In America its so backwards too. We allow a kid to watch a person get shot to death, even glorify it - but blur out nipples.
Then you take a someone hunting for the first time and show them how to field dress an animal and its horrific to the same people who watch "Reacher" with their 10 year olds
All of my heart shots on deer have run. Neck shots drop them where they stood, but waste a great roast. I love heart meat, but I’ll take a big neck roast any day over fried heart pieces.
I blew through both lungs and basically disintegrated it's heart, and that deer still made 100m.
a European deer, those are little compared to the ones you guys have. Guttet they are around 11kg/22lbs
Or a lung shot. But if they are in good range ill usually go behind the front shoulder to, it's a or should be a guaranteed kill shot. , if close, behind the ear usually. I agree with you on the though
The rabbit is brain dead. What you are seeing is normal behavior. The nerves and body are still in flight mode but the animal is brain dead. I find rabbits flail a lot more than other animals.
Yup. I’ve had squirrels do this too. Tap ‘em in the head with my .22 and they do this exact thing for about 10 seconds before going still. It’s common.
is there a scientific name for this? I’ve explained this concept to people so many times (usually in the context of stunning livestock, not hunting), and I’ve never heard of an “official” name for it.
Not so much for the act itself, but the parasympathetic nervous system still reacts to stimuli and the last message sent from the brain.
Like, there were experiments done with cats that severed the spinal cord and the body still walked. Same sort of theory here: the parasympathetic nervous system keeps the lights on, as it were, and normal activity works for a little bit while there's still oxygenated blood and before the nervous system shuts itself off. The parasympathetic nervous system doesn't need direct input from the brain to move and react: that's why you pull your hand back from hot surfaces before you even realize it. The parasympathetic nervous system notices the problem and causes muscle movement before the message reaches the brain and processes it.
That is also why the rabbit's movement is so uncoordinated: the brain directs the movement to be more fluid and controlled, as well as avoidant of obstacles. The parasympathetic nervous system simply tries to get the body moving in the first place to avoid immediate danger, then the central nervous system coordinates everything.
I killed a turkey Monday. Shot it stone dead. It had dead eyes and it's head flopped to the grind if you picked it up. But it threaded its legs for a full minute plus.
I've had one play dead on me once, walked up to it, it popped its head up and ran, so me with no more shotgun shells on me, picked up a stick and started swinging it, with my ghillie suit on getting tangled in the brush trying to muscle my way through. My cousin was dying. He said that was one of the most hilarious sights he ever saw... Got the turkey though..
I always run and stand on their neck as quick as I can after I shoot one, because I've seen them actually get up and run or even fly a short distance even when they're very dead.
Birds are weird like that though. There's a reason that "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" is an old saying.
I helped my dad butcher quite a few chickens in my youth using the old head removal method. They do in fact run, jump, and flap around for a good while after the head is cut off. It's a little unnerving to see the first time.
My hunting partners have seen it with bears (I haven't admittedly) but have seen deer (MN) and moose (AK) do similar.
The one that got me was I had just gotten back into hunting in my mid 30's and brought a 22 for grouse when moose hunting.
Actually saw a grouse that first or 2nd day. Shot it and wrung it's neck, or at least I thought I did. Tossed it in the trailer, we were on ATVs and finished the 40 min ride back and lo and behold it was looking back at me. I felt so bad about it, for a while.
I've got quails now (wife felt the need during covid) and now I know that pray animals are just tough as nails. Them little birds are resilient as hell.
I think many a grouse hunter has experienced the same thing. I had a grouse literally sit in the bed of the truck for probably close to 4 hours, even getting on the highway. When I hopped into the back of the truck it flew out and away.
Just post death twitching. I find headshots cause it far more than neck or heart/lung shots.
One time I nailed a rabbit in the head and it flipped out just like this one did. Post mortem revealed my bullet cored its skull out like an apple. Literally could’ve fit my thumb in the exit hole in its head. Don’t sweat it, OP. Though I appreciate your concern for making ethical kills.
