Old rabbiter has Wild West solution to rabbit problem

Press, 2 August 1983, Page 19

Old rabbiter has Wild West solution to rabbit problem

Bill Wallace is an old-time professional rabbit killer, but he hates myxomatosis. He has killed many thousands of rabbits in his time, but none that way. Shooting, trapping, breaking their necks with a karate chop — anything is better in this old rabbiter’s opinion, than a slow disgusting death by myxomatosis. He has seen the victims and never wants to see such a sight again. That is why he wrote to the “Listener” last week. He had read about the plague of rabbits on Earnscleugh Station in Central Otago, and of the talk of resorting to myxomatsis to control them.

He knows a better way, but all of his lobbying of the rabbit control world had met with little response.

“No-one here is interested,” he says, gloomily. “I rung the Government departments, I told the rabbit boards, but they weren’t interested. I rung Palmer, Labour’s deputy leader, but he wasn’t there. I wrote to Mclntyre (the Minister of Agriculture) but he just passed the buck, as usual.”

Mr Mclntyre answered Bill Wallace’s letter with an assurance that he had passed his advice on to the Pest Destruction Review Committee.

The tried and true method of rabbit capture that Bill Wallace recommends is a bit like the way they round up wild horses and cattle in Western movies. Long fences divert the quarry into a corral where they are trapped until the hunters arrive.

This was the way in which Bill Wallace and his mate caught 3000 rabbits in three weeks at Sherwood Downs, in behind Fairlie, in 1922. Just like the rabbits at Earnscleugh, the Sherwood Downs rabbits had been turning up their noses at the poisoned bait laid for them.

Also like the Earnscleugh rabbits, those at Sherwood Downs lived in a maze of warrens, not in individual burrows.

“We ran a furrow right up the paddock and laid strychnine poison,” Mr Wallace recalls. “They took it at first, and then they decided not to. I said, why not try this idea of mine.” The idea was to run iron fence standards across the foot of the big hill where the rabbits had their warrens. One standard was driven in every five feet in a long line which eventually curved around into a holding corral shape. They left the standards for a couple of days for the rabbits to get used to' them, then hung a fence of wire netting on the hooks which they had attached in advance. “We did it all with a packhorse,”

he says. “It was hard work, too.” The plan, which works only with warrens, was based on Bill Wallace’s knowledge of rabbit behaviour. “They always leave the warren in the false dawn,” he explains. “Or at least, that’s what they did in those days. That’s when they went out to feed. Some would stay out for a couple of days, but most would come back at dusk.” The two rabbiters filled in all the burrows on the “working side” of their fence, and pegged the wire netting to the ground to stop the

rabbits burrowing underneath. “After dusk we’d go along the fenceline with hurricane lamps. There were so many rabbits that we were knocking them on the head until 11 p.m.” They killed them by holding them up by the hind legs and despatching them with a blow from the edge of the hand on the back of the neck — the rabbit punch. Bill Wallace’s hand got so sore that he had to resort to a piece of half-inch pipe. “We got a penny to fourpence a

skin in those days, and we had miles of skins hanging around the fence. Then we decided we couldn’t keep skinning them — there was just too many. We took two drayloads of rabbits out.”

Knowing the ways of rabbits, the pair moved their fence every day. “You had to,” Bill Wallace says. “Rabbits are shrewd as hell.”

He says they cleared out most of the rabbits in the Sherwood Downs warrens using his method. “The rest we shot with 225. You’ve got to shoot the last of them out. We’d

wait at the warren and shoot them as they put their heads out. I was a pretty good shot in those days. I had a lovely little Browning automatic but the bloody horse backed the dray over it.” He went back to Sherwood Downs in 1938 and found hardly any rabbits left. Bill Wallace was born in Linwood in 1904, not far from the council flat that he has now retired to. He remembers the disastrous influenza epidemic brought home by troops returning from the First World War. He was in the scouts then, and had the job of taking soup to houses that showed “5.0.5.” signs in their windows. He dodged the killer ’flu, he believes, because of his mother’s precaution of carrying a shovelful of hot cinders around the house every day, burning sulphur to kill the germs. He was apprenticed to a sheetmetal worker, but in 1923 when he came out of his time he got the sack because he then had to be paid a tradesman’s wage. During the Depression he worked in Timaru, and supplemented his wages by rabbiting on Sherwood Downs — a property that was cut up to make farms for returned soldiers. His cousin Sid Bray had the Lilydale run, and another cousin, Arthur Bray, was on a soldier’s farm on the flats.

He did a lot of rabbiting, for the money brought in by the sale of skins and for the meat for his table. “We lived on rabbits in the Depression,” he says. “You could buy them stuffed and roasted for Is 3d. I can’t see why they don’t sell them now instead of importing

them from China.” Bill Wallace reckons he had eaten more rabbits in his 79 years than you would find running around in New Zealand today. Amberley and the Waimakariri river-bed were also happy hunting grounds for him, but it was at Rakaia 15 or 20 years ago that he saw the effects of myxomatosis. “You never want to see rabbits like that again,” he says. “They were walking skeletons, blind and — God, it’s a cruel thing. It just eats them away.” Back in the good old days, Bill Wallace had only to ride his bike to the foot of the Port Hills and walk up Rapaki Track to get enough rabbits to last him all week. He had a bike with a baby-seat on the bar. “As soon as I’d pick up the gun, Tiny, my fox terrier, would be there in the seat with her paws on the handlebars. We’d go up Rapaki and she’d find the rabbits in the squats in the tussocks, and I’d knock ’em on the head.” Thousands of rabbit dinners have not blunted his taste for them. “I love them," he says, “but I can’t get them now. My legs have gone. Two heart attacks and two strokes.” He has seen the Chinese rabbits, but doesn’t fancy the look of them — “They’re as big as greyhounds.” Bill Wallace gave up rabbiting 30 years ago, but he hopes his successful methods on the Sherwood Downs warrens will be tried now that rabbits have made a comeback in Central Otago. “My idea wouldn’t be too costly,” he says. “It’s only a matter of hard work. Mind you, I don’t know how you get people to work these days.”

By

GARRY ARTHUR