July 3rd The First Rabbit Hunt

July 3^nd,

The first of July each year holds a special promise for me.  Longer days and sunny mornings mean the extension of work and chores, but it also means the dying away of June gloom and the easing into the blast furnace that has become Southern California summer whether. 

July 1 also has a nostalgic value.  Saturday morning cartoons of my youth shed off their yoke of impossibility and I transform Kafkaesque into one of their characters.   For when the rooster cries the arrival of July the 1^st…..I become the mighty Elmer Fudd.

Yeah….I’m bald… and when I get excited I stutter too.

Each year the first of July in California marks the beginning of rabbit season….and just like in the cartoons, Buggs seems to innately know this.  The weekend before rabbit season there are a bunch of the critters all over the place….but at the opening bell they disappear.

This year my youngest daughter Chaney earned her hunting license.  This year my wilderness adventures would not be solo.  This year Chaney would be taking her place in a long and ancient line of hunting ancestors.  Ancestors that hunted the mighty rabbit and relied on it’s protein for sustenance.

Normally when I hunt I prefer to start early in the morning.  I do afternoon hunts, but not usually in the National Forest. (Typically I have to be home in the afternoon taking care of chores or running around with my wife and kids.)  However,  opening day for rabbits this year fell on a Sunday, and Sunday mornings at our house involves a weekly trip to my 93 year old grandmothers’ house for a visit. 

Well….as you can imagine that wasn’t going to get postponed, so Chaney and I decided that we would head up to the National Forest late in the afternoon.  We figured that shouldn’t be a problem.  Rabbits are nocturnal, but stay out of their burros in shaded areas in the early morning and late afternoon hours.  The cooler temperatures are a benefit to us as well.  Hiking through the hills of Southern California in July can be brutally hot…doing it when the sun is going down helps keep things more pleasant.

Now I’ve  been to a little “rabbit hole” in the forest and seen boatloads of the furry beasts. I figured that would be the best place to start.  What I didn’t consider were the other forest creatures that would be out that same time, namely the evil black footed kaki cladded Mountain Biker (homobipedalas horriblis)

Rabbits like to stay in open areas (good for us!) but spook ridiculously easy, and scurry back to the holes never to be seen again.  A biker zipping along on a trail can scatter rabbits for a hundred yards in each direction.  Bikers also tend to be fairly skittish fellows themselves.  Apparently seeing a couple of people walking along the fields wearing blaze orange and carrying firearms tends to put them off a bit.

Fortunately the bikers we saw were far enough over on the other side of the field to really not interfere with our hunt.  What did cause us problems were the golden eagles flying overhead.  (Rabbits tend not to like them either). 

So…off Chaney and I went....hiking about 6 miles up and down the forest hills….slowly scanning the ground for killer rabbits.  As the sun set and we began our long hike back to the truck when we spotted him!

He was in an open space about a hundred yards down a hill from us.  Just as Chaney went prone and tried to get her scope on him he scampered off towards a bush and out of sight.  He wasn’t running fast though, and we thought if we sneaked up we might have a crack at him.

We took a long way around to get to that bush and with a couple of missed opportunities we finally connected!

Chaney had her first wild rabbit!

A trophy bull!

Ok…it was a small one….but it was her first! And we spent a hell of a long time hunting it. 

This was also her first time completely gutting and skinning a creature she shot.  She did a fantastic job!  (With her new knife I might add).

Thankfully she didn't want to hang it from a tree branch to do the skinning!

She then cut the feet off to dry. 

She told me she wanted to keep one for good luck, and she wanted me to have the other one….a memory of my first rabbit hunt with her.

How friggen cool is that!