RABBITING IN OTAGO.

Lake County Press, Issue 2794, 17 July 1919, Page 5

RABBITING IN OTAGO.

A Profitable Pursuit.

The all-absorbing topic the traveller hears discussed as he moves about Central Otago just now (says the Otago Daily Times) is the gentle art of rabbiting and the prodigious sums> of money that are being made this winter by those who devote themselves to it. It is agreed by old residents that never for 25 years past have rabbits been so plentiful, and it so happens that this lavish supply of them coincides not with low, but with exceptionally high, ruling prices. £1 10s a hundred skins is a standard rate, but Is or even Is Id each may sometimes be obtained. Now a hard-working rabbiter with a good block to work on will have no difficulty in getting from 100 to 200 skins, or in other words, from £5 to £lO, a day. In many parts a boy can go out with ferrets and secure from 60 to 100 a day as often as the weather is ftvourable. There are even stories current of men who have secured single-handed as many as 400 rabbits in their traps in a night, but this, if true, must represent the extreme upward limit of what is possible in the most favourable circumsances. As many as 3000 rabbits have been taken oil’ a 100-acre block in a few weeks’ time ; and a well known runholder of long experience asserts quite confidently that two men who have been trapping on his 7000 acres recently have taken considerably more money

from his run ibis season that he has. Is it to bo wondered at that with ranbiters counting their earnings in pounds per day, Central Otago farmers are in despair of securing ploughmen or other labourers at anything like tbe customary wages ?