RABBIT BOARD CONTROVERSY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 144, 17 May 1930, Page 12

RABBIT BOARD CONTROVERSY.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Will you kindly allow me space to finally reply to Mr H. Knight’s letter of “enlightenment” in your issue of the 13th inst. Unfortunately, Mr Knight appears to be sadly astray in many directions, although his reference to our exports and imports should command respect, if not cause amusement. Whilst scarcely classing rabbiting as a qualified profession, I will admit that rabbiters could help the farmers considerably if they would only play the game. It is common knowledge that some rabbiters only farm the rabbits and indiscriminately destroy cats ; stoats, weasels, etc., which unceasingly wage war on bunny. On the other hand, when the farmer does his own work, he preserves the natural enemies, and after all it doesn’t take “a man on a horse or a monkey on a stick” to round bunny into his burrow, and then armed with a little common sense, some kind of fumigation and a spade the job is done with small expense and little exertion. In Mr Knight’s report to the board he said that their rabbiter will do one thousand acres a day, and then in his letter of the 13th inst. he has another guess and says he can do sixty thousand acres a year. Now, sir, how does he reconcile these two statements? It is a well-known fact that certain parts of the Eastern Pohangina Board’s district always were practically clear and could have been easily kept so by the settlers without any board or rabbiter. At Mr Knight’s end the rabbits were quite numerous, and that gentleman should feel pleased indeed to think that for the small sum of one pound thirteen shillings and eight pence (£1 13s 8d) per annum four hundred acres of land are rabbited for him. But what of his good-natured ratepayers who for years have been paying, not to kill their rabbits, but chiefly to kill the rabbits of others t I know it is difficult to arrive at any method which treats all alike, but if the. owner of any four-hundred-acre property where one hundred and eighty-five (185) rabbits comprised a bag for one day_, was debited with a day’s wages for every day the rabbiter with dogs, gun, traps, etc., spent ob his property, plus a share of the board's administration expenses, I am afraid that £1 13s 8d per year with subsidy and rabbit skins would not go far towards finishing bunny up. I would not ask space to reply t 0

some of Mr Knight’s remarks, but ho refers to the necessity of law courts to enforce the destruction of rabbits. I have not heard of a prosecution in the Apiti-Pohangina Board for several years. Mr Knight also has a little to say concerning the arrogance of an inspector, presumably because lie insists that a few of those hundreds of “rabbiters” mentioned in his report as “trying to beat the inspectoi should play the game. Finally, lias Mr Ivnight evidence to prove that Apiti-Pohangina rabbits cross tho river to his territory, and did they swum or did they go via the Piri bridge? In conclusion, I am not an inspector minding his business. I have no axe to grind; I have not been farming for thirty-five years without a spare minute, but I am an eastern Poliangma ratepayer, sieaed 0 , pOSE „ Pohangina, 15th May, 1930.