IT WAS THE DRIEST 12 months on document when 21-year-old Paul Gatschet noticed the commercial within the native paper.
Volunteers wished, introduced the Hays Every day Information. Farmers close to La Crosse, Kansas, had a jackrabbit downside they usually wanted assist corralling the crop-destroying critters. So one afternoon, Gatschet and his youthful brother, George, drove south from Hays to hitch the remainder of the volunteers. Neither Gatschet had participated in a rabbit drive earlier than, however they had been keen if it saved native farmers from shedding their crops.
This specific drive was slated to comb 4 sections of rolling prairie. Organizers loaded practically 80 volunteers (all boys and males today) into automobiles and farm vehicles, then dropped them off once more alongside the perimeter. By the point everybody was in place, the hunters had fashioned a spindly sq., either side stretching 2 miles lengthy throughout the countryside. Then they began strolling.
One of many many outstanding issues about this rabbit drive was exactly how unremarkable it was in that period. Throughout the top of the Mud Bowl — someday between 1934 and 1936 — the Kansas Emergency Reduction Committee reported greater than 98,000 males, ladies, and kids took half in 269 drives throughout 13 counties in western Kansas. Greater than 2 million jackrabbits had been killed or captured throughout 1,974 sections, with a median of 923 rabbits killed per drive. They had been, by all accounts, slaughters.
The chaos and brutality of the drives bore little resemblance to what any trendy hunter would name rabbit searching. Nonetheless, the cooperation required to tug off the most important organized sport drives in North America’s written reminiscence is astounding. Western rabbit drives stay an enchanting, if largely forgotten, chapter within the historical past of small-game searching. They’re additionally only one approach People coped with what was arguably the worst ecological disaster in our nation’s historical past.
Though a whole bunch of hundreds of Kansans took half within the drives, Gatschet is one among few members nonetheless alive immediately. Now 88, Gatschet figures that drive occurred, by his finest recollection, in 1956 — a full 20 years after the Mud Bowl. However the extreme drought situations of the Nineteen Fifties had replicated the failing crops and overwhelming jackrabbit numbers of the Nineteen Thirties. Aside from the clothes the boys wore to the rabbit drives that 12 months — denims cuffed above the ankles, white T-shirts, the occasional black leather-based jacket — it performed out simply as a whole bunch of drives had throughout western Kansas over the earlier 50 years.
“I’m not too happy with it,” says Gatschet. “However that is what occurred.”
Kansas Rabbit Drives Throughout the Mud Bowl
Paul Gatschet was born in October 1934, smack in the midst of the Nice Despair and simply in time to climate the worst of the Dust Bowl. Wall Avenue had crashed on Black Tuesday precisely 5 years earlier than to ship the worldwide economic system spiraling. The Black Sunday dust storm, named for its suffocating, sun-blotting situations, would howl throughout the Excessive Plains at 60 mph by the point Gatschet was six months outdated. Drought was the brand new actuality. Plows from Nebraska to Texas had floor the area’s fertile topsoil into oblivion. Native grasses had all however vanished, together with their deep roots that held the prairie in place. Wind blew away no matter was left.
Gatschet remembers these years as largely dry and scorching. Swarms of hungry grasshoppers and blowing mud descended on his hometown of Hays and surrounding Ellis County. Many kids developed mud pneumonia, a persistent and generally deadly situation, from inhaling all these tiny silt particles.
“My mom informed me she coated my crib with a moist sheet to maintain me alive,” says Gatschet, who grew up in a three-bedroom home on eleventh Avenue. “Actual fantastic mud would are available by means of the partitions. As a child I didn’t know something about that, however as I bought older, I bear in mind we had mud storms. It bought fairly thick, and naturally that wasn’t good in your lungs.”
Like most rural boys of his technology, Gatschet spent his childhood searching together with his father. There have been no deer within the area but, however Kansans may hunt geese and geese. And rabbits. A number of rabbits.
