Dad had told me this would be the “Perfect storm of rabbit hunting in these conditions.” As I continued into the briar patch more rabbits appeared and each was shot in the head until I had the daily limit of five cottontails. Wow, was I a proud hunter when I got home and showed Dad my catch. We cleaned all five and cut them up into 2 front legs, 2 hind legs, 1 back strap and the ribs. Sunday afternoon Mom fried them up and made gravy, best meal I ever had in my life, mainly because I got them. We were a family of six and had a lot of meals on rabbits There were lots of rabbits in those days around 1950 but not near as many as 1920 when my grandfather Roy Porter was hunting. Rabbits are sexually mature at 12 weeks of age and have 6 to 8 babies, so when conditions are right, you can have thousands of rabbits but only about 15% survive their first year of life in the wild. Grandpa told me about using a ferret to get rabbits out of den holes. They would find a den hole in the ground with lots of tracks in the snow going in and he would put the ferret into the hole. The escape holes above would be covered with a burlap feed sack. It would take about 15 minutes and then you could hear the rabbits running to escape the predator. They ran right into the sack and grandpa would get around 6 or 8 each time. Grandpa would catch the ferret and go to the next hole. It was not uncommon to get 50 rabbits a day and grandpa would sell them for 10 cents each. Weekly wage at that time were $23, so $5 a day was pretty good. The buyers would put them in a barrel and salt them down and ship to New York City. Can you imagine doing this today with all the laws and government regulations?
Grandpa said sometimes the ferret would catch a rabbit in the hole, and you had to wait for him to eat his fill until he came back out, which could be an hour or more.
Over the years I hunted rabbits with a .410 shotgun and then a .20 gauge. The opening day of rabbit season got to be very important. My good friend John in high school decided we would skip school on opening day of rabbit season. We had a good day hunting but had no excuse from home and got another day off suspension from school. We hunted rabbits a lot in high school by just walking them up in heavy cover. Later after high school, my Uncle Max asks if I wanted to go along with him and his beagle hound. We went to an area with lots of blackberry briars and heavy grass. I jumped a fat cottontail and pulled my shotgun up to shoot, when Uncle said, “Don’t shoot, call the dog.” It was perfect tracking conditions with an inch of wet snow and 35 degrees. That beagle opened up with a loud drawn out bawl and went over the hill out of sight. Uncle said, “Now get up on that stump and don’t move.” This was all new to me, how can you kill a rabbit here on a stump when the dog ran it over the hill? Uncle said be patient, they will be back soon. I could hear the hound barking in the distance. Sure enough in about 20 minutes here came the rabbit hopping along; it was an easy shot with my .20 gauge. Uncle Max picked up the bunny and waited for the beagle, he let the dog get a smell, then we were off walking again. This time the dog jumped the rabbit out of a pile of brush. Now I knew what to do and climbed up on a fallen tree but this time Uncle Max got the shot. We bagged 8 rabbits that day and I was hooked on hunting with beagle hounds. Beagles don’t circle rabbits as many people believe. It is the rabbit that makes the circle; the dogs simply follow the tracks. Cottontails will always head back to where the race started.
After I got married I bought 2 male beagle hound pups and started taking them out with my friend’s older dogs to get them started. They would run along after the barking dogs all excited but never really got their nose on the ground tracking. This went on until they were about a year old and I thought they never would be good trackers. I tried dragging a rabbit skin along on the ground but they always lost the trail after 100 yards or so.
One afternoon with a good snow on the ground, I spotted a rabbit sitting in brush pile; I saw the brown eye first. Dad always said, “Look for the eye”. I turned around and Duke was right behind me, I picked him up and walked over to the brush pile. Being careful not to flush the bunny, Duke was set down about 10 feet away. The cottontail took off right in front of Duke’s nose and the chase was on. He ran it by sight for a while then started tracking by smell and 30 minutes later I shot the first rabbit in front of Duke. From that day on Duke was a top notch tracker and rarely ever lost the rabbit. My other male Spot just followed along but was never the leader like Duke.
When Duke was about 3 years old, he had a reputation in Central Indiana and hunters soon started wanting a pup out of this super rabbit dog, so I started looking for a good female to breed to. Uncle Max put me onto a breeder that had field trial champions for many years. I paid $300 for a female pup that had champion blood lines on both sides. That was a lot of money in 1976. Shortly after I bought the female, one of the local rabbit hunters came to the farm and wanted to buy Duke. I said, “He is not for sale”, he said everything is for sale, name your price. Once again, I said, “He is not for sale”. Then he said, “I will give you $1000”, that got my attention for a little while, since I was only making around $9500 per year. But I said, “No, I just bought a female and plan to raise pups”.
About a year later the female, (can’t remember her name) had 7 pups. I’ll just call her Mrs. Duke but it was a great litter, 5 males and 2 females. When they were 6 weeks old, my kids were in love with them and playing every day but I told them, they will be up for sale soon. I priced them at $300 and the word got out that the great Duke’s pups were available. I saved one male and named him “Duke Jr.” and he turned out to be a chip off the old block. About a year later Duke and Jr. were the talk of the county in Central Indiana, they never lost a track and if you missed the shot they just circled it around again.
One cold winter snowy day in Jan, I took the dogs over to a farm in the south part of the county where I heard there were a lot of rabbits. The farmer said, “Yeah you can hunt but there is a rabbit up there that stays in a junk yard that nobody can kill”. I said,” Can you show me? “So the farmer got on his coat took me up the hill behind his house to a place where tin cans and scrap metal were piled up in a hole with a lot of berry vines and briars growing. Duke and Jr. took off into the mess and 20 minutes later I saw a rabbit go out the other side, the farmer said, “That’s him, see that black fur on his shoulder?“ Duke and Jr. opened up on the track and I could hear their baying howl go over the hill north. A little while later the barking stopped and I walked down to where I had last heard them. There they were running up and down the bank of a large pond. The tracks showed that the bunny had jumped in and swam across the pond. Yes, rabbits will swim if they have to; this is how that rabbit always got away. I took the dogs around to the other side and they picked up the scent. I went back to the junk yard and waited, the rabbit made a big circle but came right back to the pond again. Duke and Jr. went silent again and I knew the smart cottontail had swum again. I stayed put this time and finally Duke picked up the track again, only had to show him once. Finally I saw movement and here came the bunny hopping along, one shot from the .20 gauge and it was over. I walked over and picked it up; there was the black spot on his shoulder. When Duke and Jr. got there I let them shake it a few times for their reward. I stopped at the farm house and showed the owner. He said, “Well I’ll be darn, hunters have been trying to get him for 2 years”. I said, “This is Duke and his son Jr. and I will have pups for sale next summer”.
Beagles are active companions for kids; they are happy, inquisitive and think everyone is their new best friend. Those soft brown or hazel eyes are easy to fall in love with. So if you are looking for a dog, think about the beagle hound.