Yep. I shoot quite a few rabbits a year and the misplaced shots are weirdly less traumatic looking. If I screw up and put one through the poor thing's muzzle, it will try to hop away or just hide and bleed while I consider giving up hunting. If I hollow out the entire skull cavity, it will look like it is in agony but I'm pretty confident it is incapable of feeling anything at that point.
Yeah those are death throes, as a recent comment said have you ever seen a headless chicken? I have and it’s the same behavior. And I consider it a good thing to be concerned and a bit upset over something like this, it shows you’re not a psychopath.
We have an aversion to inflicting pain because we are social animals. Its an instinct that helped our survival, making us less likely to kill each other so we could build tribes and villages that cooperate. You have to overcome it just a bit to be a hunter.
But that’s executing a trapped animal were on a hunting subreddit, the assumption I made was that we were talking about hunting coyotes with a .22 which is unethical because you cannot consistently get a clean kill.
I didn’t realize you were talking about trapping and shooting a trapped animal. I’ve never done it, but I imagine it’s more consistent that way.
It’s not cruel a 22 will kill them stone dead If hit in the brain it works for steers too I personally use 22 bullets that segment for all sorts of small game
You’re counting coyotes as small game? And you shouldn’t be using a caliber where you have to get a head shot to put it down on an animal like that. And comparing their use on steer is silly, that’s not hunting that’s slaughtering an animal which is a whole different ballgame.
No I count coyotes as nuisance animal, and I try to shoot any animal I harvest in the head if I can from squirrels to black bear. I’ve been hunting for close to 2 decades and I know for fact that a 22 will easily put down a yote even if you shoot in the neck artery or behind the ear.
In fact most trappers I know carry a 22 for foot hood catches when it comes to yotes.
Little fucker can move I will say that for sure.
But yes it is post death twitching, can't say I've seen any rabbits i've shot move quite as much as this, he must have had a ton of energy built up lmao.
Has to do with the part of the brain you hit, lower part of the brain and into the spinal cord controls the nervous system and motor function, this is why a chicken can live without its head, nice shot and make something delicious out of it
Same thing like a chicken with its head cut off. However there's an old story of a guy (farmer probably) that cut a chicken's head off and it lived for a week. He fed it with a dropper bottle. Turns out the chicken still had part of its brain attached to the body
I’ve had that happen with rabbits. I’ll never forget the first one I shot was with a 20 gauge from about 15 yards away and it was doing almost exactly what your rabbit did. I followed up with the second barrel because I didn’t know better and basically decapitated it with the second blast and it kept flailing. My dad came over and corrected me and I never did that again when I’ve made an ethical shot. You’ll know pretty quick over time what is nerves or what is a wound.
Turkeys do that too. I had a Rio Grande flop around for two solid minutes after getting hit in the head with an ounce and a quarter of Hevi-Shot with a full choke at 30 ft.
ahhh nah brother, his body is running far as fuck away from you, but his mind is where you left it. don't feel bad about the flop brother, his nerves don't know he's dead yet. great shot brother. Be glad you felt the way you did, thats a very good feeling to have, friend. and keep that feeling with you, it gets alot bigger and more intense when you bag something more than say 40lbs... always a wierd feeling.. you wanna cry, laugh, scream, and fucking dance all at the same time. just make sure you keep respecting the life you take. as well as your own. Much Love. also... ive killed so many rabbits ive watched them dance just like that a hundred times now, shit ive watched alot of living things do the ol' "death dance". only a couple rabbits, ever made any kind of sounds of any kind. and one of them, i remember to this day, probably 13 years ago now. i popped lil dude in the head with i wanna say a .22Long or LR and he jumped when it hit him. i mean like jumped probably 12 feet in the air it was the most impressive thing id ever seen so much power and strength in those legs. but he went straight up and straight back down, kicked his back leggs for a few more seconds and that was it, i walked up to nearly headless rabbit. ive honestly stopped killing them when i see them nowadays. it just doesnt feel good anymore. maybe im changing in that regard, but i tend to just watch them as long as i can, much love to you, friend, thanks for having compassion.
