Bagging bunnies for the barbecue

For just £40, Will Martin manages to buy an evening of rabbit shooting, but will he manage to shoot £40-worth of rabbits?

- Will Martin

Having abysmally failed on my personal roebuck foray, at recent barbecues I have resorted to H acquisitions from the gamedealers. The reason is simple: a roe deer backstrap or fillet is probably one of the best BBQ items I have ever tasted. It is simple. It needs nothing more than salt and pepper and, ideally, it's paired with a salsa and a good mustard. The fillet is thrown on to the grill and within minutes it can be rested then sliced.

Anyway, rather than dwell on my lack of shot deer and my growing bill at the gamedealer, I was desperately searching for pigeons - convinced that I could easily pay someone to take me for a steady hundred. So far, however, the reports of pigeon numbers have not been kind and it was looking like a meatless and sportless June.

Then, one evening when I was merrily driving back from work, I came across a rabbit. For many readers this may be a common occurrence, but where I grew up, in North Devon, this was not. The rabbit population, continually decimated by myxomatosis, combined with the modern damage of viral haemorrhagic disease (VHD) and the wet clay soil, has meant that rabbiting has always been a challenge.

A good evening with my air rifle back at home would consist of a single rabbit. Every few years our hopes would rise as a number would flourish, only for myxy and VHD to wipe the lot of them out.

Rabbit clearance area

So, rabbiting. Can you buy it, and in terms of paying for the pot, is it worth it? Under S1 of the Pests Act 1954, the whole of England, apart from the City of London and interestingly the Isles of Scilly, has been declared a rabbit clearance area. Under this act, occupiers of the land have a continuing obligation to kill wild rabbits. The Agriculture Act of 1947 in S98 goes even further, giving the Secretary of State the power to serve a notice requiring them to take specific action.