JACKALOPE

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JimT
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JACKALOPE

Post by JimT »

There is a lot of mythology and a lot of mis-information about the Jackalope of the American Southwest. First, if you see a photo of one that has small deerlike antlers, that is a FAKE! Pure and simple. The Jackalope does not have antlers. They have horns, much like a Pronghorn "antelope", except smaller. And where the Pronghorn sheds it's horns every year, the Jackalope does not.
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Second, the Jackalope is not a nice furry little bunny-like creature. If it looks like a cottontail rabbit with antlers, it is a FAKE! The Jackalope is in the family of Lepus or hares. They are large, their hair is stiff and their ears are quite long. The Jackalope have very long claws and long, sharp teeth with longer canine incisors that resemble fangs. The "fangs" are not normally visible until the mouth is opened wide in an attack.

They are a very solitary creature except for the nights when there is a new moon. The phase of the new moon triggers their mating instinct and Jackalope come from all over for the orgy. The squeals, grunts, howls and growling .... along with the clawing of the ground, urinating on each other and .... oh .. sorry. I got mixed up and was reading from my notes about a motorcycle club party.

Jackalope are attracted to the mating ritual by the unearthly low howl of the female in heat. This sets the males off in a frenzy of trailing her, since her normal method is to call, but run at the same time. The entire mating ritual from start to culmination can take many hours and cover miles of desert.

The Jackalope love the dark. Their eyes shine an unearthly shade of red. Red eyes and nasal snorting around a campfire can be a signal that things are getting ready to become serious. Normally Jackalope avoid humans, but during the mating season they will attack humans who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since they are gathered in fairly large numbers, the attacks can be deadly.

I began hunting Jackalope in my teens. I hunted them for several years before I ever saw one. It was late 1959 when I saw my first. I was hunting with my old H&R .22 revolver. It was a 9 shot double action and I had saved up money for hollowpoints for it. Someone told me there were Jackalope on the McDowell Mountains north and east of Scottsdale, AZ. I had gotten a couple rides as far as I could and then hiked on up the McDowells. In the middle of the range, if you are standing some miles to the west, it looks like a big chimney rock on top of the mountains. Beneath that, where a couple small valleys met was a patch of green. Old-timers told me that was Fraser Spring. And that was where Jackalope often came for water. It was 'way above the valley floor, far above where most people would ever be.
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It took me the better part of a day to climb to Fraser Spring but it was right where they said it was. There was a short tunnel driven back into the rock and holes had been drilled into the rock face, from which poured water in abundance. The floor of the tunnel had been concreted to make a pool. A large 2 1/2" pipe ran from the pool on down the mountain and fed water to troughs for the cattle that grazed the valley floor. Whoever put it together had done a lot of work on it. The overflow spilled out of the pool in the tunnel and kept the vegetation green in that little area, no matter the weather. Around the pool were droppings sort of like deer droppings ... large for a rabbit. And claw marks. Scratched into the rock in various places from extremely strong claws.

I filled my canteens and then climbed up the side of the mountain about 20 or 30 feet higher than the opening to the tunnel. There I made camp and waited quietly. I dozed off and on in the early evening and sometime around midnight I heard strange noises. Scraping on the rock. Sucking sounds. And what sounded very much like belching. I held the trigger back on my pistol and cocked it as silently as possible. Then, holding the light in my left hand under the butt of the gun, I flipped on the light. There at the tunnel face were 2 Jackalope! They had been drinking and my surprise was complete. At the sudden light they larger one yelled at me something like a growl and a squeal but very loud and I jerked the trigger and missed both of them. They were gone in an instant. Nothing else showed up but some Javelina the rest of the night and the next day I made my way back home. I was more determined than ever to bag a Jackalope.

For the next year I hunted them whenever I could. Several times I thought I had spotted one and tried sneaking up on it. Sometimes if something was there it turned out to be a jackrabbit. Sometimes there was nothing I could find. It was frustrating. But my stalking skills were improving. On several occasions I sneaked right into the middle of a large herd of javelina. Once I found myself in the middle of a herd of deer. It was all very exciting but was not what I was hunting for!

