You guys with a ton of rabbits, are they hard on the trees? Seems like some of these big populations would put a hurting on younger trees.

Any of you guys intentionally build brush piles with structure cavities under them for rabbits and other small wildlife? Thats on my spring to do list this year.

Must be a northern thing. All I see when I see a brush pile is a snake haven!!

I read somewhere that adding a salt block to the brush piles increases rabbit health thus bigger litters.

I’ve read that disease from fleas kills off more rabbits by a far percentage than predators. When I first bought my farm, the rabbits we killed looked like they were crawling with fleas when you killed one. I bought 50lb sulfur / salt blocks and split them roughly into 4ths with a maul. Each brush pile or thick honeysuckle patch gets a chunk thrown into it. You can actually see the bite / gnaw marks in the block over time. I do this once a year, 250 lbs total each year.

I cap the season out each year at 60 rabbits (usually 3-4 hunts) and haven’t seen a flea on a rabbit since. As the cutovers have gotten taller, with less undergrowth, I’ve still maintained quite a high rabbit population. Trap it heavy each year, established brush piles, put out sulfer salt and let all of my food plot edges grow up thick except to get the tractor in / out.

About 20 years ago my uncle and his boys bought 120 acres , about half timber and half poor tillable ground. We killed some rabbits but wanted to disperse them across the farm. Most were up tight to the old barn, farm junk, and roadway as expected but not many on the rest of the property. They left a 30’ buffer from the existing wood line into the fields for planting pines and oaks and plots. I think we planted over 500 trees. Just inside the wood line we removed scrub trees and anything dying off. Either Placed a pallet on the bottom or laid 2 logs parallel on the ground with several perpendicular to them on top, then loaded them up as high as we could. I think we built close to 30 piles around the 2 fields. Most were placed as close as possible to honeysuckle or briars. They had several food plots out and the previous owner continued to plant corn on the property also.

After 2 years we had to split the farm into multiple day hunts to cover it all. 5 guys would limit out on each hunt. Just about every pile had a rabbit in it or very close to it. The quail have returned as well. “If you build it, they will come”

Any of you guys intentionally build brush piles with structure cavities under them for rabbits and other small wildlife? Thats on my spring to do list this year.