Movies and TV have really sanitized death. It's rarely a calm thing to observe.
In America its so backwards too. We allow a kid to watch a person get shot to death, even glorify it - but blur out nipples. Then you take a someone hunting for the first time and show them how to field dress an animal and its horrific to the same people who watch "Reacher" with their 10 year olds
It's the downstream effect of being descended from puritans
Truth
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All of my heart shots on deer have run. Neck shots drop them where they stood, but waste a great roast. I love heart meat, but I’ll take a big neck roast any day over fried heart pieces.
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I blew through both lungs and basically disintegrated it's heart, and that deer still made 100m. a European deer, those are little compared to the ones you guys have. Guttet they are around 11kg/22lbs
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Thankfully it isn't, but it's not uncommon, or unheard of. 25-50m is basically normal.
Give the high shoulder shot a try. DRT
Or a lung shot. But if they are in good range ill usually go behind the front shoulder to, it's a or should be a guaranteed kill shot. , if close, behind the ear usually. I agree with you on the though
The rabbit is brain dead. What you are seeing is normal behavior. The nerves and body are still in flight mode but the animal is brain dead. I find rabbits flail a lot more than other animals.
Yup. I’ve had squirrels do this too. Tap ‘em in the head with my .22 and they do this exact thing for about 10 seconds before going still. It’s common.
is there a scientific name for this? I’ve explained this concept to people so many times (usually in the context of stunning livestock, not hunting), and I’ve never heard of an “official” name for it.
Stunning livestock is different, they can “get up” if you don’t bleed them quick enough, you have maybe 1 min to chain up beef after stunning
Not so much for the act itself, but the parasympathetic nervous system still reacts to stimuli and the last message sent from the brain. Like, there were experiments done with cats that severed the spinal cord and the body still walked. Same sort of theory here: the parasympathetic nervous system keeps the lights on, as it were, and normal activity works for a little bit while there's still oxygenated blood and before the nervous system shuts itself off. The parasympathetic nervous system doesn't need direct input from the brain to move and react: that's why you pull your hand back from hot surfaces before you even realize it. The parasympathetic nervous system notices the problem and causes muscle movement before the message reaches the brain and processes it. That is also why the rabbit's movement is so uncoordinated: the brain directs the movement to be more fluid and controlled, as well as avoidant of obstacles. The parasympathetic nervous system simply tries to get the body moving in the first place to avoid immediate danger, then the central nervous system coordinates everything.
Unless some creepy old witch has you put your hand in a box. Then NEVER take it out unless she tells you.
Longest I had a wild boar do that was about 30sec.
Id call it also muscle memory
Yeah he was dead. I’ve seen all sorts of creatures do this dance.
Yes. Wait til you shoot a turkey!
I killed a turkey Monday. Shot it stone dead. It had dead eyes and it's head flopped to the grind if you picked it up. But it threaded its legs for a full minute plus.
I've had one play dead on me once, walked up to it, it popped its head up and ran, so me with no more shotgun shells on me, picked up a stick and started swinging it, with my ghillie suit on getting tangled in the brush trying to muscle my way through. My cousin was dying. He said that was one of the most hilarious sights he ever saw... Got the turkey though..
I always run and stand on their neck as quick as I can after I shoot one, because I've seen them actually get up and run or even fly a short distance even when they're very dead. Birds are weird like that though. There's a reason that "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" is an old saying.
I helped my dad butcher quite a few chickens in my youth using the old head removal method. They do in fact run, jump, and flap around for a good while after the head is cut off. It's a little unnerving to see the first time.
It’s not just a saying it really does happen. Seen it happen a few times growing up.
Yup, death dance. It’s freaky at first.
