412 LETTERS TO YOUNG SHOOTERS LETTER 



SOME FINAL NOTES CONCERNING BABBITS 



Shoot your rabbits, or kill them by means of 

 ferrets, before the frosts set in, or else when the grass 

 is bare ; if you have any trees or shrubs they can 

 attack, they will soon destroy them. You cannot 

 usually kill rabbits with the gun in covert till the 

 beginning of November, as there will be too many 

 leaves on the undergrowth before then to see to shoot 

 them. By the end of November all the rabbits should 

 be thinned down in places where they can cause 

 damage. You will find in the case of young growing 

 trees that the time when they are most injured by 

 rabbits is in March, when the sap is rising in the 

 stems. 



A cartload of mangolds and some bundles of hay, 

 strewn about for your few surviving rabbits to feed on 

 in the winter and early spring, will save you, in the 

 case of young plantations, hundreds of trees, and 

 eventually recoup you many times over for the food 

 you artificially supply. The rabbits are bound to eat 

 something to support life ; and if you do not give it 

 them, or they cannot obtain it, they will resort to 

 trees, whether old or young, in order to escape 

 starvation ; and under these conditions the amount 

 of injury a few rabbits can do is appalling. 



I have seen a young covert of fifteen acres ruined 

 in a month of frost and snow, almost every tree in it 

 being cut to pieces and killed. As the covert in 



