“What’s recycled rabbit?” a friend asked. “I don’t know whether to try it or not.”

“Taste it,” I said. “I guarantee you’ll like it.”

We were at the local wildlife Association’s annual wild game night, an event the group holds every February. The friend had just sampled some smoked rainbow trout and was eyeing a platter of meat labelled “recycled rabbit.” The meat on the platter looked like pieces of cut up pheasant or maybe chicken and I was tempted to tell the friend it was one or the other, just to get him to sample it.

Resisting temptation, I decided to tell the friend what the meat really was. “It’s bobcat,” I said. “Get it? Recycled rabbit.”

The friend made a face but he took a piece of the bobcat off the platter, popped it into his mouth, chewed on it and smiled. “Hey, it is good,” he said. “First time I ever ate a cat.”

The first time I ate recycled rabbit I was reluctant to try it as well, after I asked what it was. The thought of eating cat meat kind of turned me off. However, while the taste of bobcat meat is difficult to describe – partridge and pheasant it ain’t – it really isn’t all that bad. Most people make a face when they hear that recycled rabbit is bobcat meat but the frowns usually turn to smiles after they sample it.

Recycled rabbit was the only strange and unusual fare at the Association’s wild game night this February. Association members generally bring a mixed bag of wild game dishes to the event; smoked salmon, venison hors d’oeuvres, moose meat mince pies and pheasant breast are a few of the dishes I recall sampling at previous wild game nights and this event was no exception.

Besides the recycled rabbit, I had the pleasure of sampling smoked pheasant, smoked salmon with cream cheese and smoked rainbow trout – all dishes fit for a king, if I have to use a cliché. I went back a couple of times to a platter that held brook trout pate and I almost didn’t get a taste of the venison meatballs it went that fast.

Once word got around that recycled rabbit was bobcat meat, it wasn’t devoured as quickly as the other wild game dishes. However, one of my friends, whose name is unmentionable, enjoyed the dish immensely and dipped into the platter holding the cat meat several times. “I never knew cat would taste that good,” he said. Smacking his lips, and with a far away look in his eyes, he said “I wonder if common old housecat would taste as great.”

“Don’t go there,” I said.

“Shad is the best poor man’s fish of any, for they are fat of themselves, that they need nothing to make them ready for eating.”

Two British farmers touring Nova Scotia in 1774 wrote the above about shad after seeing how plentiful they were in Annapolis Valley tidal rivers. Besides shad, they said, “these rivers abound… with plenty of fish of different kinds.”

After completing that long ago tour the farmers took pen to paper, describing the province and its people in detail, writing a document that eventually was deposited in our public archives. Most interesting of all, for those of us who wonder what hunting was like here over 200 years ago, there’s a description of wildlife and its harvesting. There was little or no sports hunting here in those times and game was taken mainly to supplement the food supply.

But even then, the lengthy excursions into the winter woods to hunt moose must have taken on a holiday atmosphere. Take the description of those winter hunts, for example: “Great numbers of the inhabitants employ much of their time in hunting in the woods, where they will frequently continue for a week, taking a quantity of provisions with them. And at any time when their store is exhausted, they can readily make a fire and dress part of the game they have taken; for which purpose they constantly carry a steel and tinder box, with matches, &c. in their pockets. At night they make large fires, near which they wrap themselves up in blankets and lay down to sleep with as much composure as if they were in their own houses.”

At that time game was abundant, the Britishers report: “They have abundance of game in the woods. The mouse-deer (moose) is also in great plenty…. They also have rein-deer which they call carraboes and numbers of bears, both of which they reckon good eating.”

Bears and wildcats are mentioned, the former “very ravenous and frequently kill sheep, calves and swine wherever they fall in their way. Wildcats, or “lucovie” they call them, are also a “fierce animal (that) frequently does much damage amongst sheep.”

On small game, the report mentions “wild fowl and game in great plenty, such as geese and ducks, of which they have two sorts, and teal.” I find this amusing. Many waterfowl hunters today distinguish between bagging ducks and bagging teal, as if the latter wasn’t a duck. The report indicates the British practiced the same distinction and we’re still doing it over 250 years later!

The report mentioned the various wild birds that were observed, among them “eagles, gleads, hawks, buzzards, ravens and water-crows.” Now, what are gleads and water-crows? Were buzzards resident here in 1774 when today they’re classed as accidental visitors? Readers who have answers to these questions can reach me at via e-mail at edwingcoleman@gmail.com. You can read the entire report by Googling Robinson, Rispin. Thanks to Roger Meister, New Ross, I have a copy of the report, which was printed and released in 1944 by the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

“In all the years I’ve been hunting, more than forty, I’ve never seen rabbits scarce as they are now.”

