i 
maneuver the vehicle between the rabbit and its escape 
cover. To accomplish this, spurts of speed up to 35 
mph were often necessary, and thus only fields with 
smooth terrain could be safely and effectively night- 
lighted. Because the “target” rabbit had to be kept in 
the spotlight beam at all times, it was imperative that 
nightlighting be done in fields in which the vegetation 
permitted the rabbit to be seen at all times; when the 
animal was lost from view, it usually escaped. If a 
rabbit could be cut off from escape cover, it often 
paused momentarily; at this moment the rabbit was 
potentially most vulnerable to capture. To effect cap- 
ture at this precise time, the driver had to have the 
vehicle in such a position that the netter could literally 
pounce, directly from the vehicle, upon the rabbit with 
the net. 
An experienced nightlighting crew can, on the aver- 
age, expect to capture about one of every five rabbits 
flushed. On different nights in autumn, we have cap- 
tured as many as 13 of 36 cottontails (36 percent) in 
3 hours of nightlighting and as few as 3 of 51 (6 per- 
cent) in 7 hours. 
Subadult cottontails were more susceptible to cap- 
ture by nightlighting than were full grown rabbits. 
However, the nighttime behavior of cottontails, and 
thus their trappability, was quite unpredictable at any 
time. Cottontails were most skittish on very cold, 
moonlight nights when snow covered the ground and 
were most susceptible to capture on dark, cloudy 
nights when the vegetation (or ground) was wet. As 
a rule, cottontails held best on cold, rainy nights in 
autumn, on cool nights following a thaw or snow in 
winter, on warm, humid nights in spring, and on cool, 
dewy nights in summer. 
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