Cold, clear, crisp mornings this time of year always reminds me of rabbit hunting. One of my good friends in high school had a pack of beagles, and we would load them up almost every Saturday during season and head to the woods. January and February were prime times to hunt rabbits.

My family had an old VW bus that we had taken the seats out of so we could haul eggs in it. It was our hunting vehicle, but it rally stunk after putting 10 or 12 beagles in it and driving 20 to 30 miles. And the ride home in the afternoon was just as bad. I don’t know how we stood it!

That VW bus had high ground clearance and a low gear ratio. We thought it would go anywhere, and usually proved it would. Mud holes and slick logging roads were no problem. The only time we got it stuck, we went down a long hill and parked at the bottom. The lower part of the hill was soft sand, and when we tried to leave the tires just bogged down in it.

After a couple of hours of working to get out, we walked the two miles to the nearest house and the farmer took us back on his tractor. It easily pulled the bug bus up the hill to solid ground. He charged us $2 as I remember, not a bad price for what he did, even back in 1966!

I have many great memories of listening to the beagles “sing” as they ran rabbits and we scrambled to get in a position to shoot them when the dogs brought them around. After a few trips I learned to anticipate where the rabbit would run as it made its circle back toward its starting point.

Rabbits almost always run in circles when chased, trying to stay in familiar territory, I guess. The only exception was when we jumped a “swamp rabbit,” a bigger, darker version of the cottontails we usually found. Those rabbits were faster and would run longer before heading back. They were much harder to kill.

The first time I went rabbit hunting with my friend I carried a .22 rifle, thinking I would be sporting and give them a chance. The next time I went I had my .410 shotgun. The .22 gave them way too much of a chance. After shooting at some rabbits with the .410 I switched to a 12 gauge shotgun and finally started hitting them!

One January Saturday we had some snow on the ground. It was solid white in our yards and along the highway. We decided to leave the dogs at home and hunt without them since we thought the snow would be a problem for them. It turned out to be my best day, I killed six rabbits.

The snow in the woods was not a solid blanket, but the scattering of white made the rabbits show up much better. We went to an area where timber had been cut the year before and there were big piles of limbs along the edge of the cleared area. We would kick the brush and a rabbit would run out!

I will never forget that day. There were three of us hunting, and two would go to one side of the brushpile while the third kicked at it on the other side. When a rabbit ran out the one closest to it got the shot. We would take turns doing the dirty work of kicking, because the rabbit usually came out on the other side and the kicker seldom got a shot.

The three of us killed almost 20 rabbits that day. I don’t think we ever killed nearly that many with dogs, since finding one, letting the dogs run it and then getting it often took an hour. Without the dogs we kicked a lot of brush and shot the rabbit as soon as we saw it.

We ate a lot of fried rabbit back in those days. Cleaning the game we killed was always a part of every hunt, and we would often have the rabbits that night for supper, if we got home in time. Nothing was ever wasted, and we would not have considered hunting anything we did not plan to eat.

Rabbits are not as plentiful as they once were. I would love to hear the pack of beagles chasing them again, and feel the excitement of trying to be in the right spot to shoot. I will cherish memories of my growing up wild in Georgia for as long as I live.