Black-tailed jackrabbits (which are literally hares, not rabbits) can develop as much as 2 ft lengthy and attain speeds of as much as 40 mph. Outsized hind legs launch them throughout desert sage and grassy prairie, and their large ears launch warmth to chill their our bodies. Jackrabbits are prey animals, with often-bulging amber eyes that may scan practically 360 levels for predators. They’ve a knack for fast alternative. Females can produce a number of litters annually, with as much as eight younger in every.
Jackrabbits are primarily desert dwellers, so it’s not notably shocking that their numbers swelled when drought settled over the prairie. The critters ransacked already struggling crops like wheat and sugar beets and stripped bark from treasured shelterbelt timber. It was widespread to see jacks within the daytime and straightforward sufficient to shoot them with pistols as they fed within the fields.
“When it was scorching and dry, we noticed quite a lot of rabbits,” Gatschet says. “When the coyote inhabitants bought low, the rabbit inhabitants appeared to go up.”
Gatschet’s father was a schoolteacher and his mom was cook dinner with 5 kids to feed, so their boys introduced residence no matter they might throughout and after the Despair. Gatschet remembers these jackrabbits — fried, baked, stewed — tasted fairly good.
By the point the Gatschet brothers noticed the newspaper advert in 1956, Paul was in school learning English. Drought worse than the Dust Bowl had returned to the prairie. That meant rabbits had, too.
Just like the jackrabbit drives earlier than it, organizers didn’t enable weapons. They had been a lot too dangerous with so many individuals and so many rabbits operating round. As a substitute, volunteers carried golf equipment, leading to a mob’s stockpile of sticks, baseball bats, and splintered 2x4s, some even wrapped in barbed wire. The Gatschets hadn’t introduced something like that, so somebody handed Paul the spoke of an outdated hickory wagon wheel. The wooden felt heavy in his fingers.
The drivers started strolling towards the middle of the 4 sections, the place an enclosure of rooster wire had been erected. Their plan was to funnel the rabbits into the pen and dispatch them there.
At first it appeared to Gatschet like corralling cattle. They began kicking up jacks, which leapt and hopped forward of them. Coordinators saved a watch on the drivers, nudging or checking their tempo to make sure the pests didn’t squirt again by means of the strains. When the boys closed on the ultimate sq. mile, the pushed jackrabbits started to converge. Nevertheless it wasn’t till the rabbits noticed their very own type operating towards them that chaos broke free.
“You could possibly inform the rabbits had been confused. Because the group bought smaller and smaller, it bought to the place there have been simply strong rabbits within the center, about 50 yards sq.. At times you’d see a rabbit simply go — like, Oh, he’s taking off. And he would go, as a result of we didn’t have any weapons.”
One close by rabbit made a run for it, and Gatschet reacted out of intuition.
“I threw my hickory spoke at him.… It was substantial, and dagnabbit if I didn’t hit the rabbit within the head and roll him.”
Among the many boiling jackrabbits had been two or three coyotes that had gotten swept up within the drive. Because the coyotes made their very own bids for freedom, they burst by means of the human wall solely to be met by a knot of coyote hunters. These males hadn’t been allowed to hold weapons both. As a substitute, they’d introduced their canine.
“The greyhounds bought beat up fairly effectively,” says Gatschet, recalling a coyote that ripped one canine’s slender jaw. “It bought fairly gory. However often these hunters had one or two Russian wolfhounds with them, and the wolfhounds would are available for the kill. It was a twin hunt.”
By now the sq. of drivers had pushed the rabbits into the chicken-wire entice. Most Mud Bowl corrals had been octagonal, constructed 54 ft throughout and anchored by sturdy posts. As the dimensions of the rabbit drives tapered into the Nineteen Fifties, so did the corrals.
