I see a figure of 20000 rabbits quoted for this years shoot - anyone know if that is correct ? Seems like a lot of bunnies for the weekend .

Jeez I dont think we'd have that many left in auz When the carlisi virus spread it really knocked the rabbit pop to hell Put a lot of pro shooters under not mentioning the prossesing companies I heard you blokes over on the land of the long white cloud still had probs with em ! As a matter of intrest is there still a market for Possum skins over there ,and are the Forrestries dept still employing Pro hunters /cullers for goats rabbits & possums? I still remember the Gov Culler days.

Muzza: The figures you quoted for the Easter Bunny Hunt are close to what was reported in the ‘Otago Daily Times’. (on Easter Monday) They gave the winning team’s score as 1787 rabbits and 21 hares, plus a few ‘others’. A total of 43 teams took part, and the total kill was reported as 20,201 rabbits and 807 hares, plus a few dozen ‘others’. (‘others’ consists mainly of possums, feral goats, wild cats, stoats and ferrets – none of which have many friends or admirers!)

For those unfamiliar with this event, the conduct of it is fairly simple. The teams meet for a briefing at Pioneer Park in the town of Alexandra, in Central Otago, at 09:00hrs on Good Friday. A team may consist of up to twelve shooters, with an unlimited number of helpers – drivers, navigators, spotters, ‘picker-uppers’ etc. There is a ballot for shooting blocks, the teams are given maps showing the locations and extents of their respective blocks, and they are sent on their way. Some of the blocks can be quite large – 5,000 to 10,000 acres, and more. The teams must be back at the park, with their kills laid out lines, by 13:00hrs the following day. The only firearms which may be used are rimfire rifles and shotguns. Spot-light shooting from vehicles is permitted, and this is in fact how the majority of rabbits are taken, as they are semi-nocturnal by nature. The more determined teams hunt flat-out the whole of the permitted time, pausing brifly for food and drink, but never for sleeping.

I can quite believe the kill numbers reported in the ODT. I’ve had a few weeks of rabbit shooting in the Lindis Valley in Central Otago recently, in late December and again in mid-March, and there were THOUSANDS of them about! I believe they are just as numerous in places such as Hawea Flats, the Cardrona Valley, Mt. Pisa, and the upper Clutha Valley. In December, my son and I got almost a thousand rabbits in eight days, despite losing quite a lot of shooting time because of heavy rain. In March, I was on some stations further down the valley, where the vegetation tended to be thicker and taller, and the rabbit numbers were, I think, rather smaller, but I still got nearly five hundred in the space of twelve days. I was hunting in a fairly leisurely manner, too, not exactly working my butt off!

RCD (Rabbit Calici Disease) has certainly had an effect on the rabbit population, but it hasn’t been the ‘silver bullet’ that the farmers had hoped for. According to a ‘pro’ shooter I was talking to down in Central, RCD seems to go in waves. He reckons it can strike quite suddenly in heavily populated areas, for no apparent reason, and for a while there are dead rabbits all over the place, then a few months later, huge numbers appear in other areas only a few kilometres away which had previously been almost bare. He said that in 2004, he and his partner had taken 20,000 rabbits off one station in the Lindis Vally, and that was just working at it part time. The bunnies are surely not facing extinction in that part of the world, regardless of RCD.

Thanks Redrover .

The figure I saw was 20203 , which is a big pile of bunnies in anyones language - almost enough for a pie for Easy Rollins lunch....

The Easter Bunny Shoot is part of the Otago tradition , and always looks like good fun unless you are a rabbit .

The calicivirus needs social contact between colonies of bunnies , so it would have a wave effect - high populations with lots of social interaction , spread of disease then high mortality with a lull before numbers get up enough for the disease to spread again and so on .

Thanks for the update .

Quote:
‘The Easter Bunny Shoot is part of the Otago tradition , and always looks like good fun unless you are a rabbit.’

Yes, it is. I considered staying down there a bit longer in March, and taking part, but I finally decided against it. In 1997, the last Easter before RCD got loose, my younger son and I did participate, and we were lucky enough to be in the winning team. The others, who were the main part of the team, had been there several times before, knew the ropes, and were really well set up this time – and determined to win. On top of that, we got a good block – nearly all of it could be driven over, and the place was crawling with rabbits. We nailed about 1425, from memory, which was enough to win, though not a record. I haven’t taken part in subsequent years, because after that first experience, it would probably have turned out a big anti-climax.

44 teams took part in 97, and the total kill was about 24,500. The Saturday was a very hot day, and by mid afternoon, with all those carcasses lying in the sun, Pioneer Park was really starting to pong! They brought in a rubber tyred front-end loader with about a 3 cubic metre bucket and a big dump truck to get rid of them. The rabbits had to be slung into the bucket by hand, so as not to wreck the grass, and the truck had to make several trips. I’ve never actually weighed rabbit carcasses, but I guess they must average about 1.5 – 2kg, so 24,500 of them is, as you say, a fair pile of meat!

It’s interesting to see that this year’s total is getting close to that of 1997, with almost the same number of teams participating. (probably the most teams there have been since 97) It almost suggests that the bunnies might be winning out over RCD – good for us, but bad news for the farmers.

