Well, just back from a most enjoyable weekend of bunny busting.

My mate and I headed off last Saturday to my favourite rabbit hunting grounds south of Brisbane for a three day shoot.

We arrived mid morning and set up our camp then proceeded out into the nearest paddock for a little fun. I carried my Fausti Stephano O/U 12g and a belt full of 32gram #4 shot loads whilst my mate took his trusty .22 rimfire. First blood went to my mate with a nice 45 yard head shot on a young rabbit...from then on in it was all shotgun fun. There was plenty of rabbits to go around so we decided to just have a little fun that afternoon. The rabbits were darting out almost from underfoot. We covered the paddock in about 25 minutes or so which was out and back. We carried back six nice rabbits...or what we thought were nice rabbits. Unfortunately we found that this particular paddock appears to be rife with hydatids.....BUGGER ....I was looking forward to a nice feed of rabbit stew.

The next morning we headed off on a "look around" for feral dogs and pigs, without any luck other than some recent, solid sign....next time! Later that afternoon we "visited" another paddock and shot quite a few bunnies with the mate starring with his .22 rimfire.....wish I could shoot even half as good as him. We didn't bother bringing any of the rabbits back after the previous day's findings. We are satisfied with just thinning out the population and hopefully we can help eradicate a bit of the parasite infestation they are suffering.

There is normally a couple of big mobs of kangaroos that I was hoping to photograph and display, but for some reason they weren't there.

Planning another visit in a month or so hopefully.

Cheers, Vince

Enjoyed your pictures, Vince. Different looking country to be sure(compared to what I am used to). How can you tell if a bunny has Hydatids? I have been stocking my freezer with rabbits(snowshoe hares) here in Alaska for the past couple days. Have gotten 22 hares in the past two days with my open sighted Remington 121 .22 LR. All head shots but one. They are starting to turn white and there is no snow on the ground yet so they stick out and are easy to see.

roklok wrote:

Enjoyed your pictures, Vince. Different looking country to be sure(compared to what I am used to). How can you tell if a bunny has Hydatids? I have been stocking my freezer with rabbits(snowshoe hares) here in Alaska for the past couple days. Have gotten 22 hares in the past two days with my open sighted Remington 121 .22 LR. All head shots but one. They are starting to turn white and there is no snow on the ground yet so they stick out and are easy to see.

There is no doubt that the aussie landscape is VERY different to what you would have there in Alaska mate. I'll see if I can get some better pics and I will post them for you.

Hydatids....very nasty. Have a look at this thread....it will give you a link to all of the aussie info on Hydatids. I would imagine that it would be the same all around the world:

Hydatids

The disease can be identified by the presence of cysts that are full of a clear liquid and hundreds of small white eggs either in the gut or on the muscles. It can also be found in some of the internal organs along with small white worms. Most unpleasant.

Cheers, Vince

Cool Pics Vince Thanks for posting them.
Joe

Nice Vince! You beagle them or kickem up your self?

Crackshot wrote:

Nice Vince! You beagle them or kickem up your self?

No dogs mate......much more fun to wander slowly through the paddock scaring them up and hit them on the run with the 12g. You also pick up those that run then prop and look/listen. Thats when you have a crack with the rimfire rifle.

I've never been a real big fan of using dogs when hunting, although you can't beat them when out pigging. Without the dogs running him down a pig stands a pretty good chance of getting away unless you are real quick with your rifle.

Cheers, Vince

Vince, I've wanted to visit Australia for years and those pictures make me wanna visit it even more now!

Nice pictures. Kindof looks like the BLM land that learned how to shot at outside of Cottonwood.

Beautiful country. I would love to visit someday.