at                     -                                 2 
~   There is an unusual number of reports being received at the offices of
the 
( -    Game Commission from many sections of the Commonvealth, particularl
in the form 
of local newspaper items, claiming that the hunters' failure to bag the usual

number of rabbits this season is due to iLhe fact t! at their numbers have
been 
reduced by the Rint-necked Pheasants. For many years the Game Comission has
been 
attempting to trace to some definite conclusion reports that pheasants hill
young 
rabbits, but invariably investigations of this sort lead nowhere. In every
in- 
stance it has amounted to nothinT but hearsay--someone's friend told him
he 
actually saw a ringneck kill young rabbits, but upon interviewing such friend
wre 
find that he didn't see it at all, but thot a cousin or brother-in-law of
his 
saw it, and so on. The truth of the matter is that field mice can be blamed
in 
many instances for killing young rabbits in the nest. These little creatures,

coming across a nest of young rabbits, have beer ]komow to eat the elres
=ud oft- 
times the fleshy part from the lips of the baby bunnies. 
Invariably the Game Connission is asbed ho7 they  '-o-v that the rinneoh
does 
not kill young rabbits. This question can be readily answered, in p rt, bT.
citing 
one specific instance after another wfhere rabbits are found in abundance
on ring- 
neck pheasant farms. They are fairly plentiful on Pennsylvania's ovrn game
farms. 
On the Barbados Island in the Schuylkill K, Iiver at Norristo rn were trapped
severfl 
hundred rabbits. Living on the same islnd were a -reat malr rinp-necked pheasants

and quail. The following record is also of particular interest: It concerns
a 
wild rabbit which burrowed beneath the wire enclosure of one of the rlheasant
pens 
of the late 7. L. b.eaver of Tillersburg, ond built a nest within ' he enclosure.

This wild rabbit, in due time, had a nestfull of youngsters which she proceeded

to-successfully rear among the pheasants. The pheasants did not molest the

rabbits nor harm the young which later followed their mother to a nearby
w:oods. 
The apparent scarcity of rabbits in certain sections of the State mirht to

attributed to the long drought. Certainly no disease of any sort is responsible.

Again it may be that they are keeping holed up more than usual for some reason
or 
another. Numbers of hunters have remarked that they observe many rabbits
on 
the highways and roads in the evening and in the wee hours of the morning,
vrhilQ 
going to and from the hunt, but that while hunting those same sections during
the 
day, they seem to find very few of the creatures about.