Jackrabbit Round Up!
Kansas
Jackrabbit roundup in the Youngtown area, east of Marion KS, 1935.
I think I have seen maybe one in all of the 16 yrs I have been hunting in the Flinthills.
In Osage county my dad used to talk of jack rabbitt drives and they would fill a hay wagon. Smack them with clubs and whips.
I’ve seen picture similar where in Ness county Ks in the 1930s, the locals would surround a large piece of land and drive jack rabbits into a snow fence enclosure. There the rabbits were clubbed, by the hundreds or many hundreds. I grew up in Ness county and in the 1960s, it was easy to walk pastures with a shot gun and kill 5-10 jack rabbits in a few hours. If there was lots of snow, one could drive country roads and shoot them with a .22 sitting by fence posts, or in brush along side the road. It was not uncommon to shoot 20 or more in an afternoon. In those days jack rabbits were sold to mink farms for mink food. These days I hunt Ness county 7-8 days a year, for deer, pheasants and coyotes. I rarely see a jack rabbit.
Things were a bit out of balance during the dust bowl... I’ve seen old silent movies if them rounding up the jackrabbits. Crazy stuff.
They were originally native to all of Kansas and into Missouri
I grew up in Scott County in the 60's. We used to see them all the time. I jumped in the back of a pick-up with a few cousins up in Colby once. They would just drive through their pasture and shoot lots of them with a shotgun. Hardly ever saw them around Hartford where my other cousins lived. Just cottontails over east.
My grandpa talked about seeing them when he was younger. Extreme SE Kansas
Yep was a common sight on relatives farm when I was a kid in the 60’s just north of Andale. Shot lots with .22s and they fed them to their dog and their hogs. Pretty rare to see one now, but do occasionally.
I've seen maybe 5 in Greenwood County and one in Harvey County. Shot one out by Dodge City once and decided they didn't taste near as good as cottontail.
Have seen them around here, many out in the Flint Hills. Most I've seen were spotted out where we pheasant hunted from between Ellsworth to NW of Hays. Have only seen one in the Garden City area when hunting out there. I cannot imagine seeing as many as are in the original picture, wow
What caused the population decline?
~8 years ago I used to see a dozen of them in a field right on the NW edge of Wichita. They seemed out of place because I'd only ever seen them when hunting the western part of the state. Unsurprisingly, the city has continued to expand and I don't see them anymore.
City expansion didn't move them out Ryan. There is more wildlife in urban areas than there is in suburbia, out in many of the rural areas anymore. For many years, Johnson Co Ks, ie Olathe/KC had the highest deer/per square mile population in all of North America. I was invited to hunt up when they allowed archery antlerless hunting within the city limits for a short time. I saw more wildlife there within the city limits. The property we hunted, by a heavily used golf course, than I ever saw out in rural Kansas. I saw bobcats, fox, turkey, LOTS of deer, quail, squirrels, possums, raccoons, and every species of birds
Habitat changes with time, Ryan. Jacks also respond better to drought than most species. Airport runways seem popular. I know ICT has had them. I was amazed how many we saw flying in and out of Newton's airport, probably 20 years ago. They can do well on golf courses, too.
No doubt increasing woody cover has had an impact in eastern Kansas..
But, if something happens to those isolated populations and they get extirpated, it's hard for more to one in because of population fragmentation in much of Kansas.
I've seen a photo with more than a dozen in back yard at the edge of Valley Center. Well, it was the edge, then. We see them about one out of three or four mornings heading to a duck pond in western Reno County. Same place, year after year. I assume it's just a few in that spot that reproduce a little annually.
Thanks for the photo as it helps paint a picture in my mind of some stories I was told this past fall. My buddy's father grew up in the sandhills northwest of Greensburg and told of growing up during the depression and living off jack-rabbits. He told about the round ups and netting them and clubbing them. I think he even said they would ship them out on the train and sell them?
He remembers there wasn't a single deer around but jacks were plentiful. I had the same question in my mind about why they never came back. He also said the sandhills had buried cars in them from the dust bowl and originally the terrain was flat but after they broke up the land to farm, the blow sand created the dunes and topography you see now in the sand hills.
He also said that he'd ridden a horse through almost all that country north and south of highway 54 in the vicinity ranching for various folks and found rattlesnakes south of hwy 54 but never encountered one north of hwy 54 which I found interesting.
15 years ago I ran into a group of Portuguese men out in SW Kansas. They were from New Jersey and were here hunting jack rabbits for meat. They had killed over 150 of them in the week they were here and they had them marinating in buckets of red wine. They then planned on freezing them and taking them back East. Pretty neat.
My parents place had 4 jacks that hung out in the driveway (an hour southeast of Wichita). You would mostly see them at night. One year they were gone and haven't returned. I still see some in the right pastures east of there. Similar to the chickens; places that used to have some don't anymore... places that used have a ton of them still have a few.
I get jack rabbits and cottontails in my yard now down in Grady county Oklahoma. Although the jack rabbits haven't been around much lately. I've had a couple of grey foxes almost every night.
A national falconry group often holds conferences in sw KS, largely so members can fly their birds in jackrabbits. The wheat stubble fields have good numbers and are safer for their birds than sagebrush.
I had a guy come and hunt them on my in-laws place using his Golden Eagle. It was awesome watching that thing work. Met him here on this board, his Golden Eagle was the #1 rated Golden Eagle in the US at the time.
Good for you. Danged impressive birds. They’ve been documented killing pronghorns in Gove County.
When I was a kid { those who know that was a long time ago } our 4H club used to go out on Sunday after noon and shoot jacks for a club fund raiser. I think we got 5 cents each for them
Bryan: if they had 150 they had to be killing after dark.
I thought Dave was talking about a 150" 3.5yr old deer for a second ;?)
Because Dave, you can hunt all day in western KS and not see a fraction of that many Jack's. If you spotlight them, they are much easier to find. We did a Uturn outside a packing plant one night in Dodge City and the headlights lit up a dozen in a short grass field. The next day in sunlight, there wasn't a rabbit to be seen.
Writer it was 8-10 miles west of Great Bend
I see a few Jackrabbits here in Chase County. They are in the open pasture land in the Southwest part of the County. A few years ago driving through the pasture country before dawn on my way turkey hunting I saw dozens of them. Talking to an area rancher later, he said that for some reason there were a lot of them that year.
I have never participated in a Jack Rabbit roundup but have done so for coyotes. When I was growing up in the mid 1960s local groups would get together and surround a property where the landowner wanted fewer coyotes. Everyone would gradually work toward the center forcing the coyotes to eventually try and escape through the lines. This was shotguns only. I never got to fire a shot on these nor did my Dad. There were quite a few coyotes taken this way. At that time there was a $2.00 bounty for coyotes and the proceeds were donated to a local charitable organization. I don't know if the fur was salvaged.
15 years ago there were jacks and pheasants all over SW Kansas. Killing 150 jacks would have been no problem at all.
See Jacks by Bentley but when I am in Sw Kansas which is about every other week I see them everywhere. I see the most between Point of Rocks and Wilburton's crossing at the Grassllands. Still yet to see a Mule Deer on the main river channel down there. I guess my last sighting would have been in 2008. Lots of Jacks and Quail but not many deer.
