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bonanza
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(.400 member)
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03/03/08 10:49 AM
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Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Ruger M77 varmint in 220 swift.
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tophet1
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(.400 member)
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03/03/08 11:34 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Ruger No.1 in .218Bee.
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mickey
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(.416 member)
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03/03/08 11:50 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Ruger #1 in .223.
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Tatume
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(.400 member)
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03/03/08 12:38 PM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Kimber in 22 LR.
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DarylS
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(.700 member)
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03/03/08 12:46 PM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Hammer works pretty well, or just stick 'em. As for the adults, a .32 to .40 cal flinter works wonders as well.
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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A John Deere Riding Mower with a mulching kit installed.
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Charles
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(.275 member)
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03/03/08 12:56 PM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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A longbow and a fine cedar shaft works well. More sporting(or at least more challenging) than a .220 Swift.
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Tikka LSA 55 in 222Rem. Central Otago in the South Island is bunny heaven. The annual Easter bunny shoot normally produces over 10,000 bunnies in some years. I haven't been on one of those shoots but have shot in that region. I'll try & get some pics.
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xausa
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(.400 member)
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03/03/08 04:50 PM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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A while back there was a report in Precision Shooting magazine about a rifle built with a .17 caliber barrel and chambered with a .22 lr reamer, which the owner shot .22 Hi Speed cartridges through with amazing results. Sounds like just the thing for the charging bunnies.
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NitroX
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(.700 member)
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03/03/08 05:11 PM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Not a baby bunny but I was once charged by a blind rabbit. I was shooting some old .22 longs in my rifle as I had run out of my normal ammo and found an old packet. The rifle was not sighted in for this ammo but I thought it might hit close enough. I could have said "it gave a mean look like I owed it money" but as it was blind with myxomotosis that wasn't likely.
I missed the incredibly frightening charging rabbit, also known as the grey death, charge with the first 4 shots and held off the last cartridge for an end of barrel killing shot and so saved myself to hunt the grey death another day .... I thought about making a film 'Death at my feet' but the title was already taken. Plus I washed my feet anyway ...
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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The best and most accurate rabbit rifle I ever used was a Ruger 77 in .22 Mag rimfire. It was just excellent in every way, apart form aesthetically! However, it was just too noisy, so it was traded in for a .22LR with a moderator firing subsonics. You have to get closer, but you make up for this with multiple shot opportunities. Wandering around the farm on a warm evening with a subsonic .22LR is about as fun as it gets...
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Jabali, I just got my custom Volquartsen in .22LR (well nearly, it is being delivered from Bilbao as I type) It has taken 2 years !! Don't ask, long story, my question, how noisy is subsonic ammo, could you use in say a half acre garden or would the noise annoy neighbours ? thx, Mike Bailey
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Hi - in my experience it is never going to be silent, but I have not had any problems with neighbours and in a half acre it should be fine.
I think the key point is that subsonics remove the sonic "crack" associated with normal bullet flight. This is the noisiest part from an observer/neighbour standpoint - i.e. not in close proximity to the shooter. From this perspective, you often find that neighbours are not even aware of shots being fired.
However, you still get some of the bang from the powder ignition, as well as muzzle blast, but it is "moderated" and is therefore alot easier on the ears and the sound doesn't seem to travel as far.
Of course you still get the noise of the bullet impact, but this travels the least of the three noises described. To my/the shooter's ears, this can be as loud as the muzzle blast bang, but to someone standing a field away, it is probably much less significant.
I'm sure you would get complaints if you turned your garden into a rifle range, but taking shots at rabbits and squirrels has not been a problem for me. The sound carries much, much less than a supersonic .22LR and is far less than a shotgun blast.
Not very scientific, but I hope you get the picture... Also, I'm referrring to sub-sonics in conjunction with a moderator - but I'm not sure what rules Spain has on moderators. If used without a moderator, the sonic crack would be eliminated, but the muzzle blast bang may be too loud for neighbours in close proximity.
