From the time I was 12 till I was 17, I recall family hunts for antelope hunting in western Colorado. Tags were plentiful, and we drew every year.
The biggest part of those hunts?…after you got your antelope, you got to spend the rest of the week hunting rabbits. Those were such memorable hunts…I could not believe how many rabbits we would get into, walking the sage choked dry-washes and arroyos. This was before my blackpowder days…I had my CVA Mountain Rifle at this time, but only just so…I was still learning how to use the gun. And no one else in our hunting group knew anything about smokepoles….so those early hunts were with modern smokeless.
About 7 years ago…I was talking with my dad about those incredible rabbit hunts. We set a date, and took our Brown Besses and headed out early on a frosty Saturday morning, in mid-October.
This area is no where near where we live, a 4.5 hour drive and we arrived mid-morning, to clear blue skies. The hunt was incredible. Rabbits were everywhere, you could see them moving about in the sage brush as we were getting out of the vehicle; putting on our hunting bags, and loading our guns.
While hunting, my dad was having trouble with his gun, so I gave him my Brown Bess Carbine. I used his gun for this first hunt. His Bess was an India made gun. The gun sparked well, but I found that there was a large gap between the frizzen and the pan, allowing all the prime to dribble out as you hunted. I made due as best I could, and luckily got my limit, never going more than 100 yrds from the truck. You’d move through the sage brush, and rabbits would explode from cover, mostly in groups of 2 to 4 bunnies. Occasionally there would be a single rabbit loping off through the brush, and at other times they would explode like a cove of quail, going off in all directions. You seldom walked more than 10 or 12 yards without seeing bunnies hopping off through the brush. Once you made a shot, you immediately reloaded, and you’d always see rabbits while reloading. Once I had a rabbit run up to me and sit a couples yards away, while I reloaded…I could not bring myself to shoot it, so I walked off…and it followed me at a distance, until I made my shot. Hunting this area for rabbits has always reminded me of walking through a field with clouds of grasshoppers exploding with every step, I have never seen anything like this anywhere else that I have ever hunted.
On this hunt with my dad, it was the first time we’d done this rabbit hunt with blackpowder…and it was a most incredible hunt. The rabbits average about 5 to 5.5 pounds…very big for cottontails. We made that hunt 3 times that fall, between October and late November. Those hunts are easily my most memorable with my dad. Once the winter storms roll in, the hunting becomes very hard and spotty. After that year, the area got hit with Tularemia the following summer, and the rabbit population took a big hit. We drove out there that next fall…maybe saw 2 or 3 rabbits all day, lots of bones; we covered miles and miles of dry-washes that were packed with rabbits just 9 months earlier…
Dad and I have had several recent talks about those ole rabbit hunts in those sage choked arroyos. This coming summer I’ll be heading back to this distant hunting ground to scout the area and if the population has recovered, we’ll be heading back again for a nice enjoyable rabbit hunt this fall. I have a Fusil de Chase that I would love to take on this hunt…and I have an 8 year old grandson that I very dearly want to share this experience with, as often as possible, before my time passes.
