No pooch? No problem! The author popped this pair of cottontails on a houndless one-man hunt. His favorite rabbit gun is a 16-gauge double-barrel that throws a wide pattern. An orange hat provides an extra margin of safety amid the thickets. Photo by Gerald Almy.

Follow a pack of woofing beagles through the woods and wait for them to chase a rabbit past you: That's the classic way to pursue cottontails. But if you don't own a kennelful of hounds and don't have friends who do, you can still enjoy superb rabbit hunting. There's another method that I've used for years, and it works like a charm: Kick 'em up!

Of the millions who hunt rabbits every year, a substantial number venture into the woods without canine assistance. Indeed, increasingly urbanized lifestyles leave many hunters no choice in the matter: If you live in an apartment or a housing development, it's hard to keep a pack of beagles. Even at a house in the country, where you can keep just about as many animals as would suit you, it's still sometimes hard to justify maintaining a bunch of dogs. You need to feed them year 'round for a few hunts each fall that must be squeezed in between deer and turkey hunting, fall fishing, waterfowling, and the usual family, chore and work obligations. These days, time is tight for all of us.

But just because you can't manage to keep a passel of beagles on hand doesn't mean that you can't get after the cottontails. Excellent sport is to be had simply by walking up the rabbits -- provided that you use the right tactics and hunt prime locations. I know that from experience, having spent many hours busting through thickets, stomping on blowdowns and pausing in greenbrier patches to flush out the furry beasts either on my own or with a friend or two along to share the fun.

The shooting is definitely more challenging, because you're taken by surprise and don't have yelping beagles to alert you -- and you certainly won't have the cottontail circle past you again if you miss! But even with these greater challenges, rare is the hunt that doesn't see us move quite a few rabbits, and, usually, bag enough for several tasty dinners.

One of my earliest lessons in the productivity of kicking up cottontails came on a quail hunt. Three of us had been searching for birds; finding few, we finally decided to give the dogs a break, and to try jumping up a rabbit. An hour later we had three fat cottontails bulging from our game pouches.

Hunting rabbits successfully without the aid of beagles requires three things: (1.) understanding the feeding, resting and movement patterns that rabbits display, (2.) knowing what types of habitat the rabbits use at different times of day and under different weather conditions, and (3.) learning the best tactics for flushing them in a way that gives you a good shot.

Years ago, rabbits did a lot of their feeding and moving during the daylight hours. As clean farming, the widespread planting of fescue and the removal of brushy edges and weedy fields began to degrade habitat, however, rabbits increasingly became creatures of twilight and night. Studies have also shown that hunting pressure turns rabbits, like deer, more to the nocturnal.

Though rabbits have yet to transform completely into creatures of the night, the hunter who heads out at the crack of dawn to work the cover until midmorning, or who is afield during the last few hours of daylight, will definitely find more cottontails moving about. And the more active the game, the more likely you'll get shots, and the less bush-stomping you'll have to do to roust out the quarry.