00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to this Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. I'm coon hunting, to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways had off. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Rabbits, dogs and car hoods. Dogs of all kinds stir my soul more than anything when it comes to hunting. Rabbit hunting with dogs is what I do the least, but may be my absolute favorite. It's easy to do, the dogs don't have to be world champions, and it's exciting and fun. I'm going to tell you all about it, but first I'm going to tell you a story. The story this week comes from our man on the scene, Ron Ausman. Ron has been a faithful listener of the show and sent this story in a while back, and since we're chasing rabbits this week, I thought i'd include it here. So in Ron's words and my voice, here we go. November nineteen seventy five, I had just passed my Pennsylvania Hunter's Safety Course and would be allowed to start carrying a gun and hunting with my father and our small pack of bassets and beagles. In Pennsylvania, a junior hunter had to be twelve years of age before he or she could start hunting. And my birthday was on the twelfth of December. I assumed that my father would take me to the store to buy a hunting license on my birthday. Now I would start hunting after Christmas when the second small game season started. He just told me to remember my birthday was November the twelfth this year. Now, the license department asked no questions and they issued me my first official hunting license without a hitch and Dad told me we were going hunting on Thanksgiving morning, which was one of our traditions. A couple of days before Thanksgiving, my dad had another surprise. He gave me a brand new H and R single shot Topper junior in twenty gage. Now that shotgun would serve me and then my brothers for several seasons. The morning of the hunt, I woke up at our normal time. We had breakfast at home, and we loaded up to Buick station wagon with our gear and four hounds and off to our hunting spot. We went back. Then there was a lot of accessible land that was not posted in the county where we lived. The spot we were hunting was the future home of the new Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, and that we're going to be breaking ground there in the next couple of years. But right now this was basically a great play. So several thousand acres of awes and rabbit cover that was open to the public. We started hunting, working our way through red and green briers, letting the hounds work in front of us. We were hunting for about an hour before we struck the first rabbit. The hound opened and started the race. My dad was a meat hunter. Some shooting a rabbit on the jump was fair game, but this time he didn't have a chance to make a clean shot, and the hounds were running the rabbit good. So Dad had me stand on top of a a fallen tree and said, watch for the rabbit. You should come back around in a few minutes. He went and stood about fifty yards away and watch it through the rabbit. Within a few minutes I could see the rabbit coming my way. Now, if you hunted rabbits with hounds, you know that the rabbit gets a good a good lead on the pack typically and then slows down and maintains a steady pace trying to return to where its original setting spot was. I cocked the hammer on that h and r and waited until that rabbit was about fifteen yards away. I got him. Dad came running over and we celebrated first rabbit on my first official hunt. About an hour later, the hounds had another rabbit started and Dad had me standing in an open area to watch for it. The hounds were working their way to my rear and out behind me, and I was trying to watch all around as the rabbit could appear just about anywhere. I was watching in front of me, when out of the corner of my eyes, just to the left, the rabbit appeared and stopped about ten yards away. Fortunately, the way I was holding my shotgun, the barrel was pointed right at the rabbit. I cocked the hammer and shot from the hip. Bam. Rabbit number two. Now by this time, it was about three o'clock, in time to head back home for a big family dinner that my mom and my grandmother had been working on all day. The best part of the whole day was later that evening when my father called his brother to tell him about the hunt. These were his words to his brother son to Dad zero. Now that is one of the fondest memories. I have a hunt with my dad, and how proud he was of me on our first hunt. And according to the retired gunnery Sergeant Ron Ausman, Pennsylvania born youth hundred rabbits, an adult defender of Iron Nation, now residing in the great state of Alabama, that's just how that happened. Now, in that story, nothing really remarkable occurred. There was no surprise ending or hilarious calamity that befell Ron or his father. It was just a simple story. And then my best Keith Morrison's storyline twist or was it? If you look past the wilful falsifying of a state document, a son and a father, a crime they committed together, and the rabbit