Jack rabbits

[Mauser48]

Now that I have a 6 inch ruger gp100 I thought I would try hunting some small game. I have a place where I can hunt cottontails and jackrabbits and mainly see jack rabbits. I was going to use a 158 grain swc with a light charge of 700x in a 38 case. I saw on youtube that someone was calling jack rabbits? Is this an actual method that is proven to work well? It sounded like they were just using a coyote call. Has anyone tried this?

[khmer6]

Cotton tail distress call. Never called for bunnies. Plenty around that they pop up a few feet away in the desert

[khmer6]

My wife nailed one during our javelina hunt. Results were devastating. Nothing left for camp dinner lol

[AZ-JIM]

Mauser, it can be done...so I hear. If you use mouth calls, you can walk around and when you jump one, squeal that call (jack distress), supposedly they will stop and give you a shot. Never tried it myself, like khmer said they pop up pretty regularly out here.
BTW, khmer the last jack I got I seasoned and grilled.....it was terrible lol. Next time it will go in the crock pot with some green chilies. If that doesn't work then I will give up on jacks :(

az-jim

[leftiye]

They probly can be cooked to have sabor bien (probly incorrect), but the last one I tried to cook when I was a teenager broke me of that habit!

If you squeal or whistle at them, sometimes (once in a while) they will stop. My favorite moving target. I'm pretty sure they won't come to a call.

[khmer6]

I don't generally go out just for rabbits. It's usually paired with wing shooting or something else. I only keep the back straps from jacks. Soak in buttermilk or salt brine. Season heavily and pan cook. Cotton tail but and chop like a big game animal. Quarter it up soak in buttermilk, bread and fry like chicken fried steak 😄 . if it's mainly jacks you see them quick target acquistion and staying alert is going to be key. The scatter gun and 6 shot or larger is a fine tool for that. You can try to wail on a call if you spot them to get them to pause. Cotton tail I've seen in a abunance this year . you can normally walk up close enough to pet them. Jacks like to run. Cotton tail normally will freeze and hope you don't see them in plain sight and hops off after you walk by. Kind of dumb. Move slow and you can catch them more often. I'm not sure where you are geographically but in the Midwest and possibly other places they do bunny drives. A woodland area a bunch of people take brush and make noise whacking trees and what not driving the animals out to the edge of a crop field

[white eagle]

been along time since I had rabbit or hunted them
but I do remember them (cottontail) being tasty
I took the kid hunting for cottontails when he first started hunting at age 12
he is now 25 and has a girlfriend and they have a pet rabbit so I think he will not be hunting with me ;)

[sixshot]

I've shot thousands of jackrabbit but I've never eaten one, a young one might be ok but I've never been that hungry. I have eaten a lot of cottontails over the years & they are excellent.
Back in the 70's it was very common to shoot a whole brick of 22 shells in one day on a jackrabbit safari out in the big desert west of Blackfoot, Idaho. We did it many times. I would take my 2 oldest kids, they were about 8 & 10 & we would load up & the clips we had for the 10/22's, climb up on the farmers hay stacks & wait for the hungry jackts to come out of the sagebrush & cross the snow covered fields & start feeding on the haystacks we were on. It was almost scary there were so many jacks. We would start shooting & we'd get 40-50 before they would run back to the safety of the sagebrush, we would wait 20 minutes or so, load our clips & start all over again. This would go on until dark. You could hear shooting all across the valley, some people would use shotguns. The rabbits were in the tens of thousands. They would under cut the hay stacks & the stacks would fall over. I'm sure we could have filled a pick up bed full of rabbits every day back then.
I remember a picture in the paper of Cleveland Armory holding one with a broken leg, all publicity!

Dick

[T-Bird]

I think there's a reason jack's aren't listed with a lot of recipes. I love wild rabbit cooked many ways but the only jack I have ever cooked (taken on a wild pheasant hunt in SD) was crock potted and was awful. didn't try just the backstraps tho. Still probably won't try another. Shoot Straight, T-Bird

[MUSTANG]

Growing up in the Texas Panhandle, we did a lot of rabbit hunting. Jacks went to the Hog pens for feed, cotton tails we would keep to cook.

