I went out for the rabbit opener and all I got was four ticks and a pit bull head

For about ten minutes yesterday morning, it looked as if I was going to get my first rabbit of the cottontail season at the crack of shoot time, literally just a few yards into my hunting grounds.

It was dark when I arrived at my favorite spot, a long stretch of a Sacramento Valley river with a lot of land between the levee and the actual river.

Wait, it was way too dark. Read more...
Duh. You got shoot time wrong, moron. I was half an hour early - must be out of practice. No problem, though. I just walked over the levee and squatted so I could listen for a while, and eventually watch.

Ahead of me was a flat area dotted with grasses and scraggly wild mustard, bordered by oaks, and beyond them a steep drop to the river. Good bunny habitat!

After 20 minutes - still before shoot time - I made out the shape of a rabbit about 15 yards from me. I watched him. He saw my shape and hopped quickly, then stopped, unsure whether I posed a threat. Before long, another one appeared where I'd originally seen the first one.

Good news, right? Well, sorta. Unfortunately, I had not squatted in a ready-to-shoot position. My gun was in my lap, not close to where it needed to be for a speedy shot. And if I shouldered my gun and shot squatting, it would've knocked me on my butt, so I'd have to stand, mount and shoot.

It went predictably. When I determined it was light enough, I lurched to my feet. Bunny bolted. By the time I got off a shot, he was almost to the edge of the river. I missed, and there was no second chance.

So much for a glorious opener.

I saw exactly two more rabbits after that, the first just a few minutes after my bungled glory. The rabbit was 50 yards away, at the edge of a bank of wild grape. Long shot. Risk of wounding, not killing. Zero chance of recovering a wounded rabbit in the grapes. No thanks.

The second was a doozy. I had started the return portion of the loop I walk. I heard something scrambling in the wild rose thicket on my left, and ahead on my right I saw a rabbit scramble too. He was close enough to shoot, and he was bolting across a long stretch of open ground between the levee and the woods, the best chance you get of shooting a rabbit.

But at the same time I saw the thing on my left emerge from the thicket looking like a giant rabbit. Harvey?

I swung on the closer thing in time to see it was a young-of-the-year deer in a state of panic. Can't shoot that!

But by that time, the rabbit had safely made cover. Tricksters indeed!

I could feel that the morning would end with a big zero, but I tried one last trick of my own: I parked myself near a little oak on a little rise over that patch of wild grape. Last year I learned that if you hold still long enough, rabbits will come out.

I sat there for a good 30 minutes, gun ready. I felt the sweat dripping slowly down my lower back into my undies.

Wait a second, it's not hot. I'm not sweating...

Oh boy. That could be only one thing. I shuddered, but continued my fruitless vigil until I realized the jig was up.

I continued back toward my car and decided to poke around where the first rabbit had evaded me, and that's when I spotted a deer-colored carcass on the ground.

I have always been fascinated with skeletons, ever since I was a tiny little girl. I used to collect cow bones on a family friend's cattle ranch. When I was 5, I wanted to be a paleontologist, and some form of archeology or paleoanthropology was always my second choice for a career.

On closer inspection, I saw it was not a deer. Round face. Young mountain lion?

The hide, dessicated, but still covered with hair, enveloped the skeleton like a stiff casing. I peered more closely at the snout.

Pit bull, I guessed. It was young, with very clean and not fully developed teeth.

Everyone's favorite dog to get, and then dump when it becomes a problem. How sad.

I called my mom.

"Hey Mom, want a pit bull skull?"

"A what?"

"A pit bull skull. I'm rabbit hunting and I found a dead pit bull."

"Oh. Sure!"

I should explain here that my mother is an artist, and her latest thing is encasing skulls in fragments of broken windshield glass. It's way more interesting than ordinary taxidermy.

"All right, it's yours."

"Thanks! This is the weirdest call I've gotten in weeks."

Weeks. Tells ya something, doesn't it?

Back at home, I started finding ticks. One. Two. Three. Four. I flushed them down the toilet. A fitting end for my first rabbit hunt of the season.

Pit bull head. Or at least that's what I think it is.

© Holly A. Heyser 2010