The American Beagler Forum

Got the dogs together right after school and headed to the field for a quick hunt. I met some college kids rabbit hunting with .22s and no dogs. I invited them to tag along and let them share my other shotgun. One of them had never seen a dog on rabbits. Took us a while to get one up but when they finally started running the dogs got the job done.

We shot two and they are going to meet up with me Saturday morning for a hunt. Seem like nice kids and two of them have family farms we can hunt on too so it was a win win.

Were the rabbits wormy ?

chris83 wrote:Were the rabbits wormy ?

Surprisingly, not the one I opened up and checked the liver... I am not sure about the other one because they wanted to clean it themselves after it was shot. It seemed fine and was huge, as far as rabbits go. Sometimes in early season I will find more tape worms than in late season. The conservation says you can still eat em but I can't stomach the thought.

This article about eating rabbits before the frost is pretty informative.

http://www.unluckyhunter.com/2011/07/my ... fe-to.html

As a kid,we ate rabbits any time we killed them and never had any ill effects.Tapeworms in rabbits is caused by ingesting fleas when they groom themselves.Rabbits habitually eat their feces in the winter to derive all the nutrients they can from them.
I'm 61 years old and have only heard first hand about one case of rabbit fever. It was a game wardens wife that contracted it from skinning and infected rabbit.The liver of an infected rabbit will look like it's sprinkled heavily with white pepper,no mistaking it. You'll see a couple of spots on most rabbit's livers,but those are just scars from parisites. Rabbits also can have bladder worms,which again are no problem with proper cooking.
If you were to see some of the parisites that infect cattle and hogs,you probably wouldn't eat them either lol.

We've been open for almost three weeks here. Just running dogs, not killing any yet, but then I've reached the age where killing isn't what's important. Just enjoy the music and pride when the dogs do well. A good day hunting is any day you bring all the dogs home even if your game coat is empty.