I have been shooting that area since 1997 annually and have just returned from a fortnight there last night.
1997 was unbelievable for outright numbers.
I remember walking and shooting a few gullies solo with a 12 ga going through about 400 rounds in 4 hrs on my first trip in 1997.
I shoot over 45,000 acres and can report that the Calici is definitely removing many of the population. Over the 10 days of shooting we sent half the number of rounds off as usual.
We use a variety of tactics from shotguns in the briar of the gullies combined with rimfires and long range centre fires.
I believe that one of the major factors this year is the great season the area has had. Calici works better in wetter climate.
One of the farmers where I shoot reckons that it is the best season in the last 20 yrs at least for Central otago.
By the way the winning team shot their rabbits between the airstrip and the Clutha apparently.
That is only minutes from the centre of Wanaka.

APB: Which area were you hunting in recently? I can’t help wondering if the low(er) rabbit numbers you observed was just a local phenomenon. The farmers in the Lindis Valley/Tarras areas who I spoke to seemed to think the population was, if anything, on the increase, and some were contemplating going back to the use of poisoned baits. (it has been a very wet summer around there, too - several said it was the wettest they could remember, ever)

The fact that the total kill for the Easter Bunny Hunt was the highest since 97 doesn’t reaaly indicate an overall drop in numbers for the region, either. Sure, the number of teams entered this year was probably the largest since 97, too, but the rabbits still have to be there …

The owner of one of the stations I was shooting on in March told me that a team was there for the EBH, and they shot about 400 rabbits. Not a big number, but that doesn’t totally surprise me. There were plenty of rabbits there, but much of that place is very steep and scrubby, and quite unsuitable for spotlight shooting from vehicles. I didn’t have great success there hunting on foot with a 22RF, either. ‘Ridge-hopping’ in the parts where the grass was shortest and the scrub more scattered proved to be by far the most productive method, but taking shots at less than 100m was the exception, not the rule. My Sako 222 came in for a lot of use.

I don’t believe that it is possible to form any definite conclusions on the effects RCD is having on the rabbit population of the entire region just from your observations and mine, plus the results of the EBH, as there are simply many variables and unknowns involved. However, over time, a trend should become apparent, and I, for one, am very interested in seeing what it will be.

I saw in the newspaper that the winning team in this year’s EBH were on a station in the Cardrona Valley. I didn’t realize it was quite THAT close to town.

I can't believe you would shoot those,I quit rabbit hunting years ago after a bad incident.
I was hunting in East Texas for rabbits when I saw one 50-60 yds out and crawled within 30 yds and took my shot and it dropped immediately.
I walked up to it and rolled it over and to my horror it had a easter egg clutched around it's little arms,never been the same since


Sean

Redrover
I shoot the same properties each year and have been since 1997 as stated.
We spend a minimum of 10 days there and do a lot of walking through tried and proven areas in the Lindis.
This year was the lightest for numbers in memory where we operate.
A couple of gullies had very high populations but in contrast several of our previous best areas were totally devoid of rabbits. This is the result of Calici & not poisoning.
There were 50 odd teams of shooters I believe with approx 20K shot averaging 400 per team.
There were so many teams this year that one of the farms I know were asked to take 2 teams instead of the nbormal 1.
The overall tally has not varied a great deal over the last 10 years. I think the record set in 1997 was about 27K? The number of participants has increased and their ability is improving as well I would venture.

APB:

Were you shooting on Merivale? I have only just made the association between what you are saying, and a chance remark Gerald made to me while I was down there, about a group of Aussies coming over every year for a shoot.

I was there from 6 March to 20 March. Gerald told me that there were probably less rabbits on his place than on any of the neighbouring properties. In addition to shooting, and RCD, he had been running a fairly intensive trapping operation until about a month or so before. I think his assessment was pretty accurate – I also had permission to shoot on some adjoining properties, and there were a LOT more rabbits on them. Far more that I could see and shoot at, anyway, because generally, the grass and other vegetation these places was not so tall and thick.

Quote:
“The overall tally has not varied a great deal over the last 10 years.â€

No, that’s not correct. The official results for 1997 were:
44 teams.
Winning team – 1,424 rabbits. (plus 4 ‘others’)
Total kill – 23,949 rabbits. (plus 246 ‘others’)
We were told that neither of these figures was a record, though I don’t know when either was exceeded.

In 1998, the first year after RCD was introduced, the official results were:
25 teams.
Winning team – 712 rabbits.
Total kill – 5,290 rabbits.
(don’t know how many ‘others’ were taken)

It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that this constitutes a BIG drop-off in rabbit numbers!

I haven’t kept notes of the EBH results since 1998, but I ‘m pretty certain that both the winning tally and the total kill number has steadily increased since then. This year’s results (for 43 teams) are getting close to the pre-RCD numbers, and the winning teams tally of 1787 might well be an all-time record.

To what extent the team scores reflect total rabbit numbers for the region and/or the abilities of the various teams is anyone’s guess. I’ve just been looking over the detailed results of the 1997 shoot. There were two separate teams shooting on Timburn Station – one got 182 rabbits, the other got 802. There were three teams on Cluden Station, and their respective scores were 298, 660 and 740. Why the huge disparities?

I understand that the team shooting on Merivale this Easter got about 400. All things considered, I’d say they were doing quite well to get that many.

Redrover
See PM.
APB

quote:

I can't believe you would shoot those,I quit rabbit hunting years ago after a bad incident.
I was hunting in East Texas for rabbits when I saw one 50-60 yds out and crawled within 30 yds and took my shot and it dropped immediately.
I walked up to it and rolled it over and to my horror it had a easter egg clutched around it's little arms,never been the same since

Mate!!!!!!!! have no fear twas a set up by those nasty,nasty Tree huggin greenies So sleep well & keep on blasting

APB:

Check your private messages.