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penwolf
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(.224 member)
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04/03/08 02:27 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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I like to use an RPG on these killers. Bunnies are not to be trusted. There is no such thing as overkill when face to face with a furry death machine. Sense the Fed Gov won't sell me a Nuke an RPG will do.
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Shanster
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(.275 member)
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04/03/08 02:51 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Ps90(5.7x28) ar15(223 rem) beretta storm carbine(9mm), I am off to a bunnie shoot on friday. You want to be part of the brotherhood of the red mist. Deep clips hollow points, hard hitting good optix light and laser for close up work. And a side arm(glock 17 9mm with light & laser) if your primary rifle goes dry or malfunction.
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DoubleD
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(.400 member)
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04/03/08 03:28 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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A gun for rabbits, why?
If you have these vicious little killers, that's all you need...
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xausa
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(.400 member)
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04/03/08 03:45 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Such a rifle would have only theoretical value in these parts. The supply of cotton-tail rabbits has been so sharply reduced in recent years by the corresponding growth in the coyote population that seeing one as road kill is worthy of note. The rare ones I sometimes see are in the immediate area of the house, where presumably the coyotes are less of a threat. I miss them, as well as their aquatic cousins, the swamp rabbits, which used to be fairly common in this area also. The quail population has waned as well, possibly as a result of the burgeoning turkey population.
I have noticed recently that the deer seem to be using the turkeys as scouts. Several times this last deer season I watched a flock of turkeys enter an open area, and then, only after the turkeys had spread out all over the field, did the deer emerge. Unfortunately for the deer, the turkeys' acute sense of vision and hearing did not extend to my vantage point, over 200 yards away, but in the opposite direction, the effective range of my .25-'06 did.
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dnovo
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(.333 member)
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04/03/08 05:45 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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700 NE. They charge when they are wounded. Dave
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k80
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(.333 member)
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04/03/08 11:51 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Just be glad that "charging"
rabbit was not a West Texas
Jackalope. The speed and the
horns can be dangerous.
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9.3x57
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(.450 member)
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04/03/08 12:11 PM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Quote:
Such a rifle would have only theoretical value in these parts. The supply of cotton-tail rabbits has been so sharply reduced in recent years by the corresponding growth in the coyote population that seeing one as road kill is worthy of note. The rare ones I sometimes see are in the immediate area of the house, where presumably the coyotes are less of a threat. I miss them, as well as their aquatic cousins, the swamp rabbits, which used to be fairly common in this area also. The quail population has waned as well, possibly as a result of the burgeoning turkey population.
I have noticed recently that the deer seem to be using the turkeys as scouts. Several times this last deer season I watched a flock of turkeys enter an open area, and then, only after the turkeys had spread out all over the field, did the deer emerge. Unfortunately for the deer, the turkeys' acute sense of vision and hearing did not extend to my vantage point, over 200 yards away, but in the opposite direction, the effective range of my .25-'06 did.
Xausa: Ditto here.
Funny thing you mention the symbiotic relationship between deer and turkeys. We see the same thing here on my hayfield. Just the deer I could see from the house counted to 161 last eve, in the bare melted off spots. There is a blowing blizzard right now and I can't see anything.
And...again....our grouse population seems to have taken the hit from the exploding turkey population. I have read a study regarding the grouse and turks, and turk predation on grouse eggs was suggested but not yet conclusively proven. I think they hammer them.
As for bunnies, we used to raise them for meat and very tasty they are. Never killed the babies but one of my home-grown bolo knives sufficed for head lopping of the big ones.
Other options include:
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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I don't know about baby bunnies, but for adult cotton tails I use a magazine rifle chambered for the 375 H&H. 270 grain hard cast bullet loaded to 1300 fps. Drills a neat hole and doesn't spoil any meat. The 375 H&H will produce very fine accuracy with lite loads, something the various blown out and improved 375s do not. Bottom line, if you can stop a charging cotton tail with a 375 H&H you will be able to hit something bigger.
