Driving 600 miles to hunt rabbits didn’t seem like a harebrained idea

Winchester sprang out of the willows with all four feet clearing the brush. Then he sprang up again, and this time, a white snowshoe hare sprang at the same time just ahead of him. He found the trail when he landed and gave chase just as two more hares rose out of the willows.

When my eyes adjusted to the day's last light, I could see the willows quivering with rabbits like a river boiling with trout in May.

The spectacle took me by surprise before it occurred to me our beloved bird dog was chasing rabbits. Many bird hunters believe a rabbit chase can ruin a bird dog, while others say it's OK to ignore it if the dog is a pup or if that's what a hunter wants from a bird dog.

It was not what we wanted, and I used my whistle to call Winchester back. I knew it would take all the restraint he could muster to quit the chase.

My surprise at seeing the rabbits burst out of the brush en masse was a visual treat. For Winchester, who had long followed the mysteries of bird scent on the wind, the sudden burst of scent and wild hare at nose level must have been irresistible. Years of pointing birds might be thrown aside at the thrill of game on the ground.

It wasn't until Steve called his name in a short, commanding tone that Winchester spun around, tongue sideways, with a look of pure joy. "That," his look said, "was a lot of fun."

"Let's get out of here," I said.

As we sped down the highway, I craned my neck to count the number of rabbits along the a 30-mile stretch of road. I stopped counting at 100.

It was our last trip to the Interior for the extended ptarmigan hunting season — our season on the Kenai Peninsula ends in April. We didn't go back until this fall, when the rabbits began appearing along the road just outside Delta Junction.

The roadside rabbits did not seem to end as we drove to Tok. We missed a chance to photograph a fox carrying one half its size into the ditch.

We weren't hunting hares. Most of our hunts in the Interior include the dogs, which are pointers of birds, not flushers or chasers of rabbits.

English setters have been bred to point birds. Centuries of breeding have taught them what amounts to a gentlemanly pursuit. Ptarmigan are considered polite birds, and they will most often hold for the dog's point. It is up to the hunter to "flush" the bird while the dog remains what is called "steady to wing and shot."

A snowshoe hare, although it uses its seasonal camouflage to its advantage, will not hold. It runs, and the chase is best left to a dog that knows how to hunt a hare for the hunter. Since we had setters with us on both trips, we didn't give a thought to hunting hares.

But in the dark of midwinter, I thought about the abundant rabbits up north.

Some people go to Maui or visit tanning beds. I've done that too. It's a way to flip the switch and feel a sudden burst of life-affirming light and heat.

Another way is to just get out of the house. The farther from home, the better. These midwinter slumps are the source of my most ill-conceived plans. Desperate plans, as I think of them afterward, when they have become lessons.

My problem is learning to recognize the desperate plan before it happens.

"What if," I said to Steve, "instead of going to Maui, we go hunt rabbits up by Delta Junction?"

He knows my history of impulsive ideas. The trick was getting him to come up with the idea. If it were his idea, it was less likely to go wrong. It isn't that my ideas are always bad, it's just that I knew he didn't want to go to Maui.

Steve hesitated at the idea — his plans are often well thought out. He would not embark on a rabbit-hunting road trip if it sounded too spontaneous. But my plan was not complicated, and it made great sense.

Since 2015, we had seen the number of rabbits grow each year and figured they were nearing the peak of their population cycle. Snowshoe hare populations are known to follow a natural seven-to-10-year spike in population followed by a sudden crash brought on by disease or starvation.

There were rabbit recipes I wanted to try, and I wanted to learn to tan the hides. Steve nodded as I listed my well-thought-out reasons. But I suspected he knew that any plan that sounded too good might be one of my destined-to-fail desperate plans.

He admitted winter was a good time to hunt hares — less brush and less worry about spoilage.

It was also appealing to hunt an abundant population at its height, especially if it is destined to die out of natural causes. There are different theories about why hares crash, including predation and poisonous vegetation, but no matter why they feast and famine, it made sense to take advantage of the opportunity.

A few days later, we lay in the loft of a cabin in our parkas as the winds of Delta Junction blew through the chinks in the logs and electrical outlets. It was minus-18 and we hadn't seen a single snowshoe hare along the road in our 600-mile drive.

When we searched for tracks, the wind howled and spat pellets of snow into our faces. We had arrived, perhaps, after the crash.

"Where have all the rabbits gone?" I repeated. But the exact cause of  a catastrophic population crash — if that's what had occurred — is not even known by science.

What I should have known is something that seems always to hold true for hunting: There is no such thing as a sure thing. The same is not true of Maui vacation packages.

Christine Cunningham of Kenai is a lifetime Alaskan and avid hunter. She writes about hunting in Alaska on alternate weeks. Contact her at cunningham@yogaforduckhunters.com.