The first stories of rabbit drives came as pioneers crossed the Snake River at Blackfoot and began to settle and farm the sagebrush-covered plains of Bingham County. An early story, on the founding of Moreland, states that the rabbits came in great droves, eating the grain crop and the gardens down to the roots, eating the bark off the newly-planted trees as high as they could reach standing on their back legs, and eating around the bottom of haystacks until they were ready to topple over. Rabbits were fenced out, shot, trapped and poisoned, but those that died were replaced by 10 more, coming in from the sagebrush. The farmers banded together to look for a solution.

The situation was bleak. Losing the crop, either in the field or in storage, could mean suffering or even starvation for the families and their livestock. Something had to be done.

A plan was drawn up to drive the rabbits into a fenced pen and slaughter them. It meant waiting until winter, when deep snow would make it difficult for the rabbits to run. In the meantime, the farmers secured some rabbit fencing and attached it in the corner of an existing field, creating a pen. On the appointed day, everyone turned out and encircled a large area. On a signal, they walked forward, beating the brush with sticks, to drive the rabbits out of cover and toward the pen. When the rabbits were all inside, the gate was shut, and it was an awful sight to see the men climb in and slaughter the animals. Many dead rabbits ended up in stew pots if the winter was especially harsh.

This method was used for several winters in the early 1900s and seemed to lessen the damage or, at least, drive the survivors farther out into the desert.

The story, referenced above, mentioned that those rabbits were affected with watery boils, and the writer seemed concerned about the families that took dead rabbits home. Later, in 1935, Dr. J.D. Dunshee, a state health officer from Boise, said in a newspaper article that physicians were reporting cases of tularemia resulting in death among their patients. Tularemia, sometimes called “rabbit fever,” causes fever, lethargy, loss of appetite, skin lesions, signs of sepsis and possibly death. It can be caught from handling an affected animal, especially during the skinning process. Animals other than rabbits have been known to carry this disease. Today it is successfully treated with antibiotics, but Dr. Dunshee warned readers to avoid contact with animal blood and to thoroughly cook the animal before eating.

In 1981, Idaho made national news by holding another rabbit drive in the Mud Lake area. In a repeat of the damage seen 50-plus years earlier, rabbits ate their way through fields of wheat and hay, causing an estimated $5 million in losses to area farmers. The same plan was put into use; however, this time, representatives of the Idaho Humane Society and the Idaho Department of Health were on hand. The Humane Society, having been blocked from stopping the event altogether, asked that the rabbits be killed in a humane way — a knock on the head and a slit throat. The Department of Health supervised the skinning and freezing of all the meat, bringing their own refrigerated truck. —

A news helicopter, flying low over the scene, captured footage of a sea of running rabbits, before their engine noise spooked the rabbits into scattering in all directions. The farmers’ committee chairman spoke with the news crew, “We lost four-fifths of the rabbits when they were turned back by the TV chopper, but we showed the news media we really do have a jack rabbit problem over here, and I hope the general public will better understand why we have to get rid of them.”