“The little sq. bought smaller and smaller, and the rabbits contained in the fence began leaping however they couldn’t make it over. And what shocked me was, I simply thought it was like cavemen. A few of the guys began to holler, ‘We’ll get you SOBs!’ And a name went up among the many males. All of them simply rushed the rabbits, clubbing them left and proper,” says Gatschet. “The rabbits may inform it was the top.”
Rabbit Drives within the West
It’s onerous to pinpoint the start of jackrabbit drives in American historical past, however one factor is evident: Hunters had been driving rabbits lengthy earlier than Europeans arrived.
Many early media reviews credit the Paiute-Shoshone with growing the jackrabbit drives. That is true sufficient primarily based on archaeological evidence and firsthand accounts of recent Paiute drives in Nevada, however the Paiute-Shoshone corralled rabbits for subsistence.
“The outdated rabbit drive was and nonetheless is a favourite means of manufacturing meals for these desert folks,” Harry W. Gilmore wrote in American Anthropologist in 1953. “…Every individual tak[es] his station about 50 ft from these subsequent to him. This line circles round towards a lake or river, thus forming a semicircle. By closing in progressively, the semicircle turns into smaller and smaller, and the animals are unable to flee. Lastly they’re trapped between a strong line of individuals and a physique of water and are simple prey for arrows and atypical sticks.”
One of many first mentions of controlling native jackrabbits as vermin appeared in Michigan’s South Haven Messenger in 1846. The newspaper column, “Slaughter of Jack Rabbits: The Western States Are Alarmed In regards to the Pests,” defined that whereas Colorado and California’s rabbit drives “have a sure ingredient of sport and basic frolic, [the drives] are however a really severe enterprise.”
That exact account is rife with concern: the farmers feared devastation of their crops; the agricultural secretary feared the West would change into the following Australia. (Although Australia additionally organized its own rabbit drives, these farmers had a real invasive pest downside on their fingers. Rabbits are an launched species to the continent.) Different accounts made it clear that rabbit drives had been festivals that rallied residents round trigger.
“The biggest drives are extensively marketed and the railroads run particular excursions to the scene of battle,” reads a 1901 Kansas Metropolis Gazette article concerning the California drives. “The whole lot assumes vacation apparel. Popcorn stands, barbecues, crimson lemonade, circus balloons … and gamblers curiosity the good crowds of 10,000 to twenty,000 folks which assemble to see the enjoyable. … The rabbits cry shrilly like a child in ache when being killed. The fur flies in an obscuring cloud. Generally the younger rabbit fingers hit each other within the pleasure and dirt of the slaughter and the drive results in a free combat to the extraordinary amusement of spectators.”
Kansans started placing on their very own drives within the mid and late 1800s, however the revelry didn’t drain away till drought and dirt arrived with the Nice Despair. By 1935 there have been an estimated 8 million jackrabbits in 30 western Kansas counties. Clubbing the pests appeared probably the most sensible answer. In spite of everything, nobody may afford ammunition to shoot the rabbits as soon as corralled. Jackrabbits additionally supplied a supply of meals and, at first, revenue. Some counties paid bounties between 1 and 4 cents per rabbit whereas they might afford it. (Hodgeman County, simply southwest of Hays, stopped paying out after 44,000 pairs of ears had been turned in.)
As crops continued to fail, livestock died, and cash dried up, Kansans — who bore a few of the harshest Mud Bowl situations — grew extra determined. Usually self-reliant farmers had been shedding every little thing. Many bought off land to pay mounting money owed. They couldn’t feed their households. Their kids had been falling sick and even dying. Within the Nineteen Thirties, it felt just like the world was ending. For some, it had.
That helplessness explains, partially, the violent mob mentality that so shocked Paul Gatschet 20 years later. As creator Timothy Egan explains it in his guide The Worst Exhausting Time, residents who had been attempting to outlive through the Mud Bowl “vowed to make a final stand” towards the newest menace to their livelihoods: jackrabbits. “If nature is out of whack, ” the considering went, “then we’ll combat with every little thing we bought.” The drives had strayed past crucial evil into managed chaos. Rabbit drives had been nearly like state-sanctioned riots, the place after church service on Sundays, “a mob of individuals with golf equipment herded rabbits right into a corral and smashed their skulls.”