hunting, what you have is a father and a son spending time together that eventually led them to Grandma's house and fellowship over a shared meal with more folks, and then a father's phone call to a brother to brag on a son a rabbit hunting may have been the activity, but family was the result. If you read between the lines and look past the trees, then you can see the forest. Thanks for sharing, Gunny. There are few things in the outdoors that I enjoy the most that don't include a dog. Now, whether it's my well known passion for coons, squirrel and duck hunting, with the latter two of each being formidable on their own, the addition of a good tree dog or retriever just enhances the whole flavor of the endeavor. It's like black pepper on biscuits and gravy. It's good by itself, but reaches a front level of greatness when the pepper grinder stops after a minimum of half a dozen turns. Rabbits can be and have been hunted without dogs since we figured out they tasted good with mashed potatoes and gravy. I can't remember a time at any time when we'd see a rabbit cross the road or flush as we were rambling around the homestead and someone not wish that Rascal's next move was into a skill of the hot grease. They taste great, and next to quail, it was the wild game. My mama liked the most. Rabbit hunting was a lot like squirrel hunting. For a lot of folks, it was their introduction into hunting. Season is pretty long to bag limits liberal, and how you gather them up is fun. You don't have to be quiet or have any special clothing or equipment outside of a firearm or bowing era and if you're good with a slank shot, you can use that, provided it's legal where you are. The Eastern two Thursday the un the United States has good luck, charms and supper hopping all around it. There are four states where you can hunt the year round. That's in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Utah. But here in Arkansas it's September to the end of February. Most of the other states have a similar season now. Growing up, it was commonly said that you couldn't eat a rabbit unless the month in which the rabbit was acquired contained an r in the spelling. September to March was okay, but May through August no boin on. Some folks there that down even further by saying that you should wait until the first frost before killing and eating them. That sounds a little crazy to you allow me to explain the reasoning behind it. Down here in the Land of Cotton, buttflies are an issue and they're found over most of the US except for Alaska, plus southern Canada and northern Mexico. And they thrive in warmer climates and they lay eggs on the backs of rabbits that hatch and enter into any open orifice or wound, where they can migrate to the neck and the shoulders, the back and the behind and grow until the next stage, where they form underneath the hide while breathing through a poor or a hole in the skin. Two weeks to a month later, they will burrow out of the skin and fall on the ground and dig a hole where they can spend their next stage of development. It's like a snake farm, except we're talking about a butterfly, and butterfly it just sounds nasty podfly. It pretty much is. In the cooler months, the flies aren't as active, and that's where the old wives tales and practices come from, the ferring to the colder months to eat them. If you've ever seen a rabbit or squirrel one of those on them, you'll know why. Final comments on bodfly walls or wolves as the old folks referred to. Is it safe to eat a rabbit that has been parasitized by a butterfly? And the answer is yes, Remove it and the meat around it, and cook the meat to one hundred and sixty degrees and you're good to go. Now, would I eat a rabbit that's been infected with one? And the jury is still out because I ain't never been that hungry, not yet anyway. So with that bit of info behind us, let's get to hunting. Now. Outside of a rabbit being an n seasoned target of opportunity that you could snag while you were out hunting something else, there were four ways to hunt rabbits where I grew up. You could use dogs to run them, and we're gonna talk more about that in detail in a minute. But you could walk and cover where you thought a rabbit might be and flush one out. This method works better with more than one person. You walk in close proximity of each other and cause more of a deservance. That way, you'll have a better chance of making the rabbit run instead of just letting you pass by its hiding spot. The third way is to track them in a fresh snow. That was a rare occasion where I live, But the name is exactly how you do it. You find a set of tracks and start following them until you find this rabbit. Now, the softer the snow the better. The crunch of ice and frozen snow lets them know that you're getting close, and they'll stay way ahead of the approaching racket. Getting on a fresh track, and the few snows that I can remember that we ever got there. I was a kid. That was ideal for tracking rabbits. Was like finding a five dollar bill in the old coat pocket. You knew you were in for a good day. Following a