I was living in S.E. Idaho the winter of 1981-82. Those Black Tailed Jacks were unbelievably thick. You could grab your .22 and head for the sage and see, literally, thousands in an afternoon. I had a ball hunting them that winter. We lived out on the west side of Rigby at the time all those "Bunny Bops" were held. It was a media circus that the AR folks wallowed in. They even got a court injunction to stop them, or at least to limit anyone under 16 (?) from being a part of them. Those hares would attack the hay stacks at night and destroy thousands of dollars worth of old fashioned bales. They'd eat the bottoms out and the stacks would fall over, crashing hares by the dozens. What wasn't eaten was peed on and was worthless as fodder. Some ranchers paid a bounty of 25 cents each. As for them being table fare......I stopped in to visit a local named Clyde Ormond, a prolific outdoor author back 50 years ago, and he said when he was a kid they ate so much jackrabbit that if a dog barked, they'd all go run under the porch. When I moved back east that spring, I brought 60 pounds of boned jackrabbit meat with me to make into sausage. Good stuff.

My Dad talked about rabbit clubbing here. Grandpa had a piece of ground that the RR cut through forming a long triangle that starts about 3/8 mile wide and runs into a very tight corner. That ground had woven sheep wire around it that the cottontails could not get through easily so folks from town would come down every few weeks and walk it from wide end to the narrow corner where they would club the rabbits. Dad said even though many rabbits would escape back past the walkers they would still club a huge pile of rabbits when all said and done. I can't imagine that many rabbits around, but I expect the people did a better job of keeping the predators in check back then. Now we have a hawk on every pole so the rabbits don't stand a chance of making a comeback to those kind of numbers.

Oregon used to have a 5 cent bounty on a pair of jackrabbit ears during the depression. Wayne Negus in his book Wilderness Tales & trails talks of making up to $4.50 a day shooting rabbits and turning the ears in to the county clerk in Burns, Oregon. Good depression era pay.

My father and uncles still talk of rabbit hunts in the fifties and early sixties here in eastern SD. Was evidently a regular way to spend weekend nights driving around alfalfa fields in trucks and cars having a “good” time. Evidently they made enough money for gas, ammo, other liquid nourishments, and still put a little money in their pockets. Farmers would pay for them to set up around corn cribs and cull them. They spoke of many nights filling the trunks of cars and truck beds with jacks. They spoke of the fields lighting up with eyes when they turned into the approaches.I occasionally will have one in a snare, and see their tracks in certain areas I trap, but have probably only ever seen 40-50 live ones my whole life. They sure had a heckuva time doing it, many would complain today about the way it was done. But hanging out the back of a truck or car window having a ball with friends beats the heck out of the way many kids today choose to “have fun”. Sadly, another great memory that will probably never be lived out again. It must’ve been memorable for those that participated, you can still see the fire flicker in the eyes of my uncles and their friends whenever the stories are brought up. That, to me, is priceless…

Seen a lot of jacks and cotton tails when I was trapping down in AZ back in the late 70s. Amazing amount of wildlife out in the desert back then it surprised me the first time driving the roads down there.

Use to be thousands now rare as hens teeth .Miss those days
Could get behind them in the car on the road and they would run a mile or more if you staed behind them around 35-40 mph.

very cool read

I think the part that amazes me is the vast quantity of rabbits involved.
Must have been a sight to see.

back in the 50s my grandpa was doing simmiar but here is was to rid the county of fox.

great grandpa owned a chicken hatchery , everyone disliked fox I guess , so a guy by the last name of Fox ironically was a WWII pilot he had a small plane with a big surplus speaker on the wing , teams in cars would drive the frozen fields and he would call down where they were running out as he buzzed the woods , the cars would run and gun them when riding shotgun really was riding shotgun.

Friday nights it was feral cat control loosing car bought the beer and they all stood around their cars in the parking lot of the gas station drinking and shooting the breeze.