De 



1958 



Scott: Wildlife Rhsearch 



197 



Game Mammals. — The cottontail 

 rabbit tops the list of game mammals in 

 Illinois in a number of respects. In a 

 survey of license-stub kill cards for the 

 1950—51 hunting season, Marquardt & 

 Scott (1952:4) found that rabbits pro- 

 vided twice as many sportsmen with game 

 in the bag as did any other game species 

 and numbered more than twice as many 

 as any other kind of game animal re- 

 ported. Rabbits constitute the chief game 

 animal of the state largely because they 

 are widely distributed and because they 

 possess the reproductive potential to main- 

 tain themselves despite high mortality, in- 

 cluding that from severe hunting pressure. 

 Proving that there is some bad with 

 the good, however, is the fact that tula- 

 remia, a disease which is transmissible to 

 man, occurs in rabbits. "In the period 

 1926-1949, Illinois had more than 3,000 

 reported cases of human tularemia, about 

 twice as manv as anv of the other states" 

 (Yeatter & Thompson 1952:351). Yeat- 

 ter (Sc Thompson ( 1952:379) reported that 

 "The human tularemia rate in any year 

 in Illinois seems to be determined both by 

 temperatures about the time of the open- 

 ing of the rabbit season and by the 

 abundance of rabbits." They concluded 

 that the incidence of human tularemia in 

 Illinois could be reduced by delaying the 

 opening of the rabbit hunting season until 

 about December 1. As a result of these 

 findings, the opening of the hunting sea- 

 son in Illinois was postponed until No- 

 vember 26 in 1955. In recent years meth- 

 ods of treating tularemia in humans have 

 i been greatly simplified by the use of anti- 

 ; biotics. It seems certain, however, that 

 most hunters will prefer not to depend 

 I upon antibiotics — that they will enjoy 

 ' their rabbit hunting far more knowing 

 that by hunting within a season which 

 opens after the onset of sharp freezing 

 weather they and their families are ex- 

 posed to the hazard of tularemia only to 

 a minimum extent. 



Yeatter & Thompson (1952:378) 

 recommended, as a refinement to their 

 studies, further study of ticks, other tula- 

 remia vectors, and the biology of the 

 rabbit. Ecke (1955:29-1—6) recorded a 

 complete description of the courtship and 

 mating of cottontails. Also, Ecke (1955: 

 305) found evidence which suggested 



"that some component of green vegeta- 

 tion, possibly V^itamin E, is responsible 

 for stimulating the pituitary glands of 

 rabbits into the secretion of somatic nutri- 

 tives, and consequently', determining the 

 breeding conditions of the animals." 



Dr. Rexford D. Lord (1958:274) 

 has recently constructed life tables which 

 indicate that as many as 24 to 27 per cent 

 of the rabbits available to hunters in 

 autumn may be the young of rabbits born 

 in the spring of the same vear. 



Ecke & Yeatter (1956:212-3) at- 

 tributed the death of a rabbit, estimated 

 to have been about 13 days of age, to 

 coccidiosis and suggested further study of 

 coccidiosis as a cause of mortality among 

 rabbits. Detailed studies of ectoparasites 

 of rabbits have been carried on since 1952 

 bv Dr. Lewis J. Stannard, Lvsle R. 

 Pietsch, Dr. Carl O. Mohr, and Dr. 

 Lord. 



The realization that tradition for a 

 summer hunting season on squirrels in 

 Illinois was not biologically sound touched 

 off a thorough investigation (Brown & 

 Yeager 1945) of fox squirrels and gray 

 squirrels in 1940. The chief objection to 

 a summer hunting season was that it re- 

 sulted in the killing of pregnant and lac- 

 tating females. Brown & Yeager (1945: 

 526) estimated that summer hunting re- 

 sulted in a wasteful loss of 31.8 unborn 

 and suckling squirrels for each 100 squir- 

 rels bagged. Because the tradition for 

 summer hunting was strong and because 

 squirrel hunting was good in some parts 

 of the state despite early hunting seasons 

 in the past. Brown & Yeager (1945: 

 526-8) believed it unwise to enact a sea- 

 son beginning so late that it would pre- 

 vent all losses resulting from the killing 

 of pregnant and lactating females and 

 they observed: "Such a -eason could hard- 

 ly begin earlier than October 1, and it 

 would certainly be opposed by a large 

 number of hunters." A compromise sea- 

 son of September 15 to November 15 in 

 central and northern Illinois and Septem- 

 ber 1 to October 31 in southern Illinois 

 was recommended. This recommendation 

 has not been accepted by Illinois hunt- 

 ers. 



The report by Pietsch (1^54) on deer 

 populations in Illinois will be of especial 

 value to the future wildlife historian. 



