Every year country roads and farmsteads show abundant populations of rabbits. Yet when hunting season comes around they all seem to have vanished. Estimating rabbit populations are difficult for the best of small game biologists.
The winter just passed was the warmest on record. There was above average rainfall which should transfer to abundant rabbit populations.
One rabbit in ten ever lives to be a year old in the wild. It seems that everything works against their growing old.
Like most small game animals and birds, Mother Nature allows rabbits to rise 30 to 50 young each year. But the odds are just against their survival.
Rabbits do well in heavy cover and in remote areas of overgrown fields. Hawks and other flying predators present danger to these furry bundles. For this reason they like cover that conceals them from overhead sight. Weather during the birthing times also effects rabbit populations. They young of the year need favorable weather in their early stages of life.
Here in Illinois the best locations to find rabbits are those with good habitat. Weather in the central and southern locations is not what has hurt the rabbit populations. But rather habitat loss is the problem.
Rabbit hunters have to work harder each year to find suitable habitat containing the “smallest whitetail.”
For the past 10 years or so the populations have remained steady but at a low level. Much of the blame for habitat loss in those years was high commodity prices for corn and soybeans. Land that might otherwise go to set-aside programs like CRP went into grain production.
The loss of CRP land is a major problem as more and more land does not go into CRP and other set aside programs. Rather it goes to produce grain crops. The once abandoned farmsteads that were popular with rabbits are being cleared as seemingly every inch of land is too valuable not to be placed in production. Landowners are clearing trees and brush piles in an effort to make every acre productive.
With the commodity prices softening some of that land may be going back into habitat production and rabbit production will follow. Should this trend continue for the next two or three years it is possible that rabbit production looks good for the future.