RABBIT DRIVING.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 454, 6 April 1912, Page 7

RABBIT DRIVING.

Rabbit-driving is a necessity foi

farmers in California, as one way ol dealing with the innumerable jack rabbits, whose destructiveness tc crops makes them a veritable pest The drives (writes a correspondent ot the "Illustrated London News") art held periodically, and the occasior. makes a farmers' holiday for all the countryside. Everybody turns out for the sport, men, women, anc children—sometimes a couple of thousand folk in all—mostly in vehicle* of various kinds or on horseback, and many men and boys on foot with th< dogs. The assembly is en a day fixed and at a chosen hour, the rendezvous being selected some miles frorr the enclosure of "carral" into which the jack rabbits are to be driven All being arrived, the vehicles and mounted people form up in a lonline with the ends thrown forward, forming in shape, as it were, a Cat crescent. A signal is given, and all go forward over the farm-lauds, making all the noise they can. At first, nest to no rabbits are seen, as these earliest started always creep ahead quietly ; then, however, the scene changes, and ere long there is a general panic and dozens a re sighted, scampering of! in front. More and more appear, and finally the ground becomes covered with terror-stricken fugatives. The beat of their pads on the ground, indeed, makes quite ar appreciable thud as they bolt. When near the corral, the ends of the fol-lowing-line of people curve in more and more, until, last scene of all, the rabbits, as it were, netted, surge in a mass into the carral and are shut in as prisoners. The Mexican "greasers," who always join in the sport, take a special part in the last scene of all. One cause of the great increase of rabbits in California his been the extermination of the American prairie-wolf. The first plan adopted for getting rid of th; rabbits was to poison them, and millions died in that way, but it was found difficult to dispose of the bodies. II these rabbits were not destroyed, they would clear the ground of all vegetation, including the wheat crops indeed, they have become California's greatest pest.