Charles Rodney: THE Rabbit Hunter

Charles Rodney is in his element when the dogs are making music. “When they are squealing -- and I mean squealing at the top of their lungs,” says Charles with an accent that betrays his Louisiana roots, “that’s when the dogs are running a rabbit real hard and run him down, and they’re coming back and barking in unison… we call that beagle music.” 

““I’ve been rabbit hunting for 62 years since I’d go out with my brother when I was little and wasn’t allowed to carry a gun … it’s all I know.””

When you hear beagle music, it means a lot has gone right. It means his dogs -- from his lead “jump-dog” Hank on down to number-six dog Bozo -- have found a rabbit, stayed on its trail as its bobbed and weaved through some of the thickest brier patches and tangles it can find, and that the rabbit is doubling back within range of his 20-gauge. It means that Charles is likely to dust it with some Creole seasoning later and toss it in a roux, brown it, make a gravy, and serve it over rice, just like they did back home. 

Mr. Rodney has been at the rabbit hunting game a long time -- for over sixty years since he learned with his brothers hunting cottontails and swamp rabbits on their farm in Pointe Coupee Parish. His future wife and a government job brought him to southern Maryland, and now he’s been hunting rabbits around the Mid-Atlantic for decades. He has become a local legend, gracing the pages of Chesapeake Bay Magazine and starring in podcasts on the MeatEater and films from Winchester Ammunition. 

Mr. Rodney is as generous with his time as he is skilled at rabbit hunting: he’s a tireless teacher and hosts countless people each year on hunts. Our mutual friend Phil Hoon of Capitol 6 Advisors put us in touch, and I caught up with him this spring to learn more about his rabbit hunting strategy, the dogs he runs, the best “rabbitat,” the crazy tactics of a rabbits on the run, and of course, the best way to cook them. Below are my questions in bold, followed by his answers.

Charles Rodney with some nice rabbits

Thanks so much for your time, Charles. I’ll start with a simple question: how did you learn so much about rabbits? 

Well, I grew up on a farm in Louisiana, and rabbits were plentiful. We would just walk maybe 100 yards and you could start hunting, and there were few predators. And then we never hunted anything else. 

I've been doing this for 62 years, since I was eight years old with my brother -- I wasn't allowed to carry a gun until I got a few years older -- but it's all I know. I know where they like to hide. 

I’ve been to parts of Maryland like Blackwater that feel like Louisiana. How similar is the hunt here to Louisiana? 

There are some parts in Dorchester County where it’s marshy, and there are creeks and ponds and little lakes that are like the bayous in Louisiana. In Dorchester, you might be hunting in dry land and all of a sudden you’re walking in a couple of inches of water. There are some parts of Louisiana that are very similar. 

Down where I come from near Baton Rouge -- a little town called New Roads where they got some high ground between the levees that run around the Mississippi and Atchafalaya -- there are some marshy areas that we used to hunt around. 

We hunted those areas for swamp rabbits -- the big rabbits that get about 6-8 pounds and run in that water -- and also cottontails mainly in the cotton fields, corn fields, ditches, and so forth. 

You mentioned a couple of different types of rabbit. How many species are there? 

You have the hare that turns white as it get colder up in the northeast and Michigan and Canada. That’s a heavy running rabbit -- it runs a long ways.

Then you have the swamp rabbit. That is big and mainly runs in water, swims in water, hides in water. 

Then you have the jackrabbit out west.

And there are probably some other species. In Maryland, we primarily hunt the eastern cottontail. You’re talking about 4-5 pounds -- good size rabbit, good eatin’ rabbit, too!

What kind of dogs do run? 

I have six purebred male beagles about 13 inches long. I have two or three that are “jump dogs.” When I say jump dogs, they're the ones that's most aggressive and are going to find that rabbit first. 

When they're running a rabbit, they’re bunched in together because they're all the same speed -- they're all medium speed. Normally, there are three speeds: fast, medium fast, and slow, and you want them all the same speed, because if you mix the speed up you have a dog or two that are 50 yards in front of the others. 

Hank, Rattler, Blue, Buckshot, Sam, Bozo

What are your dogs’ names? 

I’ll give them in rank… 

The best dogs is Hank. Why Hank is so good is Hank is smart; he's tenacious; he can jump. He's hard to fool by that rabbit -- he'll figure out that scent and he'll stay on it and he won't quit. 

The next one is Rattler. He is smart and he won't give up. Both of those dogs will bring that rabbit out from underneath the cover. 

The next one is Blue. Blue is a jump dog supreme, full of energy. He's going to work back and forth, back and forth. Either he's going to jump at rabbit or is going to push that rabbit out and the other dogs are going to hit the scent.

The next dogs -- they'll jump them too but they're more meticulous and stay hard on the scent. 

The next one is Buckshot. He hunts hard just like Blue, and he don't like to quit. He's a saddleback, meaning he's got a black and brown black. 