In 1962 I was 16 years old and my Dad had given me a used Ruger Blackhawk .357 Magnum. That was the coolest pistol I had ever had and I shot it for many years. I figured this was THE gun to take my first Jackalope and ramped up my hunting efforts. By this time I was scouting the Bradshaw Mountains west of Phoenix for the elusive critters. The Bradshaws are raw, harsh and uninviting. They are also home to wild burros. Twice I had come across the skeletal remains of burros. The bones were picked bare and many of them showed marks of being chewed violently upon. I could not figure out what had killed and eaten them.

Camping in the bottom of a dry wash one evening I was wakened by screaming in the distance. It was unhuman .. unearthly ... frightening. I grabbed my pistol and some ammo and made my way to the top of the hill. There, in wash below on the other side of the hill was burro with10 or 12 Jackalope around it, attacking it! They had it pretty much down by the time I reached the top of the hill and as I watched they set into ripping it apart with their teeth and their back feet. The claws on their back feet were much like razors apparently. I watched this ghastly sight for 10 minutes or so and then decided to shoot one of the Jackalope. They were only about 100 yards away and I had a good solid rest, so pulled the gun up and cocked it. Immediately they all froze. I hastily put the sights on one, held on the top of its head and pulled the trigger. It leaped about 6 feet into the air and collapsed! I had one!!!! The rest of them bounded off into the darkness.

I waited for a while and then made my way cautiously down to where the carcass of the burro lay with my Jackalope next to it. I could see it was a nice sized one, but while I still a few feet from it two Jackalope came busting out of the brush on my left, roaring and growling and snapping their teeth. In the moonlight I could see their hair standing up and the burro's blood all over their faces. I snapped a shot at one and it rolled over. The other screamed and came at me and I shot it through the head.

Suddenly there was screaming and growling all around me! I was surrounded and only had 2 shots left in the .357. I pulled some shells out of my pocket and got 2 of them in the gun before they came at me. I backed up against the dead burro and shot the closest Jackalope as they came at me. Quickly I was out of shells and they were on me. I had my knife out and began cutting and stabbing, but soon to no avail. They overwhelmed me, pulled me down, killed me and ate me. I hated it. The last thing I saw was several of them eating their dead companions.

I do not recommend Jackalope hunting unless you have a very large group of trained people and lots of ammo. Take it from one who has been there.
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Sixgun »

Jim,
Even from the old "Sixgunner" days, I have always enjoyed your stories...your good.

Here's the sad part.....when I was about 18-20 the local gunshop had a mess of the owners mounted heads on display...yea.....one was a jackalope. You ready? I was still well into my twenties believing it was real. I have more than one person tell me I lived a sheltered life. Thanks for the story. ----6
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by AJMD429 »

This is one of the few documented Jackalope attacks on humans....not for the faint of heart....!

https://youtu.be/TnOdAT6H94s
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JimT
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by JimT »

AJMD429 wrote: Sun Jun 16, 2019 5:11 pm This is one of the few documented Jackalope attacks on humans....not for the faint of heart....!

https://youtu.be/TnOdAT6H94s
THAT is one of my favorites!!
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JimT
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by JimT »

Sixgun wrote: Sun Jun 16, 2019 5:05 pm Jim,
Even from the old "Sixgunner" days, I have always enjoyed your stories...your good.

Here's the sad part.....when I was about 18-20 the local gunshop had a mess of the owners mounted heads on display...yea.....one was a jackalope. You ready? I was still well into my twenties believing it was real. I have more than one person tell me I lived a sheltered life. Thanks for the story. ----6
Thanks Sixgun. What's that about "believing it was real"? I mean, I still have the scars ...... :lol:
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by octagon »

I barely got past "mating can cover miles of desert" I laughed so hard :lol: :lol: Too dang funny!
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Ray »

Way back in the day when I was just a wee lad of 23-24 I lived in southern south america. Though I had both my beloved bride and our firstborn son with me, I missed my humble collection of sixguns, self-loaders, leveractions and fowling pieces way back up there in alabama.

