SUMMER STALKING
Summer rabbiting is one of the highlights of the airgun hunter’s year, not just because it offers the chance to pit your wits against a challenging adversary while carrying out vital pest control, but also because successful shooting is rewarded with delicious free-range, low-cholesterol meat for the table.
Rabbits have had their ups and downs over the years. When I was a boy, local populations were frequently decimated by bouts of myxomatosis. Through generations of survivors, rabbits have built up a resistance to this horrible disease, but they then took another hit when rabbit haemorrhagic disease struck. This new threat has had a detrimental impact in many areas, but I’m pleased to say that my locality has shown a strong recovery in the past couple of years – so much so that rabbit numbers are once again getting out of hand in many places.
The farm where I am shooting this evening is a great example of the rabbits’ ability to bounce back from the brink. Three or four years ago it was a rarity to see any here, but now they are abundant once again and causing the
