CHAPTER V. 



RABBIT DRIVES AND HUNTS. 



CALIFORNIA. 



In certain parts of California where jack rabbits are found in great 

 numbers the 'drive' has proved the most successful means of exter- 

 mination. Rabbit driving seems to have been first introduced in the 

 San Joaquin Valley, near Tipton, Tulare County, in 1882, but did not 

 attract much attention until the winter of 1887-88. This was during 

 the 'boom' in southern California, and it is probable that the influx 

 of people from the East, many of whom settled in the San Joaquin 

 Valley, was one of the causes of the sudden interest in rabbit drives. 

 Large tracts of land were brought under cultivation in sections where 

 jack rabbits were very abundant, and it became absolutely necessary 

 to adopt some effective means of protecting the newly planted orchards 

 and vineyards. 



The origin of the method, however, is somewhat obscure. It is said 

 that the Mission Indians formerly hunted both cottontails and jack 

 rabbits on horseback. A dozen or more Indians armed with clubs would 

 engage in such a hunt, and, riding at full speed through the under- 

 brush, would start the rabbits from their hiding places. The cotton- 

 tails, confused by the clattering of the horses' hoofs and the shouts 

 of the riders, would turn this way and that, and either dodge into their 

 holes or squat close to the ground, only to be dispatched by a swift 

 blow from a club. The jack rabbits, on the contrary, usually made 

 for the open plain, where they were turned in their flight, and soon sur- 

 rounded and killed. 



Long before the settlement of the country by the whites, the Indians 

 were accustomed to capture large numbers of jack rabbits with nets, 

 the animals being surrounded and driven into an inclosure, where they 

 were killed with clubs. One of the earliest accounts of this custom 

 is contained in Townsend's 'JTarrative of a Journey across the Rocky 

 Mountains,' pubhshed in 1839 (p. 327). In speaking of the Blacktailed 

 Jack Rabbit found near Walla Walla, Wash., he says: "The Indians 

 kill them with arrows, by approaching them stealthily as they lie con- 

 cealed under the bushes, and in winter take them with nets. To do this, 

 some one or two hundred Indians, men, women, and children, collect 

 and inclose a large space with a slight net, about 5 feet wide, made of 



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