HOW TO GET RID OF RABBITS

Rabbits mean different things to different people. For hunters, the cottontail rabbit is an abundant, sporting, and tasty game animal. However, vegetable and flower gardeners, farmers, and homeowners who are suffering damage may have very little to say in favor of cottontails. They can do considerable damage to flowers, vegetables, trees, and shrubs any time of the year and in places ranging from suburban yards to rural fields and tree plantations. Control is often necessary to reduce damage, but complete extermination is not necessary, desirable, or even possible.

Damage and Damage Identification

The appetite of a rabbit can cause problems every season of the year. Rabbits eat flowers and vegetables in spring and summer. In fall and winter, they damage and kill valuable woody plants. Equally annoying, and much more serious, is the damage rabbits do to woody plants by gnawing bark or clipping off branches, stems, and buds. In winter in northern states, when the ground is covered with snow for long periods, rabbits often severely damage expensive home landscape plants, orchards, forest plantations, and park trees and shrubs.

Rabbit damage can be identified by the characteristic appearance of gnawing on older woody growth and the clean-cut, angled clipping of young stems. Distinctive round droppings in the immediate area are a good sign of their presence too.

Legal Status

In most states, rabbits are classified as game animals and are protected as such at all times except during the legal hunting season. Some state regulations may grant exceptions to property owners, allowing them to trap or shoot rabbits outside the normal hunting season on their own property.

Damage Prevention and Control Methods

Exclusion
Low fences are very effective around gardens or shrubs.
Hardware cloth cylinders will protect fruit trees and ornamental plants.

Habitat Modification
Removal of brush piles, debris, dumps, and other cover makes an area less suitable for rabbits.

Frightening
Several methods are available but none are reliable.

Repellents
A wide variety of commercial formulations is available; most are taste repellents based on the fungicide thiram. Home-remedy types may provide some relief.

Toxicants
None are registered.

Trapping
Commercial live traps or homemade box traps are effective, particularly during winter in northern states.

Shooting
Sport hunting and/or routine shooting of problem individuals are very effective methods.

Other Methods
Many “gimmick” solutions are available but unreliable. For example, sections of garden hose to simulate snakes, water-filled jugs to create frightening, distorted reflections.

 

For help getting rid of rabbits, contact your local Critter Control office. To find a Critter Control office near you, check out our Office Finder.