On the last Sunday in February, a number of Flint Bowmen members headed north to Prescott, Michigan, to participate in the 13 Annual Flint Bowmen Rabbit Hunt at long time member Steve Fralick’s hunting property. While last year, it seemed the rabbits didn’t want to come out and play, this year proved it was definitely a different year.

It was a cool day, in the mid-twenties, and we had a hard frozen base with a little soft stuff on top of it that made tracking fairly easy for the dogs. It didn’t take the dogs too long before they had their first rabbit moving. Of course that meant it didn’t take long before we had the first rabbit hunter shooting and missing at a rabbit.

In case your don’t know, the best way to hunt rabbits with dogs is when the dogs are chasing the rabbit, find a spot where you think the rabbit will go or where the rabbit was jumped and stand still and wait. The rabbit will always go in a circle when being chased, unless they go in a hole. At Steve’s, most of the rabbits are found in a swamp to the east of his long drive and an old pine tree farm to the west side. The rabbits usually keep going from the swamp to the pines, then back to the swamp then back to the pines and so on. What the hunters usually do is spread out and watch for the rabbits to try to sneak along the edges of the swamp or the pines way out in front of the dogs.

Well, the rabbits all had read the how-to book of but we hunters did not. For most of the morning, the rabbits just kept running in circles with us hunters running all over the place missing the rabbits. We would all stand in spots, then move to another spot, then the rabbits would run where we had been. I kind of felt like Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny. The rabbits just kept making us hunters look dumber and dumber as the morning went on. At one point, I ran to where I knew the rabbit was going to go, but after getting there, I didn’t wait long enough, and within 10 minutes of leaving the spot, I watched a rabbit sneak right where I was standing only moments before.

I think just about everyone got at least one shot, with some of us getting as many as three or four shots. When deer hunting you wait for that perfect shot, but in rabbit hunting you shoot when you get any kind of opportunity. A perfect shot at a rabbit is any shot. A bow hunter usually shoots 3 times more in one day of rabbit hunting then you do in a whole season of deer hunting.

After a fantastic lunch of Caribou Chili and Sloppy Joes that Steve provided, we all went on a long trek to the far reaches of Steve’s property. We didn’t find any rabbits, but we did find some dirt clumps and other items to practice shooting at. We also found a few spots where the snow was quite a bit deeper than others, as Lynn found out the hard way.

In the end, the rabbits won the day, since we didn’t get any rabbits. That is why it is called rabbit “Hunting” not rabbit “Killing”. What we got was a fantastic time of trying to get one. Most of the people who do this every year are the same people, and a couple of newbie’s. The reason that happens is this is so much fun, that the next year you will make sure you will come back. So make a note that when it comes around next year, you are there having fun with us with your bow in hand.
 

Mike Alexander