“ON THE PREDATORS’ MENU… Rabbits Born To Be Eaten”
By Dick Ellis
According to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Upland Game Ecologist Scott Walter from Madison on February , 2010-2011 harvest estimates for cottontail rabbits are taken from a relatively small survey of 10,000 Wisconsin hunters. From the survey, DNR estimates that 31,502 hunters, or 13 percent of the total number of hunters, hunted rabbits last year for a total of 150,330 days to harvest 105,736 rabbits.
“Marathon, Dodge and Washington Counties had the highest harvest numbers,” Walter said. “The survey numbers come from a relatively small samples but gives us the basis for a best guess.”
DNR interviews over the years also offer a snapshot and interesting perspectives on bunny harvests over the years in Wisconsin. Approximately 60,000 hunters killed 200,000 cottontail rabbits during the 2001/2002 small game season. Harvest numbers from hunter surveys shows that in 1998, 61,000 hunters logged 294,000 field days to harvest 250,000 rabbits.
In 1996 and 1997 approximately 200,000 rabbits were taken. And for 10 years before heavy snows and cold in 1995/96, 320,000 to 420,000 rabbits were harvested annually.
“The harvest has dropped substantially since the 1970s,” said Wildlife Ecologist Keith Warnke in a 2003 interview . “It follows the trend of pheasant hunting and in general the trend away from smallgame hunting. It’s too bad. Rabbit hunting and squirrel hunting is how most of us got started hunting. I think it’s a symptom of the increased speed at which our society functions. And I’m guilty of the same crime.”
Even without man in the equation, cottontail rabbits are the key prey for raptors and carnivores alike. “Rabbits are food,” as Warnke put it. “Great Horned Owls take a lot of rabbits because they both feed at dawn and dusk.”
Red-tail hawks, other owls, fox and coyotes prey on rabbits, but, according to an interview in 2000 with State Wildlife Biologist Bill Ishmael, it seems everything eats bunnies, including crows and raccoons. Crows, he said, are adept at finding and cleaning out a rabbit nest.
Despite the pressure on individual animals, nature finds a way to sustain the species. Unlike cyclical population declines and increases seen in grouse and snowshoe rabbits, cottontails experience population trends. With dry, mild spring weather rabbit production can be bolstered by females giving birth to up to four litters in a single year, with two to three litters more typical.
“During years of mild, spring weather,” Ishmael said in 2000, “they can breed like…well, like rabbits.”