Kansans funneled their desperation, frustration, and fears into the singular job of killing the critters they felt had been threatening what little livelihood remained to them. It was the farmers versus the rabbits, and it was clear who needed to win.
Rabbit Drives, 1934. Kansas Emergency Reduction Committee.
Even when the jackrabbit drives turned much less of a pageant and extra of a combat, the Kansas Emergency Reduction Committee made certain to have a good time them with extensively distributed newsreel footage.
“Extermination of the rabbits has been a worth to the counties in lots of respects,” says the unnamed narrator of a 1936 film touting the company’s accomplishments in 1943. “Whereas it will appear from this that every one the jackrabbits on this planet had congregated within the western a part of the state of Kansas, there are quite a few neighboring states during which rabbits of any type are a shortage.”
Dwell jackrabbits had been loaded into vehicles and pushed to different states, whereas some lifeless rabbits had been butchered and eaten. Many Kansans feared catching rabbit fever, nonetheless, and most had been floor into fertilizer and feed for chickens and hogs.
It’s unattainable to precisely estimate what number of drives had been organized nationally (hundreds) and what number of jackrabbits had been killed (tens of millions). The final extensively publicized jackrabbit drives had been organized as just lately as 1981 in Mud Lake, Idaho. Whereas locals had been extra involved with defending their crops than their public picture, they made headlines as national media picked up footage of the drives.
“About 800 males, ladies and kids, armed with ax handles, baseball bats, tire instruments and golf golf equipment, stretched throughout a mile of the desolate prairie close to Mud Lake and rounded up jackrabbits which they declare have executed an estimated $5 million in crop harm,” learn one extensively syndicated Related Press article. “Most of the jackrabbits had been crushed to loss of life through the drive and others captured in a pen had their necks damaged and their heads decapitated.”
Animal rights teams, together with the Idaho Humane Society and the Fund for Animals, sued the drive organizers on grounds of animal cruelty. The Idaho Supreme Court docket in the end sided with the farmers.
Then, in 1983, the area’s jackrabbit inhabitants crashed.
Jackrabbits in Trendy Kansas and the West
If jackrabbits acquired extreme ire within the early 1900s, the alternative is true immediately.
“Sadly rabbits don’t get a lot consideration in our state, or most states,” says Jeff Prendergast, the small sport specialist with the Kansas Division of Wildlife and Parks. “I’m from Missouri and that’s what I grew up searching: rabbits. However out right here quail and pheasants are king. Rabbit hunters are nearly handled like second-rate residents or hillbillies. That’s simply my impression. Nevertheless it undoubtedly looks like there’s extra of a gentleman standing to the chicken hunters.”
Prendergast holds simply one among two small-game positions throughout the whole KDWP company, and the assets at his disposal are restricted relating to jackrabbits. KDWP focuses on demand from chicken hunters and doesn’t usually hear from rabbit hunters. When the company does, it’s often about cottontails. The farther west you drive by means of Kansas, the extra probably you’re to identify a jackrabbit. By the point jackrabbits started showing in written accounts of the Western frontier, settlers had already disturbed the pure panorama a lot that it’s onerous to say what “regular” appeared like. There’s so much biologists don’t learn about jackrabbit populations then or now.
“They cycle,” Prendergast says. “They appear to do effectively in dry situations, like through the Mud Bowl occasions, at any time when that they had these form of [population] explosions. If you concentrate on jackrabbits as an entire, you may have totally different species. However you get quite a lot of jackrabbits within the arid Southwest — Arizona, New Mexico. So it is sensible that they will persist in these dry environments and people dry years.”
