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It would help if the long standing government negativity towards industries that can utilise rabbit products was upended to one of support. Same with possums.
I said yrs ago and now,there will be never be enough 22 ammo in NZ to shoot all the rabbits.A old rabbiter down at Holden Station told me one pair of rabbits will multiply to about 300 rabbits a yr.Even with only about a 60% survival rate per litter.Interesting maths ,but when you seen paddocks around the back of Twizel yrs ago,300 could be 3000.
Not many in my area and I shoot every one i see on my property
Many years ago our local council ( Manawatu) gave 5 rounds of .22 ammo per rabbit tail. Was a good incentive as most shooters were well ahead of ammo actually used.
Very few where I live now. A few of the neighbors all do their bit, and the market gardener, orchards, and lavender farm no longer need to net crops to protect them from rabbits (or Pukeko).
The property owners understand the value of having people come onto their properties to kill the rabbits, and its working for everyone. We get to have a shoot, and take home rabbit meat, and they don't need to pay for pest protection.
Only problem now is there is not the numbers to support going out each night, and actually seeing a single rabbit.
I'm only talking 1000 acres, but over a handful of years, 3 very part time (possibly 1-2 evenings a weekend) hunters have reduced the numbers to virtually nothing. Surely this is able to scale to account for larger properties? If not, what's stopping this... terrain, scale, land owners not wanting hunters on their land?
Waipa the same with an option of from memory 1 shotgun cartridge per tail.Quote:
Originally Posted by BSA270
Didn't buy either for years.
We certainly didn't require 5 shots with a .22 especially if some one had run it over on the road.
I dealt to the rabbits on our lifestyle block about this time last year, 25 rabbits on 3 acres in about 5 weeks. The little beggars are back again, lots of young ones and plenty on the neighbouring properties. I'm regularly seeing 10 or so each night, the cat and I are having a competition to see who gets the most.
Im in Rotherham north canty on a 1/4acre section have got 12 in the last 3 days since the neighbor bought an air rifle still 15 odd knocking around
No rabbits in Lowburn or Cromwell or Tarras mate, stop putting LSD in your coffee, ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by turtle
The rabbiter on the station we used to hunt on used to shoot and harvest 10,000 a year for pet food. Never made a dent. He cleaned out the easy areas he could get to on quad and a bit of walking but it just pushed them into the steeper stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by quentin
The new virus they released legally a couple years ago, that was a different story. Put him out of a job.
Last time I was there, you could count on two hands how many you saw. Used to be 400-500 for a weekend.
it's strange how the rabbit population seems to come and go. When I was a kid I used to go out in the evening, walk around the house with the 22 and get 10-15 every time. These days I can go from weeks without seeing a single rabbit. Land use has changed a bit with much more trees and longer grass, which might explain it. Only 10kms away I hear there is a rabbit plague.
Yes I can go 1km up the road and see heaps they just don't seem to like the pocket we are in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Carbine
Soil types and irrigation can dictate a lot on where they chose to make there abode, I was living on a 3000ha property up in the McKenzie and we had very few in our affective areas due to pivot irrigators, I'm now down near Alexandra way and you can still see them when you close you eyes it's that bad. I've put my horse through many a warren unexpectedly unfortunately.
I use to have a photo of my father and his 3 brothers around Alexandra in the 1940s.With their model A trucks loaded with rabbits.Theyd herd the rabbits in corners of stone wall fenced paddocks.Knock the rabbits on the head,gut and skin them for the butcher shop.On the truck door was painted skull and bone crosses.I guess it was the teddy boy era.In the photo was dad and brothers sitting around a crate of long neck bottles of beer celebrating their haul of rabbits.Good pocket money for ammo, beer and petrol in those days.
I noticed a lot more ferrets and cats doing well when the rabbit numbers are up too .
Out for a hunt yesterday afternoon an hours drive of Napier. Walking past the boundary fence of the neighbours place with hundreds of rabbits visible. What got me was the amount of black rabbits but also white patched rabbits visible. Rabbits galore.
Must've been a good breeding season recently. I've noticed I've been shooting a lot more juveniles in the last few weeks than I have for a while
We popped 403 rabbits saturday night and couple of hours sunday morning on a station near Tekapo. Few bunnies with white patches, but zero black rabbits on that block.
One of the biggest changes I have noticed in Central and the rabbits is a lot of the flatter paddocks now have pivots or irrigation working on them.
One station I shoot used to have large flat paddocks with no irrigation and they held plenty of rabbits, now those paddocks have green grass or crops for the stock and the rabbits are gone from those areas.
They have moved into the dirty gullies or up a little higher onto the dry hills. Still plenty there but just relocated into terrain they like better . It's strange as you look at all the feed and long grass you would think the rabbits would be into
that area but they are living in the dusty, rocky hard areas that look like they hold very little feed for them but they thrive on it.
Rabbits dont like wet grounds and grass.
This, when Southland started changing from sheep/beef to dairy the rabbit numbers (my old lady used to do an r.d. run and would keep a track of what went under the wheels) dropped off and were replaced by haresQuote:
Originally Posted by Trout
Yeah same kind of thing here ( hare ) parts of Central look like the Waikato now. Rabbits been Rabbits will no doubt adapt.Quote:
Originally Posted by 223nut
Yes - on the face of it the Tekapo bunnies shot in the weekend had nothing to eat in that bony, stony country. Yet they were all in good nick... thriving. And no evidence of disease or virus.