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Jack Rabbit — Part 2
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In regions where the coyotes have been killed and driven off it has almost invariably followed that the jack rabbits have so multiplied as to prove a much more destructive nuisance than the coyotes had ever been.
Occasionally an epidemic reduces their numbers locally, but a very few seasons usually serve to establish them again in their former numbers.
During the fall and winter jack rabbits are hunted and killed in great numbers, the most popular method seems to be shooting them from waggons or buckboards with the assistance of dogs who start the jacks from their cover and bring in the game when it is killed. One man will sometimes kill five or six dozen jack-rabbits in a day in this manner.
The greatest number, however, are killed in drives, an area several miles in extent is beaten over by men on horseback who close in as they advance, driving the game before them, usually into some kind of enclosure or corral from which there is no escape. The number of rabbits taken in one day in this manner runs from a few hundred up to ten or even twenty thousand.
Driving jack rabbits, though on a much smaller scale than just described, seems always to have been a favourite pastime with most tribes of Western Indians.
By far the most exhilarating and sportsman-like method of hunting jack rabbits is coursing with greyhounds, in the same manner that coursing has always been followed in the Old World; jack rabbits are if anything swifter and more resourceful in dodging the hounds than are the European hares.
The jack rabbits are started from their forms and go off like the wind with the greyhounds in hot pursuit, while the rider follows as closely as he can. The whole thing goes with a swing and dash to the very end, the rabbit dodging, leaping and doubling frantically, until either he has succeeded in reaching the brush and safety, or the greyhound has seized him and both go rolling over and over together along the ground.
Although the fur of the jack rabbit seems to be well enough suited for felting it is not much used at present, while the skin is too tender and the fur itself too brittle to make it of much value as fur. The Western Indians, however, have always held jack rabbit skins in high esteem for clothing. They twist the skin in narrow strips which are fastened together to make robes, the skins being twisted in such a way as to leave the fur on both sides making a warm durable robe of exceeding lightness.