So I jumped through all of the red-tapeist hoops of fire and crawled naked across broken glass and spent a whopping $759 (1993 dollars) to get the firearms and hunting permits and licenses and both a brand new shiny brasilian made break-open 12 ga. and a single-shot bolt .22 along with 100 rounds of cartridges for each.

There were all kinds of fowls and rabbits and foxes to hunt and pumas and seals and sea lions to poach with the blessings of the natives and the indifference of the game wardens. But the most sought after game was the liebre gigante, roughly and simply translated "giant hare".

Though these were the days before al gore had invented the internet, reference works in english on taxonomy and zoology were to be found in university libraries. All of the books were adamant that there were no native rabbits or hares that far south in the western andes. This liebre must be either an introduced feral european hare or a diasporic north american desert jackrabbit. The natives insisted that the liebre gigante was the same as the patagonian cavy though all of the books written by eggheads insisted that its range was hundreds of km to the east.

So a night hunt was finally arranged and I had the honor of lugging (on foot) the truck battery for the back-up jacklight. The dogs eventually bayed a beast but I could not keep-up and at the phycological moment their primary jacklight dimmed and I was summoned to the front. Though I could hear the hounds and shouts for the light I got disoriented and could not find the action. I shined the light up and they eventually found me, more terrified and cowed than angry with me. Seems the beast that they had bayed was not a liebre at all but an angry puma.

So on the way back to the truck I took up the rear guard to light the way for all before me. I lost sight of the nimrods when they rounded a bend in the trail and I came face to face with something like this :
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Scared the snot out of me. Its snout was as high as my belt buckle and it was growling and grinding its dentures. The hooves looked sharp and deadly. I immediately knew exactly how sylvester the cat felt when he mistook the baby kangaroo for giant mouse !
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Nath »

" motorcycle club party" :lol:
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by jeepnik »

Geesh! Next someone is going to start telling tales about the time I slew one of the last chupacabre. Let’s get this straight, I didn’t loose my right eye in the battle. I have always shot left-handed. In fact the reason I survived is that the beast lunged believing all hunters are right-handed. Her mistake (the female of the species, as with many, is by far the deadliest) gave me the split second need to fire a shot. And while it didn’t kill her outright slowed her enough so that while I was badly mauled I was able to use, first my backup 45-70 revolver, then my secondary backup, a double stacked Para 1911. When all of my ammo was expended I transitioned to my Randall survival knife. I finally slew the beast with a coup de gras by stabbing it in the eye with a SAK.

In the five years it took for me to recover enough to speak so many false reports surfaced that i’ve spent the last thirty setting the record straight.
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Nath »

:lol:
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Pitchy »

And i thought i was going to have a sound normal day. :lol:
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by piller »

I grew up in SouthWest Kansas. Jackalope were plentiful. A .270 would kill them. A few folks hunted them with dog packs and .270s. The vet did a thriving business patching the dogs up.
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Pisgah »

Laugh if you will. Jackalopes are real...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shope_papilloma_virus
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Nath »

piller wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:09 am I grew up in SouthWest Kansas. Jackalope were plentiful. A .270 would kill them. A few folks hunted them with dog packs and .270s. The vet did a thriving business patching the dogs up.
:lol:
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Re: JACKALOPE

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The only time I have had the privilege of visiting the USA, I took a balloon flight right in the heart of Jackalope country, I got real excited when I thought we had flushed a Jackalope but it was just a common old Jackrabbit..... :( I was relieved in a way as being only a tourist I was not packin' any iron.... :wink:
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by FWiedner »

I was hunting outside Yuma, AZ back around '83 and encountered a large Jack.

Took 3 shots at near point blank range from my Mini-14 to slow the critter, and then a butt-stroke to the head to keep him off of me and put him down.

What a beast.

