How to get rid of a Rabbit in the Garden

By now, we are all painfully aware, rabbits are ravenous herbivores. They like nothing more than to feast on our sweet fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers in our landscape beds and vegetable gardens. This is where we as Elmer Fudd must take advantage of the situation and use bugs’ favorite foods to bate the rascally rabbit.

● Apples, cut into small wedges.

● Sweet peas, left in the pods.

● Tomatoes, cut into small wedges.

● Strawberries freshly plucked from the vine ripe and juicy.

● Sweet smelling flowers

● Green beans, their blooms, and foliage.

● Sweet young tender leaf lettuce, spinach, and herbs.

Rather than make a long list of what rabbits find tasty in our lawn and gardens, suffice it to say use what the little furry critters are helping themselves too, in your vegetable and flower gardens. As that will surely be the best bait for the troublesome wild cottontail rabbits in your garden.

 Three important things to consider when selecting the best rabbit trap location

1. Cottontail rabbits are without question a timid, cautious and elusive little furry critter. With good reason, you see they taste good and every predator in the community, cats, foxes, coyotes, hawks, and let us not forget the wise ole owl, enjoy a tasty cottontail rabbit for dinner.

Ok, I know what some of you are thinking and for that reason, I feel it necessary to remind you. For those that themselves enjoy a tasty rabbit dinner. The spring and summer months is not a good time of year for we humans to harvest and eat wild cottontail rabbits. The little rascally rabbits, Carrie potentially nasty parasites to we humans, and let us not forget, are breeding like rabbits.

2. Unlike bugs’ bunny of cartoon fame, your typical bunny thumper does his or her best to stay hidden from the view of these predators. Following rabbit runs hidden in ditches, fences, and thickets. Especially when traveling from their rabbit hole, nest or den site to the smorgasbord our vegetable gardens provide these rascally rabbits.

3. Looking for, recognizing, and discovering the location of these bunny travel corridors is an extremely important bit of information we should have. Simply put, it is much easier to catch a rabbit along familiar rabbit runs, than trying to lure the cottontail rabbits somewhere they are not familiar, there by comfortable going.

1. Box trap, a live catch box trap for rabbits generally speaking, is a homemade trap made using bits of scrap lumber or plywood left over from one of those other DIY projects. After it lies around the garage or storage shed, allowed to weather a bit, scrap lumber takes on a nice patina, and does not need painting or staining to camouflage the bright new shiny appearance of new wood. Pick-up the plans you need to build your own wood box trap online at Amazon.com.     

  2. Havahart live catch cage traps are a great choice for someone that does not want to or have the time to build a wood box trap. The Havahart is made of a wire material that makes it easy to see what is in the trap, easy to set and open when you need to release the captive critter. You never know, it just might be that honoree ole, tomcat. You know the one that keeps getting into the trash and driving your dog crazy.

Before you purchase and set the first trap, and go about catching your rabbit. Make sure you are not in violation of any city, state, or federal hunting and trapping laws applicable in your neighborhood.

1. Build or purchase yourself the best live catch box trap for your particular situation. Building your own with a young person will absolutely be a fun, learning experience for both yourself and the young person, or persons.

 2. Select the best location to set your rabbit trap in or around the garden along the rabbits travel corridors. Next to a fence, hedgerow, or ditch row where the bunnies trail enters and leaves your garden is a good place to start. The trapper’s bible contains more tips that are helpful and trapping tricks to catching rabbits than space allows here, for the best price and availability, follow the link for the trapper’s bible to Amazon.com.

3. With your rabbit trap in hand, and the best trap location selected. It is time to set and bait the trap with only the freshest, tastiest bait, rabbits in your garden cannot resist. Keep in mind, old nasty and rotten baits will only attract possums, raccoons, or quite possibly Mr. Peppy LA pooh, in other words, an odoriferous skunk.

Remember, when you catch a rabbit or other small animal in your trap, release it in an area several miles away from your garden, where the critter can live happily ever after, and you feel better with its relocation. After all, chances are there will be more than one rabbit to catch in the garden.

After reading, this article how to get rid of a Rabbit in the garden there is one more important thing to remember. Before baiting, setting a trap and catching the problem rabbits. We need to locate a place where we can relocate our cotton-tailed friends. After all, we would not want to relocate our captured mischievous cottontail, to a fellow gardeners garden, now would we? Enjoy a rabbit free garden, Mike