A bunny shoot in Tekapo - tough but good..

**mudgripz** · 03-10-2021, 10:26 PM

Fine bunny shoot evening in Tekapo.

Our chch team has been shooting together 10-15 years and was invited to shoot block on a station near Lake Tekapo village. A problem site - much of it reduced in recent decades by rabbits to a barren lunar landscape - worthless for farming. Lots of rabbits but very difficult to shoot as various people go there including meat shooters and they miss heaps, leaving rabbits very spooky, flighty. We recce'd the site after lunch saturday and on seeing truck the bunnies would all run 200-400 meters before stopping. Initial impression was we'd be lucky to shoot 70-100 in a night.

We had a strategy session - how to get the edge on them - then headed back onto site around 5pm. We set two boys to walking seperately across north part of block maybe 500m apart, quietlly approaching every rise in the ground to get the drop on them. Then we travelled across remainder of site in truck, again creeping up to crest of any rise or hill to peer over. By meeting time at 8pm we had about shot 60 - just 20 per hour - very slow going. 22LR and shottie were useless - average range was 140-150 meters. 223 and 204 Ruger and 17WSM best. We were confident however the advantage would pass to us once we started spotlighting. It did. We set up the Maxtoch lights, started into the night shoot around 8pm, and shot until about 1am. Now it was different. Now we could see bunny eyeshine against the hill faces, and the lights were holding them. Many would stop running to check the bright lights and we were getting the magic 3-4 seconds to take them. Range still averaged 120m, but quite a few now at 50-70m. We now had the edge, and covered and re-covered the dense spots. We did not miss many at all so no chance for them to be spooked by lights.

Drove across much of a square mile block again before declaring around 1pm. The last 5 hours with torches from truck had lifted totals from average 20 per pour before dark, to 52 per hour with lights, and we headed home to bed in Tekapo village quite happy with 323 for the evening from this difficult site. We were on the block again for 2 hours today on way home and with daytime strategy now refined, we nailed another 80 in about two hours. Finally called it quits at total 403. A tough little shoot. Nothing easy about it - long range and really had to outwit the little bastards. But satisfying to put up numbers. We will call to say hello to them again....