And then there is Sam. Sam is a hard hunter; he don't quit. He is smaller and goes up underneath the bushes and works hard. 

And then there's Bozo. Bozo is number six. Bozo is not a jump dog, but he's a good pack dog. 

What happens when they jump a rabbit? 

When they jump him, they're only going to run him about 25-30 yards on site because he's going to put on his afterburners on. He's going to be like a race car, and the dogs are a Volkswagen. A Volkswagen has no competition with that race car! 

Mr. Rodney with some rabbits

So then the hunt is on! What’s the strategy once you’ve got that rabbit running?  

Normally you’re hunting on a strip of grass or a strip of brier or a hedge row, and the dogs are pushing him. The rabbits are gonna cross over at some point. They might cross behind you; they might cross in front of you. You might see him cross over to go to another patch of cover; you might him see him come back on the edge; and he may come back at you!

Sometimes he’ll run right past you. Other times he’ll run from one clearing across a pathway to the next one. And sometimes he’ll run out of that whole area into another body of cover maybe in the opposite direction of where you’re not hunting. And yes, he’ll crisscross, and he’ll circle -- there’s no rhyme or reason. 

He’s gonna run and run so far, and then he’s gonna come back. He may come back up the middle; he may come back up the side; he may make a wide circle -- I’ve seen ‘em circle in a cut soybean field cut down so low that you can see a nickel on the ground.

He may come back at bullet speed; he come back at medium speed; he may hop along and stop every so often and listen. If you’re not paying attention, he’ll run right by you!

And then you gotta hit him!

You gotta be able to shoot because they’re not gonna be playing -- they’re gonna be running! 

I’ll tell these guys, “they’re on a rabbit, watch out!” and the rabbit of course is running a good distance in front of the dogs -- anywhere from 25 to sometimes 100 yards in front of the dogs -- and you’ll see him pop out. If there are many rabbits in there, you might see multiple rabbits dart out run in front of you real fast. And every now and then, you think he’s going up forward, but he’ll run back to where he got up and now he’s behind you, so everyone has to kind of spin around and pick a safe shot.

They’ll play tricks on you; they’ll make you look bad! 

It sounds like his play is to know the habitat much better than you or the dogs? 

That’s his play. I always tell people: this is his neighborhood. This is where he lives. 

In the thick stuff

What’s the best “rabbitat”? 

If I was looking for a perfect habitat for rabbits, the first place I would go is a hedge row or a field that is an intermix with honeysuckle, brier, and downed branches, where the honeysuckle and the brier have grown around a bunch of downed branches. 

The second place would be a little grassy weed field with broomsedge grass, which is about knee-high. Or sometimes when the bird hunters plant sorghum or milo and they leave it up, the stuff is beaten down by January or February. That makes ideal places because now those sorghum stalks have fallen down and a rabbit can run under there. 

When’s the best time of year? 

The season starts always on the first Saturday in November and it runs until the last day or February.

That’s a long season.

That’s a good season! We work the season in between some of the waterfowl season and deer season because we share some of the properties, but it’s worth the wait. 

I would say the best time is as soon it starts getting cold. You want it to have a couple of good frosts. It helps kill the grass and helps kill what they call it the wolf tick that’s on the rabbit. But I have been equally successful from the beginning of November to the last day of February.

February is the busiest time because some aspect of deer or waterfowl goes until the last days of January. When they finish, I have a whole lot of folks saying, “Charles, we’re done, let’s go! We’ve been seein’ a lot of rabbits when we go to the deer stand and when we go to the blind.”

I have a list of people that I call and there are some people like Phil and Jeff Crane and two or three others that get all of the Saturdays and Presidents Day in February. Those five days have been taken for the last 10 years. 

Do you use every piece of meat, or are some better than others? 

The best pieces all the back legs. The back legs are where most of the meat is, and from from the back legs to about midway [is also good]. The front legs are going to get some meat but from about three inches from the front leg going towards the stomach on the rib cages, there's hardly any meat. I don't throw that away because there's some meat on it, and you can suck on those bones like a tasty pop. 

This may be the most important question: how do you like to cook rabbit? 

A good hunt

Well, being from Louisiana, like most things we eat it over rice traditionally. 

What I do is I make a gravy. I cut the rabbit in the parts and brown it a bit. Then I season it with salt and pepper and Season All and sometimes I use a Creole seasoning. And then I chop a fist-full of onion and a fist-full of celery to small pieces, browning it.  And then I make what we call a roux, and you cook it down until it turns a light brown, medium brown, dark brown -- however you like it.  And then you put the meat in, and you add some water to it. It makes the gravy, and you can eat it over rice.

Different fellows from various ethnic backgrounds -- French, Italian, German, Spanish backgrounds -- and they'll fix it their way: With wine, with mushrooms, with tomatoes, a variety of other things. 

You can barbecue it; you can smoke it; you can roast it whole; you can do it in parts. Whatever is your taste, fix it that way and eat it and enjoy!