WE HAVE BEEN CONSIDERING THE construction of what has been dubbed, in a schoolboyish way, "the bunny banger". A bunny banger is a vehicle designed for shooting rabbits and foxes at night.
The need for such a vehicle – or, more like, the desire for such a vehicle – came up late in the summer after we had attempted a major rabbit sweep on an infested farm towards the mouth of the estuary, where the ground flattens out.
The fields ar
e huge, and intersected with three broad hedgerows cum naturally seeded shelterbelts of gnarled oak (have you ever seen an oak that wasn't "gnarled"?), hidden ditches and brambles. Along two of these, on the edge of winter barley crops, live great quantities of rabbits that no one has yet managed to eradicate, not even my son and Alf using ferrets and Alf's four-wheel-drive pick-up careering around the fields trying to head off the swarms of rabbits as they bolt for safety.
We have divined that the problem is not that we cannot shoot straight or that we are using the wrong tactics, but that the shooting platform is not sufficiently stable and manoeuvrable. The two vehicles I have used in the past are a mini pick-up and a 2CV. For chasing rabbits at full tilt with a shotgun at night there was nothing to beat the mini except stray stones and mole heaps, which threatened to take the sump out, or mud. Otherwise it was the best, if inclined to throw the standing/leaning shooting passengers overboard. But it's not very far to fall.
I have a feeling it is illegal to chase rabbits at night with a shotgun from a moving vehicle, and has been for some time. But no one used to mind. These days I have no doubt that some interfering busybody would phone the bobbies and complain about "lights in the field and shots".
The 2CV which was, after all, designed to carry two French farmers, 50kg of potatoes and a small barrel of wine, was a better gun platform because you could take out the seats, back and front, roll back the roof, slide off the doors, stand up and shoot and communicate with the driver at the same time, which in a pick-up is near impossible. The 2CV didn't mind hitting hard things too much as it had a sheet of steel bolted the length of its bottom.
But my wife, whose car it was, used to complain we left it full of blood and mud. It also had zero acceleration.
Of course, we don't chase rabbits with shotguns at night anymore. We proceed cannily through the dark, picking out rabbits in the headlights or with the spotlight and shooting with .22s.
I rather hanker after a semi-automatic but know I would get carried away and waste ammunition. The vehicle of choice for 2009, if we can get one, is a Range Rover MoT failure with the doors out and most of the roof cut away.
I have seen a picture of one with a scaffolding bar welded all the way round the top as a rifle rest and which can be driven from a raised back seat. But that is an engineering feat too far. We are, however, considering extra power points for spot lamps and stowage for a .243 for foxes and maybe a semi-automatic shotgun – just in case. Mad Max had nothing on this bunny banger. Pathetic, really.
The full article contains 587 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
