's they would ride in the back up pick up truck with salmon nets catching them alive.  Stuff them in cages and take them home alive. 

[luvmystang67]

Funny story my old man said during the 60's they would ride in the back up pick up truck with salmon nets catching them alive.  Stuff them in cages and take them home alive. 

Dad always had a "rabbit car".  Sounded like they chopped off the back of a station wagon to effectively make a truck bed, they apparently turned the exhaust manifolds upside down and ran them up out of the hood.  They put a bunch of cages on the back and had a cantilevered spring type seat where the netter would sit.  Said they could catch 100 per hour every night of the week if they wanted.  They'd sell them for $1 live, $2 cleaned to people who didn't get enough on their hunting trip (or who sat in the bar and needed to produce some rabbits by the time they left for home).

I caught the tail end of this.  If the grass was about 6"-12" high, they'd freeze in the spotlight and you could toss a net over them.

Good times...