Damn rabbits!

[Johnthecook]

Nice, if I catch it I’m going to try to clean it and eat it. No one else will eat it in my family.

[Chikn]

Remember, Wild rabbits should only be eaten in months ending in “R”. A parasite called flukes?

[Johnthecook]

Good to let us amateurs know!

[clarkinks]

I grew up eating them 3-4 times per week ( or as many as i could find). When it was a cold winter I ate them whatever month but I soaked them in salt water overnight first. The cold weather in my area kills the diseased sick ones and only the healthy ones are left alive. The appearance of the rabbit is also a good indicator of health. In the warmer areas I would not eat them at all. When I was a kid we built brush piles for them so we would always have plenty of game. Wild rabbits were not exactly wild because of those brush piles they were using for food and cover you could kind of say we were raising them for food when we did not have any other type of meat. As a kid 7-8 years old they were all the game I could handle bringing in.

[applebacon]

I cant believe most of you guys arent doing this. Alum window screen is cheap at lowes/home depot etc…

[Johnthecook]

I had this to use.

[warmwxrules]

My cages are high but i snowblow all my snow at a bunch of trees and now the rabbits can just browse high up on the trees. Today i took a garden shovel and smashed through the snow around them…moving a lot of it. I think i’ll be ok now.

[mrsg47]

So glad you took the time to shovel the snow away from your trees. That is how I lost three trees one winter. The snow was just too deep to walk into the orchard!

[Johnthecook]

He or she is taunting me daily. Avoids all of my traps.

[ltilton]

I’ve never managed to catch an adult rabbit

[warmwxrules]

Big trap filled with apples… no matter what i do, more just come back to my yard. i can’t win…

[thecityman]

For you PETA folks, I’m sorry. And I can ASSURE you he didn’t suffer- not even a twitch. Just lights out.
TO the rest of us: I saw this guy out my window this a.m. While I was having my breakfast he was having his…fruit tree bark! And we don’t have any snow, so out of all the possible foods out there he has to eat my tree??? Oh well. Hope he enjoyed his last meal. Sorry if I sound cold, but just like many of the posters in this thread, I’m tired of these guys!

BTW…I don’t who was happier, me or my Brittany Spaniel who goes on point for both rabbits AND quail (something true hunters will say shows a lack of proper training but which I happen to enjoy!)

BTW, it might make some of you feel a little better to know this guy won’t go to waste. I have already cleaned and quartered him and he’s soaking in brine in the fridge right now while I sit and work and look up recipes for rabbit. I’m leaning toward a rabbit stew in my crock pot but am open to recipes (hint!) Where are my chefs? @marknmt , @tennessean , @chefmon , @Lids , @markalbob, @kshaunfield , @Derby42 , @glib and the rest of you who enjoy cooking? Me and probably others here will likely have need of more recipes in the coming weeks!

(BTW, I sure hope @fruitnut doesn’t notice all the wood chips around my trees! I know he/you are right about nitrogen/wood chips and I certainly respect your opinion, but I got it free (inc delivery), its good for weeds, helps hold moisture, and just plain looks good! (to me). So hopefully I won’t be in too much trouble! ha. Its my first time and its only on 1/2 my trees.

[Derby42]

I really like rabbit fried. I’m not sure how much wild game you cook but if you have it quartered up in the fridge you obviously have a pretty good idea of what to do. If it is really clean ( no hair) you could just salt pepper and flour and fry in a skillet. I would then brown flour in the same skillet, add milk and make rabbit gravy. I like the legs the best, the back always seems stringy

[fruitnut]

(BTW, I sure hope @fruitnut doesn’t notice all the wood chips around my trees! I know he/you are right about nitrogen/wood chips and I certainly respect your opinion, but I got it free (inc delivery), its good for weeds, helps hold moisture, and just plain looks good! (to me). So hopefully I won’t be in too much trouble! ha. Its my first time and its only on 1/2 my trees.

I’m a big fan of mulch and wood chips. Just not a fan of overly vigorous trees. In most cases use all you want. Just be careful about throwing hands full of fertilizer on top of mulch.

