Feral Rabbit Stew

*If you are squeamish, do not read this, do not look at the pictures.


Last week Johnny and I attempted to go backpacking, but ended up car camping at Bagby due to some confusion about what was up with the trail being blocked.  That reduction in adventure levels, however, has been successfully rejuvenated with the advent of feral beach rabbit hunting as a viable activity.

It took us approximately three hours to drive from Portland to Cannon Beach.  Holy cow.  We arrived with the midday heat at Johnny's family's beach cabin and explored the neighborhood, keeping an eye out for bunnies.

Lots of folks know about the feral beach bunnies, but I don't remember being aware of them before.  When we told my brother about our plan to go out and bag one, he of course responded that he'd hunted them in the past.  He also said that a lot of them are pretty unhealthy and to keep an eye out for internal parasites.

We practiced using the slingshot for a little while, shooting at rocks out on the beach.  My aim needs work, Johnny's does too, but he hit the rocks twice and was close every other time while my shots kept ending up no closer than a foot or two from the target. 

We avoided drawing a lot of attention to ourselves, two kids with a wrist rocket and pockets full of hand-picked gravel.  Picked blackberries to pass the time, waiting for people to pass us by.  We weren't sure how the residents felt about bunnies, though we did see live traps set in one yard, and a kid spraying water with a hose at rabbits in the garden. 

All in all we saw probably eight to ten rabbits in that neighborhood.  I heard accounts from Johnny and others of seeing way more than that in the past, but considering we were there in the middle of one of the hotter summer days it makes sense that a lot of the population was hiding out somewhere in the shade. 

The first rabbit Johnny shot at was sitting on a lawn in front of an empty cabin, alternately snoozing and grazing.  A miss made it hop a few feet forward, a glancing shot to the nose stunned it, and a shot in the flank sent it running for cover behind the cabin, where Johnny couldn't follow.  He shot at one of a pair of rabbits across the street there, too, missed, then another (or one of the two, that had run that way?) back on the other side of the street in front of another house.  We corralled it into a corner and Johnny shot it in the side of the head from just seven or eight feet away.

Actually killing it was stressful.  It was Johnny's rabbit, he shot it, I just watched.  The shot shocked it and it twisted around on the ground, then took off in a daze.  Johnny stalked it, grabbed it by the back of the neck, and it went out with blows to the head with a metal water bottle.  It took too long.

The main purpose of this hunt was education.  Meat and fur were secondary.  We thanked the rabbit for giving us all these things, that we may know we are capable of killing for ourselves.  In a culture of grocery stores and restaurants I believe it is extremely important. 

People who read this might be a little shocked that I would do this, kill something and eat it, but if you eat meat at all you are responsible for the death of an animal.  Letting someone else kill it distances but does not remove you from the act.  Anyone who has experienced the good feeling of harvesting food from a forest or your own garden should understand the impulse to hunt an animal for the same reasons, and I do not think there is such a big difference between killing a plant and killing an animal, except for your own emotional response. 

I do think that it is important that while I work on my slingshot aim I should also research quicker ways to kill the stunned animal.

When I was around six years old my family got chickens and my mom enlisted my help in butchering the meat birds.  Later we started trapping and butchering invasive starlings out of the backyard, and made starling pot pies.  I used to be pretty squeamish, but now I really appreciate my upbringing.  

When Johnny and I laid out the rabbit on a board in the yard of the cabin, we enlisted my mom's help in butchering it.  I called her and she gave us step-by-step instructions on skinning and gutting.  Thank you, Mom!  I love you.

Cutting the skin away from the feet.

Removing the skin like a sock, over the head. 

We must look like that on the inside, too.  That is another thing 

this rabbit teaches us.

 

 

Healthy.

Hide stuffed with dry grass to keep it from getting stinky while it waits.

We brought the meat and fur back to my brother's house in Portland where I'm staying for a while.  We were welcomed into this house, ducks and chickens in the backyard, hides and skulls and bones tucked into rafters and displayed on the mantle.  One of my heroes standing right there at the gate to the yard, all these rewilding characters hanging out in my viscinity... holy cow.  My life is AWESOME. 

Johnny is awesome, too.  I'm sure all sorts of adventures are out there waiting for us...

Sunday morning we borrowed my brother's pressure cooker and we put together a stew to take to my sister's house for the monthly installment of Sunday Brunch.  A success!  Potatoes, bell peppers, garlic, onions, and nice tender wild-caught rabbit that Johnny killed and butchered with his own hands, with help from his friends and family, and shared with those same people. 

I found this article this morning, after my own experience with urban hunting.  Very interesting.  Much better written than my blog post here.  And very exciting!  This is a world I enjoy living in, and here I am, nineteen years old, ready to soak up the rest of my life.