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Penwold, Dnovo, Unspellable
I guess the baby bunnies that you are hunting are the offspring of The Vicious Rabbit of Caerbannog!!  (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
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xausa
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(.400 member)
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05/03/08 12:49 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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One of my game warden friends denies that turkeys prey on quail, but I had an experience last summer which makes me wonder. My wife and I drove up to the house and were surprised to see a turkey in the yard just outside the living room window. Seeing the turkey was really nothing unusual, but this one paid no attention to us as we drove past, about 50 yards away. We drove the car into the garage at the other end of the house and went through to the living room, where we could see from the window that the turkey was pecking at something, then throwing it into the air and attacking it again when it hit the ground. He paid absolutely no attention to us watching from the window, perhaps thirty feet away.
Eventually I got tired of watching and went back to the garage, loaded my duck gun and walked around toward the living room window. Naturally, when I rounded the corner of the house, the turkey flew, and I hastened it on its way with an ineffectual load of #4 shot.
I then walked around to see if I could find what he had been toying with. Eventually I found it. It was the mangled carcass of a blue jay nestling which had evidently fallen from its nest. A wider search revealed another, unharmed nestling. The mangled bird had not been eaten, just killed and played with, as a cat would play with a mouse. Certainly a baby quail would have had no chance under the same circumstances. After watching a flock of 60+ turkeys feed across an open field, like an army of combines harvesting grain, I can hardly imagine that a clutch of quail eggs or quail hatchlings would escape their scrutiny. Res ipsa loquitur.
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9.3x57
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(.450 member)
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05/03/08 02:12 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Xausa:
I do not doubt for one moment you are right in your concern.
Maybe the best "rifle" for culling baby bunnies is the turkey???
We have unintentionally trapped a number of turkeys in dirt hole coyote sets using meat for bait and they are voracious eaters of darn near anything that moves that they can get into their mouths, so why not eat baby bunnies and grouse and quail hatchlings and eggs?
BTW: I'm surprised the common consensus isn't a .22 LR in more or less and rifle with a scope on it.
Something like this:
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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For cotton tails a rifle chambered in 22 LR would be practical and obvious. Won't wash.
BTW: While a 22 LR will knock down a cotton tail, jack rabbits are another story. I've seen jacks hit fair and square with a 30-06, 455 Webley, etc., and keep going. I've also decided a 22 LR is under powered for wood chucks after shooting one through the boiler room and not getting a quick clean kill.
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xausa
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(.400 member)
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05/03/08 06:12 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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I once witnessed a ground hog make it back to his hole after getting hit three times with GI .45 ACP loads out of a M1911 Colt. I also went to pick up one I had gut shot with a .220 Swift (he was lying down at 250 yards) and found his innards stretched across the five feet to his hole, but he himself was nowhere to be found. They are truly tough animals.
At the other extreme, I once shot one with my .17 Hornet. He was lying dead next to the hole, without an apparent scratch on him. After examining him thoroughly, my shooting partner called my attention to the fact that one of his front teeth was broken off. Sure enough, the 25 grain bullet had hit the tooth, gone into the mouth and penetrated the skull and brain cavity. I wish I could claim credit for aiming at his open mouth, but I can't.
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poprivit
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(.333 member)
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05/03/08 10:29 AM
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Re: Best rifle for culling baby bunnies.
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Bolt action Savage .22 with a suppressor on the end of the bull barrel. Aguila 60-gr. subsonic ammo. Makes a sound like a handclap. I shoot from the living room and my wife in the kitchen (20-25 feet) cannot hear it.
Either that rifle or my Ruger .458 Lott. Depends a lot on the size of the bunny's tusks. I've got a mounted set that go 43 & 47 lb. That was for the giant gray Botswana bunny and required a Searcy .577 underlever.
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