An avid hunter who uses a hound told me this recently. He was commenting on rabbit hunting but he could easily have been referring to small game in general. In many coverts ruffed grouse have vanished. In many of the top coverts in the Annapolis Valley, pheasant numbers are the lowest they’ve been in over a decade.

This is what hunters tell me. And this is what I’ve found from being out in the field with my bird dog more than four times a week through October, November and December. Oddly, and I say oddly because it rarely happens, half way through the season waterfowl, especially ducks, suddenly became scarce as well in local haunts.

A couple of letters from readers after I asked for feedback on the small game situation reflects what hunters have been telling me.

Gordon Morse of Greenwich writes that when he was a hunting guide 40 years ago it was easy to bag deer, rabbit, partridge and pheasants. In those days, he says, rabbits were a dime a dozen, there were lots of partridge and pheasants were plentiful.

“I don’t hunt anymore, but game seems to be really scarce” Morse writes. “I can’t remember when I last saw a rabbit track, let alone a wild rabbit. I used t go to the Tatamagouche area and two of us could shoot 20 rabbits in an afternoon. Not anymore. We never used a hound either.”

Along the same line is a letter (via e-mail) from Jan Speelman of Aylesford who believes coyotes are responsible for the scarcity of game.

“For an answer on the pheasant disappearance, I have five acres of grassy swamp where pheasants sleep at night; you hear them going in and coming out. Lately they aren’t there anymore.

“I used to feed 20 to 30 pheasants on the manure pile each winter but they aren’t there anymore either. They are slowly being killed by coyotes who roam the swamp all night. It won’t be long before they kill all the rabbits too.

“Now the pheasants you see less and less. There is no place for pheasants to be safe; that’s why they are wilder and hide in the hedges. Also, there are more skunks that eat (pheasant) eggs in the spring. Wild creatures have taken over!”

My thanks to Mr. Morse and Mr. Speelman for their letters. Readers who have comments can reach me via e-mail at edwingcoleman@gmail.com.

At meetings of the local wildlife association and in this column, I’ve mentioned various times I’d like to see one pheasant season for the entire province. As it stands now, the pheasant season opens October 1 outside the Annapolis Valley and on November 1 in the Valley.

The later Valley season originally was set to keep hunters out of farm fields and orchards during the prime harvesting period. There’s no argument here that this was a good idea. A few hunters were giving everyone a bad name by ignoring the right of landowners to control who hunts on their land and when they can hunt.

Let’s fast forward. Eventually hunting regulations were changed to require permission to hunt on cultivated land. This should have been good enough to keep hunters out of orchards and farm fields during the harvesting period. With this change I figured a shorter Valley season shouldn’t have been necessary.

More than a few members of the Kings County Wildlife Association apparently agreed with me. About a year ago the vice-president of the Association introduced a resolution that in effect, requested a pheasant hunting season from October 1 to December 15 throughout the province. This resolution was passed by the membership and was taken to the annual general meeting of the Federation of Anglers and Hunters last March. The resolution was approved there and then was placed with the appropriate government department for consideration.

It is highly unlikely the government will agree to have a province-wide pheasant season opening on October 1. However, while the government was considering the resolution – it still is at this time – the Kings County Wildlife Association had second thoughts. Apparently worried about their image as a conservation group, some of the senior members of the Association decided that passing the resolution wasn’t a good idea. Opening the pheasant season on October 1, ran the reasoning, would cause too many hunter/farmer conflicts at harvesting time, despite regulations requiring permission to hunt on cultivated land.

Even though I’d like to see the same season province-wide for pheasant hunting, I agree with this. Maintaining good farmer/hunter relations is important. We’ve reached a reasonable balance in the Valley and to use a cliché, upsetting the applecart now wouldn’t be a good idea.

Meanwhile, the pheasant resolution sits somewhere on a government desk and the Association ponders what action, if any, it can take to make sure it dies there. I believe it will die there anyway and there’s no need to panic. There’s no sensible reason for opening the pheasant season an additional month in the Valley counties, even though some hunters would like to see it happen. From a conservation point of view, given the current status of the pheasant population, it might make better sense to look at a shorter season in the Valley and elsewhere in the province.

That decision, of course, is up to the Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologists.