|
CarpenterWalrus posted:Wabbit season. I would also recommend a shotgun to start with for rabbit hunting. I love to hunt them. I do it every free moment I get from opening day in September until it drops to below freezing all the time at which point I’m just going to put on a cardigan and curl up on the couch because gently caress going out into the frozen midwestern tundra in search of a single pound of meat. I taught myself as a complete novice with a fresh hunters safety license and not a clue about how to hunt anything eight years ago. Ive bagged quite a few of them since then. Nothing I say here is gospel mind you, but I can tell you what I’ve learned through trial and error. If you’re using a bow (or a rifle) you’re going to have to stalk and spot them while they sit still. You say that rabbits in your area aren’t likely to run even if you get close which is actually true of rabbits everywhere because that’s how they stay alive. They sit dead still and hope predators don’t see them. And those little bastards are drat near invisible in the wild even when they are sitting in plain sight among brush and trees. So you have to hope that you can walk quietly enough to not spook them and spot them at the same time. Problem is, when rabbits hear you moving through the brush - which they will - and suddenly you stop moving they often think you’ve spotted them, and that’s when they break and run back to their burrow. And if they break your chances of hitting them on the run with a bow or a rifle are next to zero even if you’re a crack shot. They’re just too fast and they zigzag everywhere. Even if you manage to spot one a target as small as a rabbit is extremely hard to hit with a bow. Much less so with a rifle or a shotgun. But when you’re hunting rabbit with a shotgun you want them to break because your shotgun sprays a mist of steely death which makes a shot on a fleeing target much easier. So you walk through the brush and you make a lot of noise, stopping for a few seconds every few yards in case you passed one and it didn’t move. Do this long enough in the right spots and one will eventually break, and that’s when you get your shot. This method is more akin to hiking and hoping to kill a rabbit while you do it. This isn’t the only way to hunt them obviously, but it’s brought me a lot of success over the years and it’s certainly the easiest way for a single novice hunter to go about it in my experience. And from a monetary standpoint a decent shotgun shouldn’t run you more than $150-300, especially if you’re buying used. Pawn shops are a great place to find a good deal on a used ones.
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2020 06:19
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 16:51 |
|
|
Did anyone else get a decent primer on wilderness survival in their hunter safety course? I took mine in Colorado and they spent a good portion of the classroom instruction going over what gear you needed to bring into the mountains and what to do if you got stuck and have to wait for rescue. All common sense stuff like don’t try and hike out if you’re lost or in bad weather and always tell someone where you’re going and when you’ll be back. But I’m guessing if you took the course in Iowa they spend little if any time going over wilderness stuff because you’re never more than a couple miles from a road or a farmhouse virtually anywhere in the state.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2020 09:09
|
|