Rabbit Hunting
We kept up with somewhat of a tradition today and went rabbit hunting after Thanksgiving.
We started the day around 8:30am at One Man Band Diner in Santaquin, UT. It's a good meeting place for everyone since we usually meet up with folks from Utah county as well as Salt Lake County.
We parked at about 10:30am and were hunting by 10:55am. Rabbits are getting harder and harder to find but we still had a great time. The weather was so nice (about 41F) that I was able to throw my coat into my backpack on the way back.
I captured the image below using Photosynth for iPhone on the return trip just before I dropped back down into the little valley that leads back to the where we parked. You can see the railroad tracks in the distance. We used to walk these tracks but Trey recently found a better place to park that saves about 20 minutes of walking.
We have been coming to this place for about 6 years now. The very first time we hunted here, we had great success. It has been downhill since then. Today we saw 7 and shot 2 (by my count).
The good news is that everyone tells me that there is some kind of 7 year cycle for rabbits. What that means exactly, I'm not sure but I guess I'll find out next year.
I captured my tracks as we hunted "The Bowl" using my iPhone with the MotionX GPS app. We always head West to a small cliff dropoff where we do some random shooting and take a drink and a snack. After that we head back the way we came.
We started a little bit further South today. I like the Northern track better. We found that the Southern track has some really deep runoff ditches that can be kind of cumbersome to navigate through.
We also stumbled upon a dead cow that had been there for at least a season. At first glance it looked as if someone had covered it with a big blanket. Upon further investigation, it turned out to be its own tanned hide. Eerie.
Rabbits or not, I'm sure we will head out again to the same place in the future. Who knows we might hit the peak of the 7-year-cycle that everyone talks about, whenever that is (I think it's all a bunch of crap really). Rabbit hunting is all about spending some good quality time with friends and even if the rabbits were scarce today ...mission accomplished.
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