:shock: :wink:
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Rimfire McNutjob »

Everyone knows that only the 22 Remington Jet can be relied upon to dispatch a Chupacabra. I keep several Smith 53's handy.
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Re: JACKALOPE

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Here in Texas, we are finding that silver in the bullet kills a Chupacabra if you hit it in the heart. Sort of like how you kill a weirdwolf. Gary Busey was right, and that gunsmith he went to see was correct about mild powered loads working well. I recently used a cut up silver necklace and put pieces of the silver in a hollow point in my .480 Ruger. I used a drop of hot glue to hold it in. I tried it on a Chupacabra that was killing 3 or 4 sheep per night on a cattle ranch near me. I met the owner when he came in for antibiotics and pain medicines after getting mauled when he interrupted the Chupacabra. I used a 2500 lumen flashlight and waited in a 20 foot high deer stand. When I heard it attack a sheep, I turned on the flashlight. Those red eyes seemed to glow. I put the first round through its head to stun it, then I put 2 through its heart. Upon examining the carcass before it crumbled to dust, the hot glue was squished out around the entrance holes. The hot glue had to move so that the silver touched the skin before the bullet could penetrate. I am glad that the bullet through its head stunned it because I couldn't have put a bullet through its heart from the angle he was to me at first. The cattle rancher says he hasn't lost anymore sheep.
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by jeepnik »

piller wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 11:59 am Here in Texas, we are finding that silver in the bullet kills a Chupacabra if you hit it in the heart. Sort of like how you kill a weirdwolf. Gary Busey was right, and that gunsmith he went to see was correct about mild powered loads working well. I recently used a cut up silver necklace and put pieces of the silver in a hollow point in my .480 Ruger. I used a drop of hot glue to hold it in. I tried it on a Chupacabra that was killing 3 or 4 sheep per night on a cattle ranch near me. I met the owner when he came in for antibiotics and pain medicines after getting mauled when he interrupted the Chupacabra. I used a 2500 lumen flashlight and waited in a 20 foot high deer stand. When I heard it attack a sheep, I turned on the flashlight. Those red eyes seemed to glow. I put the first round through its head to stun it, then I put 2 through its heart. Upon examining the carcass before it crumbled to dust, the hot glue was squished out around the entrance holes. The hot glue had to move so that the silver touched the skin before the bullet could penetrate. I am glad that the bullet through its head stunned it because I couldn't have put a bullet through its heart from the angle he was to me at first. The cattle rancher says he hasn't lost anymore sheep.
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Catshooter »

Yah, I agree with Nath.

No way were you taking notes at a motorcycle gang party. No way.


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Re: JACKALOPE

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:wink:
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Re: JACKALOPE

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Rimfire McNutjob wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:38 am Everyone knows that only the 22 Remington Jet can be relied upon to dispatch a Chupacabra. I keep several Smith 53's handy.

A Dodge Ram 3500 4wd with the Cummins engine is a pretty good match for them, but not always. I ran one down just outside of Yuma one night, did him in but his teeth got stuck in one of my tires and I had to buy a new one the next morning. :shock: :shock: Of course, it was a small one, known as the Lesser Gila Valley Chupacabra, the ones in Wyoming are much larger and more vicious. :roll:
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Re: JACKALOPE

Post by Ray »

jnyork wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 10:53 am
Rimfire McNutjob wrote: Mon Jun 17, 2019 10:38 am Everyone knows that only the 22 Remington Jet can be relied upon to dispatch a Chupacabra. I keep several Smith 53's handy.

A Dodge Ram 3500 4wd with the Cummins engine is a pretty good match for them, but not always. I ran one down just outside of Yuma one night, did him in but his teeth got stuck in one of my tires and I had to buy a new one the next morning. :shock: :shock: Of course, it was a small one, known as the Lesser Gila Valley Chupacabra, the ones in Wyoming are much larger and more vicious. :roll:

I hate it when the chupacabra bites through the sidewall and ruins the tire. Ambiguous pseudoscientific cryptids ought to have the courtesy of biting the tread when run down so the tire can be plugged.
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