My Dad and Uncles hunted rabbits when they were young also, but they did it for cash in the Great Depression. They would get from 2 cents to 5 cents for a set of rabbit ears depending on the Bounty value at a given period.

[khmer6]

Jacks aren't exactly a staple diet. I try to avoid them these days since cotton tail seems to be rebounding a bit better in my area. Once in a while I will take a Jack if I'm out with the kids or someone new but we make sure it gets eaten or used to provide the foundation of Hunter ethics. Go for the cotton tails if you can!!! I would be tempted to even try gloobits from your gun to avoid demolishing the meat. Or snipe with a 22 or bust them with the trust 12g. Let us know how your adventure goes 😄 if you really get into it there's always hunting with hawks!!!

[MT Gianni]

I've shot thousands of jackrabbit but I've never eaten one, a young one might be ok but I've never been that hungry. I have eaten a lot of cottontails over the years & they are excellent.
Back in the 70's it was very common to shoot a whole brick of 22 shells in one day on a jackrabbit safari out in the big desert west of Blackfoot, Idaho. We did it many times. I would take my 2 oldest kids, they were about 8 & 10 & we would load up & the clips we had for the 10/22's, climb up on the farmers hay stacks & wait for the hungry jackts to come out of the sagebrush & cross the snow covered fields & start feeding on the haystacks we were on. It was almost scary there were so many jacks. We would start shooting & we'd get 40-50 before they would run back to the safety of the sagebrush, we would wait 20 minutes or so, load our clips & start all over again. This would go on until dark. You could hear shooting all across the valley, some people would use shotguns. The rabbits were in the tens of thousands. They would under cut the hay stacks & the stacks would fall over. I'm sure we could have filled a pick up bed full of rabbits every day back then.
I remember a picture in the paper of Cleveland Armory holding one with a broken leg, all publicity!

Dick
Those were some fun times on the edge of the lavas. I have not seen many Jacks since. I have eaten almost anything offered me but only tried jackrabbit once, I do like cottontail.

[Mauser48]

I just want the jack for the pelt the meat is horrible. Theres a lot of them here.

[gon2shoot]

Make sausage.

Was taught at a young age,"you kill it you eat it". Ain't that easy with jacks, but sausage makes it doable.

[MT Gianni]

Make sausage.

Was taught at a young age,"you kill it you eat it". Ain't that easy with jacks, but sausage makes it doable.
Does that extend to mosquitoes and roaches as well? Just curious at where folks with those values draw the line. I have shot a lot of ground squirrels that are the main carrier for bubonic plague and I am not touching them let alone eating them. I have had ranchers bring me 22 shell after they gave me permission to shoot as rockchucks eat 1/6th of what a cow does in a day. I was taught that insects and vermin get a pass from those values and Jackrabbits qualified as vermin.

[Mauser48]

Im all for you kill it you eat it but I draw the line at vermin. I eat all the cottontails I get and they are good eating.

[Gray Fox]

Back when I was in HS in the early 60s up in the mile high juniper flats of NE Arizona, a friend's mom used to soak cut up Jacks in vinegar water, then parboil the meat off the bones and use a crockpot to cook up the makings for green chile jackrabbit burritos. Maybe it was just because I was a growing teenager, but I remember scarfing down a bunch of those things. I'll be they could be used in a real German recipe for hasenpfeffer, too. GF

[borg]

Years ago a friend and I would sit in his back yard west of Phoenix, and shoot jacks with a pellet gun.
His Asian wife would take the meat off the bones and brine the meat for a couple of hours, then Wok them with some fresh veggies and some darn hot chili oil.
It was pretty good.
Today, I wouldn't touch them, but then I don't live where there are any.

[sixshot]

Some things are meant to be eaten & some things are just meant to be shot, jack rabbits, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, gophers, rats, etc. are meant to be shot. As mentioned, don't even pick them up as they carry a lot of disease, just shoot & keep walking.

Dick

[Minerat]

The only Jacks I saw eaten were the ones a buddy of mine fed his farm dog. Other wise a good target for prefecting your swing thru on a moving target. +1 sixshot

[gon2shoot]

Well, the "you kill it, you eat it" phrase is/was a way to convince youngsters that you don't kill stuff just for the sake of killing. Anything that is detrimental (physically or economically) is exempt. Didn't figure I would have to explain that to adults.

