If the rabbit population is growing you may want to talk to the farmer about maybe not culling so many roo's so that the natural predators of the rabbits need to hunt them instead of going after the carrion.
It is the small things we forget that can cause us the most harm, like batteries. I wonder what the percentage is of people being killed by wild life verse being killed by misstep when no one knows where they are.
Rabbits are introduced here, not native and the damage they do is immense. It's a massive problem really...They have no natural predator although the fox will look for them. The fox is also an introduced pest species and is shot on sight because they won't go after rabbits or carrion when there's chickens and sheep around. They attack the lambs, eat them from their soft parts then move on leaving the lamb to die...A farmer, or cull-operator like myself will always shoot a fox before anything else. Rabbits are baited generally. There's about 200 million of them in the country - Massive problem.
One of the kangaroos I shot last night was almost 6'5" well taller than myself and as they come through fences they destroy them. I reported one such fence last night. When the cattle get out and away it means additional cost which carries forward all the way to the consumer. At at around $1800 per head or so they farmers need to wring every bit of profit from it as the wholesaler doesn't pay more for them - Farming is becoming increasingly difficult with floods, drought, wildfire, rising costs, declining prices and so on. That's why I take a few kangaroos. When one gets shot at one tends to steer clear of the area for a while at least. Kangaroos are the same. It's an Australian issue I guess, and one that some don't understand but with 60-70 million kangaroos in the country it's a problem that will never end. Of course, it's a human problem, not a kangaroo problem. We put our farms in their territory after all, on their land.
The batteries thing...That was just dumb. I normally have spares for everything but used the AA's and never replaced them in my kit. A stupid mistake I got away with this time, but may not the next...But there won't be a next.
You should take one or both of your gun trainees out and give them the .22 and tell them rabbits only, have a bang up rabbit bashing weekend. range practice is fun, but it would let them put their practice to practicable use.
!ENGAGE 20
There's nothing like putting shooting skills into practice in the field and the .22LR is a great rifle to do it with. Bunny busting can be fun too...Hmm, you've given me an idea!
ENGAGEtokens.