Rabbit Hunting Tips and Gear

Rabbit hunting in Arizona is often very fun. Given the year-round opportunity to harvest cottontails and jackrabbits alike, there is always something the hunter in AZ can do every month of the year.

Rabbit hunting is fairly straight forward:

1. Get up early
2. Go find an area out in the desert with a good mix of mesquite, cactus, and good ammount of grasses and you will find cottontails in the thick brush
3. Find an open grassy area with some tree cover and plenty of drainages such as a wash, and you should find jacks out in the open.

If you're not seeing any droppings, try driving down the dirt road you're on until you find a new wash, then pound some ground along the wash. The wash doesn't need to be big, it just has to have thick brush along the edges and plenty of grasses up on the banks. Cottontails will hide in the thick brush and hold dead still hoping you'll pass by them. You have 2 options when hunting, namely rifle or shotgun.

If you're hunting with a shotgun: your goal is walk along the edges of the wash until they run or you can try to kick into the bushes in order to provoke them (if they're even in there ;) to run, where your shotgun will make hitting them easy as pie as they bolt out. If you're using a shotgun avoid the natural instinct to aim at their white bushy tail. If you aim for the tail like your brain wants to do, you'll gut shoot a rabbit bad and you'll mess up the best meat. You want to shoot at his nose if possible. Keep your shot size to 4,6,7.5 and you'll bag any rabbit you encounter (within reason).

If you're using a rifle (you should be using a .22 long rifle) you should be stopping fairly often to look at the bushes and trees along the washes until you see a rabbit trying to evade you. Be aware that often times stopping will make a nervous rabbit who is holding still in a bush want to bug out on you. The problem with a running rabbit for a rifleman can't be understated. Your chances of hitting one on the run with a .22 is fairly difficult to say the least.

If you have a buddy you two should alternate between rifleman and shotgunner. Typically the shotgunner is going to bag more rabbits, so switching roles once someone hits their game is a good idea to keep things fun and honest. If you do this 2 gun system you'll avoid the problem with shotgunning only which is having rabbits hold still at 50 yards (this is typical of jacks). Conversely the plauge of rifle hunting is having rabbits give you a half second to hit them while on a dead run for cover.

If you plan to spend the morning out in a productive area, a hunter can expect to harvest 1-2 rabbits on average. A really good day is 4-5 rabbits. A few years ago when there were a lot of rabbits out east of town we would come home with 12-15 rabbits (with 2 hunters hunting).

A good day! 7 total makes for a lot of cleaning.

Check out my gear suggestions in the videos above which keep the cost of hunting affordable.