ORIGINAL: BTBowhunter
For years I've heard that rabbits are down due to the clean farming practices of today. That sounds logical until you see an abundance of rabbits in suburban yards. Whats "cleaner" than the mowed lawns of suburbia?
Then you go out to the reverting farms we see more and more of today and stomp the goldenrod and greenbrier etc, traditionally good rabbit cover,and see very few.
I don't pretend to know the answer. I'll only say that there must be more to it than simply a lack of good habitat.
Its not just rabbits, go to a swamp in the summer and try to find a bull frog. Go to the same swamp in the winter and try to find a muskrat.
Yet we have blue herons in every ditch, leave a muskrat in a trap that does not sink right away and all you will have in the morning is what the great horned owl couldn't eat on sight.
We protect every avian predator out there then scratch our azzes wondering why there is no small game. This ain't rocket science.[:@]