set of tracks into soft snow and seeing them in in a brush top or a grown up fence corner meant he was in and a hole in there, or he was just chilling and staying war. Now, those you could kick out and get to working on. Mister Brown and mister Winchester. It was always a surprise when they busted out of cover, even though you knew it was going to happen. It was fun. The fourth way we hunted him was by sitting on the passenger side hood of a car with a twenty two rifle at night, while your buddy drove and eased down the gravel road, the headlights of the car shining in the rabbit's eyes, making them glow and blinding him long enough for the shooter to send him a led surprise to the nogget. No. I know some of you are appalled at that confession. I just uttered, and rightfully so in my defense. It was my brother Tim who told me that this was illegal when I was seventeen years old. He, being eight years older and the wiser of our two men hunting team, had only found out just prior to telling me at the tender age of twenty five, that it wasn't legal to hunt rabbits at night. Why'd they change the law? Of Tim? Believe it or not, he said, it ain't ever been legal. How we stayed out of the penitentiary. I do not know where ignorance is blissed is folly to be wise? The poet Thomas Gray said that in seventeen forty two over in England at Eton College. Two hundred and forty one years later, circle nineteen eighty three, on the Timber Company roads of Southeast Arkansas, Tim and I were still proving that to be true. Don't do that today, kids. Not only is it illegal and unethical, there ain't a car made today with a hood that could hold up a fat baby without caving in. Now, running rabbits with dogs, that's a that's a special kind of fun. And the dogs I like the most are beagles. My friend George Pennington, the King of West Point of Virginia, owner of wood Haven Kennels, and a Tier one field trial action star himself, gave me some grief over a recent statement I made that described beagles as little walker dogs because of their similar color patterns and shades. I stand beside that remark to this day. I'm not standing behind it because I'm allabed to get hit with some of the rocks and the spursions being cast in my general direction from all the beagle purists like George, who are quick to correct the ignorant. I'm a slow learner. Remember I was nearly grown when I found out shooting rabbits from the hood of a car wasn't kosher anyway. As luck would have it, I've been fortunate enough to know some folks through my time here on this spending orb we call home that possessed numerous rabbit hating individuals known as beagles. We had some many moons ago that I've talked about before that we used to push deer around at the ben Our deer camp so we could shoot at them. I said, push them around instead of run, because the only ones running were the beagles a full speed. If they can't keep up with a rabbit, how in the world would they be able to make a deer run more than a few yards at a time. They wouldn't much is the same with a rabbit. People who oppose chasing game with dogs always painting a picture of the game being pursued as running wide open with their tongues hanging out and barely stay in ahead of the vicious, snarling, snapping, biting hounds that are only inches behind the poor distressed creature. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ideally, here's how it goes. The beagles are cut loose and hit the ground, moving in the same general direction, each one hoovering up all the scent in their path as they criss crossed through the brush and the brambles, hunting up the fresh scent of a rabbit. When one of them barks in the kittens they picked up the scent, the others will come to him, and when they smell it too, they'll begin to bark and follow the scent in the direction of the rabbit left. So how do they know which direction the rabbit is going? And how long does it take for them to figure it out? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I deep dive very little as I stumbled my way through my existence. But those questions have nagged me to no end for a long time. I started doing some research recently and finally discovered a paper written and a study performed by a couple of nerds over in the UK that was as dry over read as Chevy chases Turkey in Christmas Vacation, but it was loaded with tons of information. My faithful sidekicking doer of all things requiring above average intelligence, Reva Hanson, will include the link to that article in the show description should you want to take a closer gander at it, or if you ever find yourself unable to go to sleep. Now, y' all hang on for the next part. It's worth it, I promise. Once the rabbit scent is picked up, it only takes a few feet for the dog to determine the direction travel. Now, the study used human tracks in a sterile environment and went into great detail explaining as to how they controlled and conducted the test to be unbiased to leave me great detail anyway, after reading it twice, I started smelling what the scent nerves were stepping in when they