Evel Knievel Rabbit

As previously mention you may witness or experience some extraordinary events while out hunting and this one has to be #1 for me.

Prelude
For a number of years a small group of us would gather on New Year’s Day for an annual bunny hunt. While bunny hunting in a designated home we had a pot of wild game chili and refreshments waiting to be enjoyed afterwards.
Now the spot of choice to hunt we discovered previously on another outing. It was just outside and bordering on a city limit boundary so a suburb of homes was not far away. On one side of the property was a paved roadway seldom used so choosing a holiday was an ideal time to hunt it with beagles when there was next to no traffic in the area. Just to give you an idea how hot this spot was on our first outing 4 of us had 22-bunnies in our bag in just over two hours. From that day on we decided to not hunt the property continuously and save it for a one day annual hunt.

Onto the Hunt
This particular day was perfect weather. The day was warming up after a cold spell and bunnies were out enjoying it that is until we arrived. We no sooner got onto the property the beagles were howling excitedly and soon thereafter volleys of shots could be heard as the tally on rabbits began to climb. Man this was going to be a great day.

Having hunted the property a few times we started to know the rabbits running patterns and used this to our advantage. One of the last areas we hunted was a brush strip along side of the roadway. Here we employed a 3-sided pincher movement where any escaping rabbits had to expose themselves to a shooter if they wanted to escape back into the bush lot. As the noose tightened a few bunnies were harvested. When the noose was almost complete I noticed a station wagon driving down the road from my partially obscured vision. For a moment the brake lights came on slowing down the vehicle but it never came to a complete stop before continuing on.

When the vehicle didn’t stop completely from braking I heard one of the boys yell “OH SH!T” and first thought one of the beagles might be injured from the passing vehicle. I hurried over there to find out what happened. Here I got the eyewitness account of what happened.
A cornered rabbit decided to make a bolting attempt to cross the road to get away from us. It just so happened a vehicle had come along and instead of choosing to run under the vehicle gave it all in an attempt to leap over the hood. The front of the hood tagged the legs knocking the rabbit on its side where it slid partially across the hood and over almost the height of the windshield before flying off the vehicle. Having another one of the boys also witness this event there was no question of credibility.

The driver was described as a middle aged woman and it dawned on me of what my reaction would have been suddenly seeing a rabbit appear partially sliding across the hood of my vehicle and up the windshield. This lady had to be a farm girl with nerves of steel just to keep on trucking like she did. Any way the event was relived many times when we were enjoying our wild game chili with bursts of laughter.
As for the daredevil rabbit we never found him as he got away onto private property where we did not have permission to hunt. Hey he deserved to live another day after that entertaining stunt and this event will never be forgotten.


Ed