Originally practiced by Indigenous Peoples, collective hunting required that game be surrounded and driven into nets, brush enclosures, or over cliffs to be harvested for food, shelter and clothing. Later, settlers saw rabbits as a mainstay of the frontier diet, as simmering pots of rabbit stew kept hunger from the door of many homesteads.
Settlers saw the rabbit drives of the 1930s necessary for food, and they believed extermination of the rabbits became critical in saving the few crops produced during these dire and difficult times. The drought of the ‘dirty thirties’ began in the summer of 1931. Eventually, it parched the land nearly beyond repair. Wind, heat, and dry blowing dust obliterated most of the vegetation in the Plains States, leaving no forage for the hungry, so called “Hooverhogs". Considered the “worst rabbit year,” the Wichita Beacon estimated more than 8 million rabbits resided in 30 western Kansas counties in 1935.
To combat this, local interests organized rabbit drives. Because of several accidental shootings at early events, authorities prohibited firearms. So, participants chose the club as the weapon of choice, made from the spoke of an old wagon wheel. The drive consisted of gathering a large number of people to herd the rabbits over a large area of ground and into a fenced corral area, usually a v-shaped affair, that contained the prey while they were systematically clubbed to death. Observers described the event as a grim and bloody affair. A Morton County resident said, “It wasn’t a sporting event, but I think it’s an absolute necessity.”
Usually occurring on Sunday afternoons, people learned of the drives through handbills and newspapers. One of the largest drives, organized near Dighton, Kansas, spanned more than eight square miles. 10,000 men, women, and children attended the event. Local businesses and civic groups provided fencing. Harvesters received bounties of 1 to 4 cents per rabbit. Hodgeman County, like many others, stopped offering bounties after they paid a total bill for 44,000 rabbits.
Many of the drives occurred in the winter for shipment of the rabbits by train cars to the east. Rabbits provided a food source, and the pelts became fur collars and glove linings. Many people from eastern areas where rabbits were not as plentiful protested the rabbit drives. In western Kansas, an attempt was made to send live rabbits to inhabit the protest areas in eastern Kansas, but the project failed for lack of funding. The number of rabbit drives dropped in need and frequency when the government began to issue poisons as a way to control rabbit populations. However, the poisons decreased natural predators, such as the black footed ferret, which kept prairie dog populations at bay. Similar poisons also contributed to decreasing bald eagle populations.
Thanks to the Kansas Historical Society, and Morton County Historical Museum. For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Debra Bolton in Manhattan, Kansas.
Special thanks to Lynn Boitano for additional production assistance.
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High Plains History is a production of High Plains Public Radio.
