Rabbits are chewing water lines on hot days. I need some ideas on how to catch or deter them. The Orchard is near houses and roads? Tx

Lettuce & carrots in a cage trap

About 10 years ago a guy from Texas sent me several videos of rabbits getting caught in a cage trap. He wired carrots to the trigger. I never posted the video.The trap was 10 x 12 x 30 with a hanging wire trigger. A pan trigger should would work just fine.

Rabbits are wandering animals and change their behavior frequently as well as their selected and preferred feeding areas. That is the biggest challenge of finding their frequency areas. They will change their diets as needed and according to what is available and preferred during seasonal intervals. We only have cottontails here.

They aren't too difficult to catch if you get into where they are foraging nightly. I have caught them with our ground hog products using parsnips, carrots and apple slices for visual attraction in a cage trap with the visual bait suspended in good view. Also have caught many with baited ground traps around buildings and decks. These ghog den areas also many times are shared habitat harborage sites of rabbits as many should know already.

When summer is in full swing there are many food opportunities so trapping for them can be challenging. Winter trapping is much easier since you can see tracks and trails as to where to set for them.

I have some free time now so I will set out some traps for them today and see how it goes. We don't have many rabbits this time of year as the owls have worked on them thru out the winter at our place in the country. I find rabbit fur and gut piles lying around frequently so I know they are making regular kills. The first litters will be coming soon so they will get their numbers back up pretty soon.

I was fascinated by this as Mr. Jameson stated his rabbits moved in Pennsylvania. The question is what kind of rabbits you have in California, as around the Great Plains, we have cottontail and jack rabbits, or had jacks, until they got a disease back around 97 and wiped them out. They never moved a great deal, and our cottontails do not move at all, as they occupy the shelterbelts and rarely go on a walk to other areas.

Your bunnies are chewing waterlines because they are thirsty as rubber is not in their diet and I doubt it was contaminated with the kinds of food they eat in storage.

From my experience here with jacks and cottontails, both will respond to fox sets. They were a nuisance in trapping when there were allot of them. I think it was the fox urine, but in those days I was using Garold Weilands Big Deuce which was skunk based call too. I doubt as you are in California that rodent poison is an alternative in closed feeding stations that birds could not see.

You do though have a number of rabbit species.


Eight species of rabbits and hares occur in California.

Pygmy rabbit, Brachylagus idahoensis (CDFW special concern, harvest)
Snowshoe hare, Lepus americanus (harvest)
Oregon snowshoe hare, L. americanus klamathensis (CDFW special concern)
Sierra Nevada snowshoe hare, L. americanus tahoensis (CDFW special concern; endemic)
Black-tailed jackrabbit, Lepus californicus (harvest)
San Diego black-tailed jackrabbit, L. californicus bennettii (CDFW special concern; endemic)
White-tailed jackrabbit, Lepus townsendii (CDFW special concern, harvest)
European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus (introduced)
Desert cottontail, Sylvilagus audubonii (harvest)
Brush rabbit, Sylvilagus bachmani (harvest, except for endangered Riparian subspecies)
Riparian brush rabbit, S. bachmani riparius (CDFW special concern; endemic)
Mountain cottontail, Sylvilagus nuttallii (harvest)

Tx everyone... I think I will try cage trapping early in the spring.


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