The Glorious Sport of Rabbit Hunting

&Quot;Rabbit hunting is among the best of sports in which the bagging of small game is involved," said a habitual participator in autumn recreations afield and in woodland covers.

"By rabbit hunting, though, I don't mean hiding with a gun at the edge of old wood roads at dusk and from ambush shooting the unsuspecting game.

"Nor do I mean following the tracks of a rabbit on new fallen snow until it leads to the refuge of some friendly stone wall or hollow stump or tangled roots of a fallen tree or scraggly brush pile, there to dig out the maker of the feathery footprints and kill it by a thump on the back of its neck. Nor is the sending of a trained ferret into the rabbit shelters to drive the hiding creatures out in big eyed terror to the cudgel or the whippet of the ferret's waiting owner.

"It is none of these that I mean when I hymn the rabbit hunt. The exciting chase before the well-trained hound is quite a different affair, and no sportsman who has once indulged himself in it will ever again treat the rabbit hunt with scorn.

"The part of the dog in the rabbit hunt is in itself enough to enlarge the sport to a point worthy of any sportsman's consideration. Then to kill a rabbit while it is flitting before the dog through the brush or across the narrow space in some hazy vista is a feat which tries the skill of the best and truest of wing shots. The gunner will be amazed to find, the first time he goes out to pit his skill against the tactics of the rabbit, how many of the fleet little cottontails he doesn't get.

"However much birds or deer may vary in number in different parts of the country, rabbits are always in sufficient evidence everywhere for the furnishing of sport in the chase. The covers of nearby New Jersey abound with them. Long Island is a paradise for rabbits. The as yet unsettled and thicket grown areas of the Palisades of the Hudson throng with the timid yet venturesome creatures, as do the Westchester wilds on the very border of New York city.

"In the farther away but yet not distant hills and swamps and tangled reaches of Orange county not only the cottontail but that larger and fleeter relative, the varying hare, known locally as jack rabbit, is a plentiful denizen, and capable of inducing the dog to still greater efforts in the chase, and requiring superior skill in the gunner.

"With a gun that has no choke in its barrels — for a rabbit need not be bored through and through to bring it to bag — and with not more than four drachms of powder back of a charge of No. 4 shot, a hunter who can shoot quick and judge well the course of the game as his beagle sings it along to him from the cover, ought to be able to go out of New York of an afternoon and return by supper time with his bag of rabbits up to the law's limit, and he will have had exciting and blood quickening sport.

"The beagle is the best dog for rabbits. This hound is short of leg but long of wind. He won't leave the rabbit trail to follow the track of a fox, and even in the country on the city's very threshold there is much cover yet that attracts and keeps Reynard at home and foraging to his liking.

"And your beagle takes his time in the chase. He doesn't rush the game, as the foxhound is likely to do. He is at once tenacious and true. And the music of his voice in the chase is sweeter yet than the bay of the foxhound, mellow and far reaching as that is."