At this time of year in Victoria, there are often large numbers of pesky half grown rabbits running around the countryside. These young bunnies make terrific eating as they have very tender, sweet and succulent meat; with absolutely no gamy flavour and best of all they don’t need to be hung and can be eaten fresh.

- Clean rabbits.

- Sever the hind legs at the hip joint and carefully pare the meat all the way up to the backbone.

- Heat a medium to large sized CO over the camp fire. I generally like to use a large 6' high tripod to suspend the CO, as it allows me to quickly adjust the height of the pot above the fire and therefore control the heat.

- Add sufficient peanut oil to the CO to shallow fry the legs

- When the oil is just beginning to smoke

- Quickly dip the legs in seasoned beaten egg

- Coat in bread crumbs and carefully place them in the hot oil

- Shallow fry until golden brown.

Serve with hot freshly baked damper and strong billy tea. 

The remainder of the rabbit carcases can also be put aside for use in other delicious dishes like braised rabbit or rabbit pie.

Carolyn,

This dish is delicious and in particular, people who generally dislike game meat love it.

1080 is a very toxic poison which was commonly used many years ago to control rabbits in Victoria, however I've never heard of anyone being poisoned from consuming affected rabbits. I suspect most rabbits die very soon after ingesting the poison. However in general, I wouldn't recommend hunting rabbits for the table in areas where baiting is occurring.

I'm not sure about the other states, but in Victoria in recent times, the Calicivirus has been very effective in controlling rabbit numbers and as a result ,preventing rabbit plagues. Rabbits which are immune to Calici or unaffected for other reasons, are mostly controlled out of the barrel of a gun, rather than with poisons. I should also mention here that it is not injurious to human health, to consume a rabbit which may have been infected by the Calicivirus.

If you are hunting on private property and you are concerned about possible baiting, you should of course have permission from the land holder, who should also be able to provide advice regarding the rabbit control measures on his property and the neighbours.

TBF wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2009 at 5:27pm:



If only.......

hotshins wrote on Sep 4^th, 2009 at 7:06pm:


Works well on Ex wives, cats and Possums