Rocksteady rabbiting

Mat Manning hunkers down for a bipod-based airgun ambush as the bunnies continue to bounce back on his patch in Somerset

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Rabbits are continuing to make a reasonable comeback on some of the ground I shoot over in Somerset. A lot of landowners will probably disagree with me, but I am delighted to see them. These resourceful little mammals are true survivors, and are an integral part of the British countryside. They provide a valuable food source for countless other species and, when there is a harvestable surplus, they also feed me and my family.

Although they are making a noticeable return, the rabbits’ recovery in my locality does seem to be rather patchy. Fields where they were once abundant on summer evenings are still devoid of them, while places that only held a handful of rabbits before they were clobbered by haemorrhagic disease are starting to become overrun.

I wrote a while back about an evening spent stalking rabbits on an estate where the growing population is hampering the establishment of new plantations of sapling trees. A reasonably subtle approach appears to be keeping them in check here, but problems are now cropping up on other holdings following the arrival of new litters through the spring and early summer months.

One farmer called me to say he was very concerned about the damage that “hundreds of rabbits” were causing by undermining hedge banks and burrowing into the margins of one particular field. Most of us know that the “hundreds of rabbits” line should be taken with a pinch of salt. It is a lot like the old “my fields are blue with pigeons” chestnut — there is usually a grain of truth in the story, but the reality often turns out to be of a somewhat more modest.