explained what was taking place in the dog's nose. Allow me to break it down for you. Imagine someone spraying perfume on a Q tip and wiping it with a single stroke on a kitchen table from one end to the other, and then expecting you to walk in the room thirty minutes later and tell them which direction they wiped it on the table by putting your nose next to the surface and smell. Now, that's what a dog is doing. Pretty cool, to say the least. The theory is that they can detect the difference in the strength of the odor as it decays across a very short distance. In the study, it claimed that it took three to five feet for the direction of travel to be determined by the dogs sniffer. I'll pause a second for all the folks that were teetering on and jumping out of the window through that last part to welcome you back to your chair. Now the dogs are after the rabbit, and once the rabbit realize he's being pursued, he'll take off and run, or hop out along the trail, or make one of his own and sit and listens for the dogs to get closer. Now, this is something the rabbit does every day and night of his life. It is their place in the food chain and the reason for their being. You have to play the hand that you were dealt in their hand was a blessing for predators such as ourselves, not a curse to them. Rabbits will run out and circle around, and nine times out of ten come within a few feet of their original starting point. The circle is meant to confuse the predator by allowing the rabbit a chance to get into his burrow, or make the pursuer just plumb losing by confusing him where he went circling back over his own sent trail. Now, fortunately for us, he ain't figured in the part of the equation that has us standing at the ready with a shotgun where he left from. When he makes his triumphant return samp next time, a hot cast iron skillet, let's cover gutt and a cottontail rabbit real quick. It takes about as long to gut too as it does to explain how to gut one using this method. It's quick, and if you're hunting in warm weather, you're gonna want to get the guts out of them as soon as possible. But you grab the cottontail by the neck and with your other hand squeeze him down toward his hind end like you're trying to get the last bit of toothpaste out of a tube. All his enters will soon become his outerards courtesy of his naturally installed exhaustion pipe area. That's right. The guts pop right out through that spot where his tail lights would go. They just busts through the skin out on the ground it goes. You can use the traditional method using a pocket knife, and you know which kind of pocket knife to use. Don't waiting to pull this podcast over on the side of the road, kids, Well, gut them with your knife, keep them as cool as possible to clean them when you get back home. Now. I always check delivers for spots and lesions that could indicate to riemia. Even if they present, it's okay to eat the meat if you cook it to the recommended temp of one hundred and sixty degrease farenheit or seventy one celsius if you're eating rabbits during halftime at a hockey game. To clean him and get him ready to quarter up, just make a small incision through the skin in the middle of his back, insert two fingers on each hand and pull north and south at the same time. Crest on it. Shirt and breeches gone, and all your left with it's a naked rabbit. Now you're not gonna get to larimia from properly cooked rabbit. You're more than likely to get it from cleaning them and not wearing rubber gloves. That's an easy fix, and so is the rabbit. Once you get him cleaned, quartered up, and I like the back too, I wash it off and soak all five pieces and buttermilk and spices for at least an hour. I like to soak them overnight in an ice box or as most of you sophistic it's call it the refrigerator. Then I'll let him warm up to room temp while steal in the buttermilk on the counter. Then I'll take him out of there, powder's behind him with some self ries and flour and let him swim in some peanut ol. I've rubbed up the three hundred and fifty grid. Now that's one hundred and seventy six in Canada. Check the thickest part of the meat with an instant tormometer, and when it hits that magic temple of one hundred and sixty degrees or seventy one celsius, you're in business. Biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, and fried rabbit. It's hard to beat. Y'all. Get out there and get after him. Take an old friend or a new youngin, or better yet, take them both. Let me know how y'all do. Keep sending those stories into my tcl story at the meadeater dot com. Funny stories, amazing stories, or one where you learned or taught a Listen. Y'all have sent us some good ones, and we'll get around to use some of them when the time is right. You need to check out Steve's Shoulden history channel that debuted this week. It's called Hunting History and he's been working on it for quite a while. Lots of good episodes coming see y'all be sure to check it out until next week. This is Brent Reed signing off, y'all be careful at

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