PM me for my chigger stew recipes.

[IDSS]

In my experience, jackrabbits will, indeed, respond to a distress call. I've had them show up on coyotes stands countless times. Not sure what they think they're going to do, but they come charging right up.

[shoot-n-lead]

Not sure what they think they're going to do, but they come charging right up. They are going to watch a coyote, eat a rabbit.

[M1A4ME]

When we lived in ND in the late 60's (Minot AFB) we killed jack rabbits while bird hunting. Mom fried them up just like the cottontail rabbits (except she'd could only get a couple hind legs in that big skillet) and they were great. Fried rabbits, gravy biscuits and green beans. MMM.

Years later, in TX, we killed a couple of jack rabbits and they were just nasty. I killed one, mom tried the fried rabbit with gravy cooking and it was so strong tasting (sage maybe???) we couldn't eat it. Dad killed another one a week or so later and it was just as bad. After that we just let the jacks run off and only killed the cottontails and the quail.

Maybe its about what they eat.

[marlin39a]

I've never called them up. I usually glass for them hiding by the base of junipers during the day. A 50 gr v-max takes them apart. Around sunrise and sunset are best times to find them. I'd never eat the varmints.

[BAGTIC]

Whether something is edible depends on the cook more than what it is.

[Ole Joe Clarke]

It might be the cooks fault, but probably not. When I was a young'un you could tell if the cow had been in the pasture where the bitter weeds were, because the milk tasted and smelled terrible.

[Rattlesnake Charlie]

Yes, I've had jack rabbits come when I was trying to call coyotes with a rabbit call. Didn't matter if I was using a high pitch one (cotton tail) or low and raspy (jack rabbit). Called probably hundreds of cattle too. They want to see what is making the racket. I'm sure more than one coyote was laughing his tail off somewhere watching those cattle surround me.

[drinks]

Jack rabbit, not a rabbit but a hare, is tough when mature, I have eaten and enjoyed young ones, the adults require a pressure cooker to get them ready to eat.
Cotton tail and swamp rabbit are very good.
Nutria is decent , muskrat is not bad, beaver is not bad, young coon can be very good.
I have never eaten snowshoe hare but have been told it is similar to jack rabbit, just not quite as tough.
People I have asked about the european hare say it is tougher than a rabbit but is decent with careful cooking.
Some of the worst meat I have tried to eat was deer, but it was buck in the rut and the hunter had no idea how to take care of it.
I like javalina but know many who do not, I believe it is because they do not know how to take care of it as soon as it is shot.
You can ruin domestic animals as easily as wild ones, ignorance will do it every time.
The cure for ignorance is just education.

[Lon246]

Well, drinks, we think alike.
In 1954-1957, my folks lived near Portland, OR. My Dad's brother had eight kids to feed, all older than I was at 14.
All of us in two vehicles made a trip to eastern Oregon near Boardman each late fall for whitetail jackrabbits. These hares weighed about 8 pounds and were around 2 feet in length. (Check WIKIPEDIA if you like). We shot them with every firearm imaginable including one cousin using a bow.
Once and only once he let me borrow it and I hit a sitting one in the head. Probably the luckiest shot I've ever made in now 61 years of hunting.
We would make 5 man abreast drives up gentle sagebrush dry washes that tapered to the point of a "V" in bare ground wheat fields. The rabbits would boil out of the sage onto the bare ground and the Hare Wars started.
In two days we would take about 300 rabbits. They would keep only the hindquarters at about one pound each - a total of 600 pounds of edible meat for winter. Oh, they shot elk too, but got more meat from rabbits. When very hungry, cold and young I remember eating a hindquarter boiled in bacon grease in a coffee can on a small white gas stove placed on the spacious rear floorboard of an old Buick. Dear God, it was good.
The gubbamint banned 1080 poison in '72 and the coyotes came back and the rabbits are gone.

[barrabruce]

think jugged hare for recipes.
Aint bad if done right.
Then again they have been taken of pasture mostly and 1/2 grown ones are better than old bucks or does ..just like wabbits.