Louisiana rabbit hunters close out season with a bang - nola.com article

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"We have 3,000 acres in Butte La Rose that we lease. We're diversified in that club," Trahan said. "It was primarily a deer-hunting club for years, but we're slowly introducing all the other small game that we have available, and these guys are starting to understand that it's a resource you can tap.

"There are other animals you can hunt, and it does not affect the deer hunting. We've proven that in the last seven years by doing a lot of woodcock, rabbit and squirrel hunting."

Trahan is certainly in the minority. Louisiana wildlife managers over the years have acquiesced to public pressure and opened more opportunities for hunters to take whitetail deer. Archery seasons are four months long in most of the state, and rifle seasons are three months long.


In theory, that's nothing compared to the rabbit season, which is a whopping five months long, but in practice, the rabbit season doesn't begin until all deer seasons end. In general, hunters don't pay top dollar to join clubs and then watch a pack of beagles chase around bunnies. They're there to get venison for the table and a trophy rack for the wall. No hunter wants to see a buck he's been patterning for weeks get chased off by a bunch of howling dogs.

But Trahan has found that those hunters are being overly cautious.

"I watch our deer on these hunts. I want to see what they're doing," he said. "First and foremost, we're deer hunters; that's what we love to do. So we don't run all our deer out of there, and I've seen first-hand where basically, bucks and does alike, they'll just kind of get up, get out of the way and make a circle of a hundred yards or so.

"Trail cameras tell the truth because deer that we have on camera the day before the hunt, you'll get them back on camera the day after the hunt. They don't leave."

That's true when his club's members target any type of small game, Trahan said. In addition to rabbits, they also hunt squirrels and have grown especially fond of targeting woodcock.

"This year was the first year we actually hunted woodcock opening day in December, and we hunted every day of the woodcock season," he said. "What we typically do is hunt mid-morning until around lunchtime, and we don't affect our deer hunters. If we've got an area where guys have been deer hunting, we respect that. We'll stay out of that specific area.

"If you've got even 500 acres and you manage it correctly, you can really diversify your club."

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