Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
With Britain’s rabbits declining significantly over the past 20 years, it is time that we recognised these animals for the valuable resource they are
The boom and bust of local rabbits has become depressingly routine. My childhood was spent shooting bunnies on the family farm and I found an endless supply of targets for my old BSA rimfire. A friend and I shot more than 100 in a single night and rabbits were a fact of life across extensive areas of Galloway.
To my eternal shame, I sometimes used to fling away rabbits I shot — there were often too many to handle and the local butchers were unable to match excessive supply with moderate demand. I was able to win over one friendly butcher who paid 50p each for my rabbits and he complimented me for my diligence when he found that I had even skinned their tails.
Since the late 1990s, rabbits have become scarce. Many of their warrens have grown over and been filled in by trampling sheep and cows. The survivors often breed furiously all summer and fill the world with their offspring, but this boom is countered by a depressing slump in early autumn. The fields are filled with them throughout June and July, but are reduced to one or two adults by November when my ferrets are ready to get stuck in.
There is no obvious explanation for these dramatic periods of boom and bust. I don’t doubt that foxes and buzzards eat a few rabbits when they can catch them, but it can hardly be possible that either kill enough parts, I can’t help thinking that mild, soggy conditions provide a perfect breeding ground for parasites and pathogens such as liver fluke and coccidiosis. Thousands of rabbits must wither away underground every year and it is now rare to find a rabbit that does not show some scarring and liver damage from fluke. Farmers are worried about the devastating impact of fluke on sheep over the past 10 years and it makes sense that it is growing among rabbits too.
I often flick through the Shooting Times and see fantastic photographs of ferreting and rabbit shooting across the country.
Myxomatosis was a PR disaster. Pusfilled bodies littered the landscape and the British public recoiled in horror. Until that point, rabbits had been an accessible source of food for everybody and while myxy killed a vast number of rabbits, it also killed our appetite for their meat. Rabbits are slowly making a comeback but their meat is hardly an everyday ingredient in most households.
Amid dreadful declines in rabbit numbers, it is surely time to resurrect the species as a valuable resource. I would love to see rabbits rated for their meat and their fur again. Rabbits still suffer from the label of pest or vermin and often receive punishments that are hardly proportionate to their crimes. I am pleased to see them prospering on golf courses and on industrial estates; they are a pleasing reminder of wildlife in a sterile, human world.
It would be lovely to see rabbits recognised as a resource in their own right. Writing from the perspective of someone who had thousands of rabbits and now has very few; kill them, cook them and eat them — but above all, enjoy them.
“Rabbits on industrial estates are a
Patrick Laurie is a project manager at the Heather Trust. He has a particular focus on blackgrouse conservation and farms Galloway cattle in south-west Scotland.