Rabbit is one of my favorite tasting wild game.Also my favorite to hunt with our beagles.Some years we will save a bunch of the backstraps and a bunch of the cheeks from our Walleyes,,and have a little feast of Rabbit backstraps and Walleye cheeks."Surf and Turf" at its finest.

It has been 5 or more years since I have heard a beagle in the woods. And I trap most every day, I see very few rabbits and NO grouse. Pheasants, what are they? This state was know as a pheasant state when I was a kid, not now.......jk

Bingo!
I have 6 properties, 2 of which are my own, that I do rabbit specific habitat work on yearly. A chainsaw and a little time will see abundant rabbits in the cover created come fall. It’s not necessary to hand build brushpiles. Basically clearcut and walk away. Don’t treat the stumps. Stump sprout is good.

I can't be too far from you here in lower DE, but we have very few rabbits here anymore... mainly due to loss of habitat from over development and cleaning farming practices, like clearing all hedgerows and cutting all ditch banks yearly. We're knee deep in hawks and eagles and automobiles... quail long gone years ago, rabbits on their way out too... most of our rabbits live in town limits these days. This comes from diehard beagle guys that love to run dogs and hunt... now they hardly shoot, preferring to keep the low rabbit count intact to run another day.

Breakfast. It makes wonderful sausage gravy and my wife and I like it better than pork sausage. They are really easy to debone too once you get the hang of it.

My nephew used to love fried rabbit livers as well. Claimed they were the best livers you can eat. I myself don't care for any liver fried.

Season them good because rabbit plain is bad.

Plain rabbit has a great flavor to me Guss.

I dump all the branches from apple trimming jobs during the winter and dump them near my firewood pile. The rabbits have a hay day and most of the limbs have no bark left.

I think I’ll take notion and work on some rabbit habitat this year. Everywhere we have brush , seems like there’s rabbits. Have a 60 acre clear cut neighboring our property, probably cut 6 years ago. In the early morning you can ride by and count a dozen rabbits easily along that clear cut/road edge. Most of our property is fields for farming grain. With ditches that we mow annually. Sounds like I need to create some habitat, I’m thinking rows of brush to create cover. Can you guys who do this elaborate? Thanks

And as far as eating rabbit vs squirrel, both are good but rabbit wins for me. My daughter whooped up on the squirrels this year and we ate a bunch. We eat a lot of game. But it’s amazing how easily the rabbit peels compared to squirrel. Clay why would you rather skin squirrel?

I agree that the hide tear’s right off a bunny.
I despise hair, any hair, left on the meat after dressing.
I have to be much more careful keeping hair off the meat when cleaning rabbits.
A single pellet in a rabbits guts makes for a dang nasty mess.
We shoot rabbits with.410’s. Not many have a busted gut, but it happens.
Squirrel are .22’d. Head, shoulder, rib cage shot. No gut busted.
Not bragging, but I can peel a squirrel mighty quick, and I guarantee there’s not a hair on them.
And then there’s the thing that I’d 10 to 1 rather eat squirrel lol.

A lot of people wait until they're done hunting squirrel , to clean them!
Big mistake , they skin fast and cleaner when skinned as soon as you shoot them.
A friend of mine shot a deer , and wanted it skinned as soon as we got it to his barn.
Landowner , forgot to add.
It was the easiest deer I ever skinned.
Still warm and the hide came off like I couldn't believe , bet it was skinned in under 2 minutes from first cut to final cut.

Have to add the same with rabbits, clean them as soon as you shoot them.
Carry Ziplock bags with you.

I am with claycreech. I much prefer squirrel. Young squirrels skin much easier than old. Does anyone use 13" beagles?

I’ve got a pack of five. It’s a motley crew lol. All different sizes and colors. Black and tan beagles, tri-colored, liver and white beagle. Even a 1/2 basset 1/2 beagle.
Much like when I had coonhounds…….I’d hunt a poodle if they do a good job.
If they don’t perform to my specifications, they don’t stay in my kennel.
I can pet a good dog easier than a deadbeat hound.