In reply to Chester, on the subject of dead mice.

[mapsedge]

I started this as a reply, decided it would make a good post. So here we are. This was predicated on the post I wrote for The Road Less Ordinary, Of Mice and Traps.

To Chester:

Michelle has watched (correction, helped, she says) her grandfather, an avid racoon hunter, skin and field dress a racoon on several occasions (I'm pretty sure it was a different racoon each time). She has changed a variety of diapers. She held me once while I was being violently ill from a bad reaction to a prescribed pharmaceutical. She will insert her hand into the body cavity of a dressed chicken to remove the giblet package and scrape away any innards the butcher might have missed.

But she will not touch a dead mouse, or bait a fishhook.

I told her yesterday as we were making pizza that I'd like to try rabbit. She agreed, guardedly, like she knew there was more coming. There was: I told her why.

Our neighborhood is lousy with rabbits, making them a cheap source of edible and, with the right seasonings and cooking method, I would guess delicious protein. As my predation creates less competition for food, their population would grow, providing more food for us, and so on. It's a win-win. Outside the city limits this is "normal." Inside them, it's "weird." I don't get the distinction.

We try to eat naturally and seasonally. I can field dress a broccoli blindfolded, chop an onion with nary a tear, and I am ... curious ... to try my hand at our world's fauna, to pay, as Michael Pollan says, "the full karmic debt for my meal."

I'm a kid of the suburbs. I am not a hunter or trapper, but I am keen to try.

Comments

[thebruce.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Now, how, pray tell, do you propose to capture/dispatch the wee beasties? Hav-A-Hart trap and a piece of 1/2" pipe?

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

I like that option better than running it down on foot and tearing its throat out with my teeth. Top of the food chain I may be, but my canines aren't suited to the task :)

Yeah, I'd kinda figured on trapping since there's not a clear line of fire in any direction in my neighborhood, the actual dispatching to be done with a Daisy Model 880 pellet rifle.

Although, to be perfectly frank, we haven't gotten that far yet.

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

I like the idea. In a residential area, traps definitely. My concern would be that the Daisy is a little lightly powered for killing things of rabbit size in a relatively humane fashion, one-shot fashion. If you were gearing from scratch, I'd recommend something like a .177 or .22 CO2/air rifle for the dispatching - > 1000 fps on the muzzle.

- J

[thebruce.livejournal.com]

Bill, I have to strongly second this, or recommend the aforementioned 18" piece of household steel/galvanized pipe applied behind the ears of Mr. Bunny as he's held by the back legs. I raised rabbits for many years, both here and abroad, man and boy, and that's the most humane way I've come up with.

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

The 880 is a pump rifle, and on 80% pressure with a pellet is supposed to be the functional equivalent of a .22. Of course, if your gun is old - as mine is - that may no longer be true, and I have no real way of determining that.

My only reservation to the Mr. Fudd in The Study with a Lead Pipe method is the "grabbing the back legs" part, as I have no desire to be bitten by a wild animal.

I do want to be humane about it. I have no desire to inflict more discomfort than is strictly necessary in order to feed myself.

I've looked into snares, some, and it seems to me that the snare kills the animal, though I can't for the life of me figure out how.

[thebruce.livejournal.com]

Snares are not a good idea for anything but a survival situation. They're illegal in Germany, and a bad idea especially in neighborhoods where the passing cat may trigger it. A snare kills by breaking the neck.

Your pellet rifle will do the trick, between the eyes at point blank range, and then followed by.... well, I'll tell ya next time I see ya or in a private email.

Do you recall my Pig Story?

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

Well, I say that only because I used to have a Crossman 760 pump and it was definitely under powered for rabbit. I looked at the Daisy and BB velocity is supposed to be 750 fps and pellets in the 650 range. It may work fine at point blank, but that'd be my concern.

For comparison, most .22 caliber air rifles are in the 900+ range, many over 1100. .22 caliber powder starts near 1100 and goes up to 1800 or so I think.

Personally, I like rabbit. I'm considering taking up fishing again this year -- although I know nothing about the whole fly-fishing/salmon/NW mystique. I'm just a simple, southern-style, closed-reel, live-bait, fisher dude.

- J