Hippity Hop And Away We Go

Anyone lucky enough—or brave enough—to go on a San Juan rabbit hunt should begin by forgetting all the rules of hunting. Previous experience is a handicap. Marksmanship is unimportant. What the hunter needs is a stiff drink before starting out.

Experienced hunters may find this advice startling. I myself was surprised when I was introduced to it on a late-summer rabbit hunt on San Juan Island in Puget Sound. But any resemblance between this northwestern sport and other forms of hunting for anything anywhere is purely coincidental.

The hunt was scheduled to start at 10 o'clock at night, an unorthodox hour indeed, but certainly more civilized than the conventional predawn starts to which I was accustomed. There was another advantage—we had ample time to look over San Juan Island before dinner. Ever since leaving Seattle, some 80 miles south, I had been hearing about the innumerable rabbits to be seen on San Juan. But when we drove from the biggest town on the island, Friday Harbor (pop. 735), to Roche Harbor on its northern end we did not see a single one.

San Juan is the second largest (57 square miles) of a group of 172 islands that stretch like steppingstones from the mainland of Washington to Vancouver Island and Canada. Salmon abound in the surrounding waters, ducks winter along the black-sand beaches, snow is something that falls somewhere else and Santa Claus arrives each Christmas on a paddle-wheel ferryboat.

Back in 1858 the U.S. and Great Britain came close to fighting a war over a British pig that was shot on the island by an American settler after it had repeatedly rooted up his potato patch. The setler was named Lyman Cutler, and he offered to pay $10 for the pig when the British authorities tried to arrest him, but before the controversy ended nine companies of American infantry and artillery, plus a detachment of engineers, were lined up near Roche Harbor against five British warships with 2,140 men and 167 guns. After facing each other awhile, both sides reached the statesmanlike decision that no pig was worth a war.

Subsequently smugglers made San Juan Island a free port for opium, diamonds, dancing girls, Demerara rum, Chinese coolies, whiskey and wool. At one time the traffic in English wool reached such a volume that the San Juan sheep were considered a natural wonder, producing more wool per head than sheep had ever been known to produce before. The rabbits were a late arrival. During the heyday of the rabbit-fur muff some Belgian hares were imported into the island, and since there were virtually no natural predators and the climate was good and food abundant all year, the result was an incredible number of rabbits.

But as we drove along the roads bordered with green junipers and red-trunk madro�a trees, the fabled rabbits were nowhere to be seen. Obviously, this was going to be another of those cases where we should have come last week or next week or when it was warmer or cooler or wetter or drier. And when preparations for the hunt began with a couple of old fashioneds it seemed simpler to go along with the group. As it turned out, I was glad I did.

A spectacular sunset on Roche Harbor and Vancouver Island, 10 miles away, brightened the otherwise gloomy outlook when my host, Bill Morrice of Seattle, said, "How about looking over a few rabbits before dinner?" Five minutes later we were driving along the same road we had traveled earlier. The only difference was that it was now dusk.

Bill said, "Ready?"

I said, "Sure," but the skepticism was hard to hide. He swung the car onto a narrow dirt road and cut the speed to 20. It was like touching a match to a Roman candle. Rabbits exploded from one side of the road to the other. They erupted in waves, popping back and forth ahead of us for a good 20 yards. As the car moved forward, new waves shot from the hedgerows. Brown and gray and spotted and checked rabbits whizzed past each other at dizzying speeds, barely avoiding head-on collisions. Some scooted across the road inches from the wheels. Others seemed to clear the road in a single leap. They hopped, loped, bounced and bulleted by us with the erratic animation of an early silent movie.