Thread: Virus

This whole thing doesn't make any sense to me. As pointed out earlier in the thread, a planned virus release that is only expected to kill between one third and one half of the rabbits is a complete waste of time. It’s a short-term Band Aid at best. Add to that the obvious lack of hands on, proactive pest control by land owners, farm managers, tenants, etc, then the problem is just compounded.

When I was down in Otago last year I couldn't believe what I was seeing in places. We don't see anything like that up here in the Waikato.

My first experience of the rabbit problem was in the UK as a youngster, early to mid 80s. The rabbit numbers in Sussex and Surrey on the dairy farms were beyond comprehension, in the 70s as a boy they seemed to be consistent and we’d shoot a few with our air rifles and catch them with dogs. But in the early 80s numbers just exploded for some reason, possibly due to a change in fertilizer regime and pasture improvement.

On our farm, with the small fields and old hedgerows, the damage would extend into the pasture anywhere between 10m and 50m, eaten flat to the ground. It was worse where the fields were adjacent to the old copses on higher ground, that were left wooded eons ago. The impact on the dairy was significant and the businesses were struggling.

The old timers all remembered the myxomatosis outbreak in 1953 which wiped out almost every single rabbit in the country. But still there were a handful of survivors, plus those that were captured and kept out of harm’s way by sport shooters, and bob's yer uncle within 6-7 years the rabbit numbers were pretty much back to pre-myxo numbers. My grandpa went on about this time and time again, how incredible it was how they came back after not one was seen on the farm for over 2 years.

But that outbreak gave the rabbits resistance, and subsequent myxo releases - mostly illegal - didn't have anything like the impact.

In 1981 as a young teenager I was given a 20ga single shot, two ferrets and a Jack Russell called Knob and told to go and kill rabbits. After a summer learning the habits of rabbits, and varying degrees of success with the ferrets, we added two greyhounds we got free from the dog racer down the road. Now we were really in business, man what a dog, they caught the rabbits the ferrets chased out of the warren. I gave up with Knob as he kept getting stuck down the hole and I got sick of digging him out with the backhoe.

When I got a bit older I earned a 12ga Franchi 5 shot semi-auto and an old .22 Hornet. By 1984 we were driving the old Series III Land Rover pickups around the farm at night, with huge aircraft lights bolted to the roof powered by an additional alternator and controlled by the passenger in the cab, with two shooters standing in the rear. We would collect that many rabbits in one night that the shooters would be standing on a carpet of bunnies three deep across the whole tray, we had to dig a pit with the backhoe for all the carcasses. My right shoulder was a constant shade of light green and grey from the constant whack of the Franchi. We got a couple of knackered Cortina MK4s and cut holes in the roof and took out the back seat, it was easier to stand and steady yourself, one shooter and two up front driving and working the light made for a productive night.

Between the age of 13 and 17 we were out shooting rabbits in industrial numbers from vehicles from spring through to autumn, to the point at which it became too muddy. Then it was out on foot in winter with the dogs and ferrets, the .22 and a wee 410. In winter it was very productive to get the ferrets down into the depths of the warren, catch the largest and hardiest of the mature rabbits and the numbers the following spring were definitely reduced. It was pretty much a full time bloody job for a kid. One year, probably 1985, the myxo came back and clobbered the rabbits, we’d find them hopping around the diary all pussed up and out of it, so we’d hit them with a big stick and take the dead rabbit and stuff him down a fresh hole. But even then, numbers were only reduced by a bit, maybe a third max, then the following year it was all on again.

That’s how we controlled rabbits. None of this sit back and wait for a new virus bollocks. If you wanted to maximise your revenue, you had to stay on top of them, god knows how much it cost in shells over the years, we shot thousands and thousands of rounds.

I'd left England by the time calicivirus came along in the mid-90s, but it was exactly the same pattern - big wipeout followed by gradual resistance and a return to pre-release numbers.

If there isn’t a concerted effort by land owners in Otago to get experienced guns and dogs on the land working hard, they’re never gonna make the blindest bit of difference to rabbit numbers long-term. And the more farms and stations that get sold to eco-greeny American tech mega millionaires who want to hide away from Donald and his gang, the worse the problem will become! They are clueless!