At times they were so thick out west that they would have rabbit round ups and with a closing circle club literally thousands. Nothing like that for many many years.

when you look at the fur records of ND at the turn of the century your head would explode,,,even up to the 1950's

I haven't seen a jack around here (NE Nebr.) for at least 20 years, plenty of cottontails but no jacks.

Four or five years ago I would hit more on the freeway driving from Buffalo to Kaycee than I would see in that stretch this winter. Still a few around, but they have crashed. They always cycle just like our snowshoes here do, so I never thought much of it. Hopefully you are incorrect and they come back.

Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease is a real thing. Populations are very slow to recover unlike other rabbit cyclic die offs.

https://www.avma.org/resources-tool...animal-health/rabbit-hemorrhagic-disease

Odie1, I haven’t seen one here in eastern or southeastern Nebraska since I was a kid, last one I saw that has to be about 40 years ago easily.
With their ears up when running there is no doubt what they are, so much bigger than other rabbits here. I’ll never forget the last one I saw. Unique animal for sure.
Jim

I haven't been up there in awhile, but there used to be a sizable population around El Reno in central Oklahoma.

There used to be coyotes that made a living going up and down 395 in eastern Oregon cleaning up road hit jackrabbits. One of my hunting techniques was having my partner drop me off and continue on and I would wait in the ditch until a truck came by and then scream my guts out on my jackrabbit call to imitate a wounded jack. Gotta a lot of 'yotes that way.

I lived in Jefferson Co. Idaho the winter of '81-'82 when the locals had a horrendous problem with Black-tailed Jacks.....there were so many they literally would eat up haystacks to the point they'd collapse and kill a bunch of the jackrabbits. That was the year the Bunny Bops/Roundups got national news coverage and the AR folks sued to stop them from clubbing the darn things.
I'd shoot them and bone them out for sausage meat. Best hunt I killed either 14 or 17 in the Lewisville Knolls and had to quit on account of not being able to carry any more! They averaged between 6 and 8 lbs each. The big White-tailed Jackrabbits were even bigger, but I only shot a few of those. They looked like monstrous Snowshoe Hares. When I moved back to Michigan that spring I had over 60 lbs of boned meat I made into breakfast sausage.

ttt

That's brilliant.