It’s onerous to gauge simply how effectively jackrabbits are doing in Kansas immediately, and Prendergast couldn’t present an estimate on a complete statewide inhabitants. He does know, primarily based on the state’s annual rural mail service survey and excluding these pure inhabitants cycles, that their numbers have been comparatively steady because the Seventies.
Within the northern Nice Basin, a black-tailed jackrabbit’s inhabitants cycle lasts between 7 and 11 years. “Jackrabbits are identified for his or her dramatic inhabitants fluctuations,” reviews the USFWS, and their highs “could also be twice and even a whole bunch of occasions better than throughout inhabitants lows.”
Nonetheless, it’s been years since black-tailed jackrabbit plagues made headlines. Which is puzzling: We all know jackrabbits overran the nation from Kansas to California throughout historic drought. And we all know the West is at the moment experiencing record-breaking drought. So why aren’t we beating again rabbits with sticks anymore?
Researchers aren’t certain. Completely different research level to totally different culprits, and the reply most likely lies in a mix of illness, parasites, rising predator populations, and altering habitat as edge cowl diminishes. It’s additionally attainable that the absence of black-tailed jackrabbit spikes displays an total species decline. Perhaps there simply aren’t sufficient critters to achieve noticeable ranges anymore.
And whereas each white-tailed and black-tailed jackrabbits had been current when settlers arrived in Kansas, white-tailed jackrabbits (traditionally extra current in north Kansas) have been extirpated from the state.
“Once they speak about jackrabbit drives the place they’d encompass a pair sections and push a whole bunch of rabbits collectively, you’re not going to do this now,” says Prendergast. “We’re undoubtedly not on the ranges we’ve seen traditionally. We’re not at ranges that we’d think about regarding, however I don’t know what to say a wholesome [level is].”
Jackrabbits are a species of least concern in Kansas, with a liberal bag limit of 10 per day and a year-round season. Although few hunters goal jacks, harvest numbers assist shed some gentle on jackrabbit numbers. Throughout the 2022 to 2023 season, an estimated 1,625 hunters in Kansas killed about 3,575 jackrabbits. Most of these had been probably opportunistic pictures taken by pheasant hunters. In 2006 to 2007 (the earliest 12 months for which information was out there), some 3,640 hunters killed about 57,900 jackrabbits. This distinction is much less a mirrored image of declining rabbit numbers than an instance of a spike of their inhabitants cycle.
“Now you don’t see many jackrabbits within the daytime,” says Gatschet, who nonetheless lives together with his spouse in Hays. “We used to see quite a lot of them within the daytime after we had been youthful. However I perceive from a few of my buddies who hunt that they nonetheless have some north of Hays, however it’s a must to know which discipline to go to get them.”
Within the 10 years Prendergast has labored as KDWP’s small-game specialist, he can’t recall a single grievance about jackrabbits.
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“We don’t actually see the densities of jackrabbits we as soon as did,” says Prendergast. “So it could be that we’re not noticing the small harm that a number of jackrabbits trigger over what was the perceived harm. Even within the Mud Bowl, the jackrabbits had been one thing of a scapegoat. [People] wanted one thing guilty for the crops failing and [losing] what little was on the market. Realistically the jackrabbits most likely had been consuming the brushy, weedy stuff that wasn’t actually impacting the farmers. The crops had been failing anyway.”
AS HIS FELLOW Kansans clubbed the trapped jackrabbits to loss of life, Paul Gatschet largely simply watched, his hickory spoke hanging by his facet as volunteers shouted and swatted and swore.
“To listen to the rabbits, that ‘eh eh eh,’” — Gatschet imitates the panicked bleat of a rabbit in misery — “it was a dramatic factor. We went on the market considering we had been going to assist the farmers. However I left with the sensation they had been simply God’s creatures. They had been simply rabbits. They needed to eat. So what do you eat? There’s wheat, so assist your self to the farmer’s wheat. They usually did. I didn’t be ok with it, and I by no means went on one other drive.”
This story first ran on Mach 20, 2023.
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