[kshaunfield]

Kudos, @thecityman! I don’t have nearly enough experience cooking rabbit. Our 4 dogs catch lots (not enough!) but I let them keep them - between rabbits, deer and scraps from slaughtering the dogs eat waaaay less dog food in fall/winter. Its hard to go wrong with rabbit stew. In the past I’ve made it with bacon, carrots, onions, potatoes, garlic, rosemary, thyme, wine, chicken stock. Maybe even add some nice firm cooking apples if you have them. That’ll serve them right!

[ltilton]

My best hunting cat used to chow down on those - even when they were almost as big as he was. Rule is: You caught it, you got it.

[MES111]

@fruitnut

Just be careful about throwing hands full of fertilizer on top of mulch

What is your reasoning for this?

I seem to remember, a long time ago, I asked how to fertilize (if needed) when there is a heavy layer of chips present and my notes to myself are that it was ok to apply fert onto the mulch and that it would eventually work itself down through to the soil with watering and time.

NOTE that I said “seem to remember” - nowadays I “seem” to remember alot of things to be as I remembered them but not necessarily as they are now

Thanx,

Mike

[thecityman]

That’s good news, steven. I’d seen several of your posts about the hazards of too much nitrogen and high-nitrogen dressings so somehow I had it in my mind that you were on the side of wood-ships causing too much vegetative growth. I’m very relieved to find out I was wrong! As I said, I respect your opinion/advice as much as anyone here and always feel better doing something you agree with.

Knowing this, I’ll probably do all my trees now. The City I work for contracts our tree trimming, and often the contractor is as happy to have a close place to dump the chips as I am to get them. I must confess that I had enough mulch for about 25 trees so I let a kid who lives near me do the actual spreading around the trees (shame on me for being so lazy, but the kid (16 yr old) was thrilled to get some pocket money. So that eased my conscience from not doing the work myself! ha Thanks for clarifying your position of mulch.

kevin

[thecityman]

I meant to ask about that as well, and look forward to Steven’s answer. I must confess that while I’ve never had many of my trees mulched, those that I do have been fertilized exactly as he just warned about. SO, @fruitnut , I fear I may be “out of compliance” after all. I only fertilize twice a year, usually only about 2 handfuls of 15-15-15, but I’ve just thrown it on top of the few mulched trees I’ve had the last few years. So I’m with Michael, please let us know why that is a bad thing. I know some people are just anti-fertilize for normal situations. So, is your opposition to combining fertilize and mulch (thereby too much nitrogen?) or is it to the method…ie, putting it on top of mulch instead of pulling mulch back and forth over fertilize? Thanks again for your input.

[thecityman]

@kshaunfield , I appreciate your humbleness, but I’ve seen enough of your posts to know you are a pretty good cook! I have to look no further than your exact post saying you aren’t experienced cooking rabbit, which you follow up with some if the most delicious sounding idea’s I’ve heard so far!!! Bacon? Apples? Both of those ingredients are a bit “out of the box” but sound extremely interesting and good!!! As do all the other ingredients you mentioned.

@Derby42 I’m really just a country boy at heart so yes, I’ve had a fair bit of experience with wild game, but for whatever reason, not much with rabbits. Members here will be happy to know that I’ve dispatched more than my share of squirrels, almost all of which ended up on the dinning room table. Also, I often do fry the young ones exactly as you described. In fact, that’s one of the many things I love about your suggestion- it is something I would be comfortable doing- even though I hadn’t thought about it yet! I haven’t ever done the gravy step you suggest, but that sounds AMAZING!!! The only thing us southern folks like more than fried food is fried food with gravy. hahaha (insert obesity and other heart/health related jokes here.)

@ltilton - I’m 46 years old and have been sort-of anti-cat all my life (not a hater, just not a fan for the usually stated reasons). Just one month ago a kitten showed up at my door. I thought it would be a good way to keep the mice population (which has skyrocketed here) down, so I started to feed it. It was super-wild and stand offish. Over the last month I’ve become friends with the little guy and even taken him on as a part-time house cat. Even my dog seems to love it (and that was a rocky road on both sides in the beginning). Anyway, I’ve noticed you’ve mentioned your cats in a few posts so I wanted to say that for the first time in my life, I sort of get it! I still wish I could teach it tricks and make it more dog-like in other ways (haha…maybe thats why so many people are either cat or dog people but not both.) but for the first time ever, I’m seeing things in cat behavior that are neat too. And hearing that your cat actually catches rabbits gives me even more reasons to give cats a second look!