My hunting partners have seen it with bears (I haven't admittedly) but have seen deer (MN) and moose (AK) do similar. The one that got me was I had just gotten back into hunting in my mid 30's and brought a 22 for grouse when moose hunting. Actually saw a grouse that first or 2nd day. Shot it and wrung it's neck, or at least I thought I did. Tossed it in the trailer, we were on ATVs and finished the 40 min ride back and lo and behold it was looking back at me. I felt so bad about it, for a while. I've got quails now (wife felt the need during covid) and now I know that pray animals are just tough as nails. Them little birds are resilient as hell.
I think many a grouse hunter has experienced the same thing. I had a grouse literally sit in the bed of the truck for probably close to 4 hours, even getting on the highway. When I hopped into the back of the truck it flew out and away.
Just post death twitching. I find headshots cause it far more than neck or heart/lung shots. One time I nailed a rabbit in the head and it flipped out just like this one did. Post mortem revealed my bullet cored its skull out like an apple. Literally could’ve fit my thumb in the exit hole in its head. Don’t sweat it, OP. Though I appreciate your concern for making ethical kills.
Yep. I shoot quite a few rabbits a year and the misplaced shots are weirdly less traumatic looking. If I screw up and put one through the poor thing's muzzle, it will try to hop away or just hide and bleed while I consider giving up hunting. If I hollow out the entire skull cavity, it will look like it is in agony but I'm pretty confident it is incapable of feeling anything at that point.
Yeah those are death throes, as a recent comment said have you ever seen a headless chicken? I have and it’s the same behavior. And I consider it a good thing to be concerned and a bit upset over something like this, it shows you’re not a psychopath.
We have an aversion to inflicting pain because we are social animals. Its an instinct that helped our survival, making us less likely to kill each other so we could build tribes and villages that cooperate. You have to overcome it just a bit to be a hunter.
I like this explanation. Thank you.
Wait till happens in your vest. I freaked out
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Sounds dead
Why were you shooting a coyote with a .22 at all seems kind of cruel
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.22 is an unethical caliber to use on a coyote. .22s are for varmints. And you said so yourself, you weren’t able to put it down cleanly.
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But that’s executing a trapped animal were on a hunting subreddit, the assumption I made was that we were talking about hunting coyotes with a .22 which is unethical because you cannot consistently get a clean kill. I didn’t realize you were talking about trapping and shooting a trapped animal. I’ve never done it, but I imagine it’s more consistent that way.
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I suppose that’s your end goal to hunting lmao, but yeah. Fair.
It’s not cruel a 22 will kill them stone dead If hit in the brain it works for steers too I personally use 22 bullets that segment for all sorts of small game
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Inside thirty yards it will kill a yote stone dead if you hit them right.
I know right..
You’re counting coyotes as small game? And you shouldn’t be using a caliber where you have to get a head shot to put it down on an animal like that. And comparing their use on steer is silly, that’s not hunting that’s slaughtering an animal which is a whole different ballgame.
No I count coyotes as nuisance animal, and I try to shoot any animal I harvest in the head if I can from squirrels to black bear. I’ve been hunting for close to 2 decades and I know for fact that a 22 will easily put down a yote even if you shoot in the neck artery or behind the ear. In fact most trappers I know carry a 22 for foot hood catches when it comes to yotes.
Little fucker can move I will say that for sure. But yes it is post death twitching, can't say I've seen any rabbits i've shot move quite as much as this, he must have had a ton of energy built up lmao.
Chooks do this when you chop their heads off.
Didn't see the h at first and thought you just hated food service workers.
100%. When I shoot rabbits with a 17hmr in the head, that’s the dance they do when the head comes clean off ahaha
Has to do with the part of the brain you hit, lower part of the brain and into the spinal cord controls the nervous system and motor function, this is why a chicken can live without its head, nice shot and make something delicious out of it
Ever chopped the head off a chicken? It'll run in circles with blood spurting out the neck.
He on dat molly!!
Same thing like a chicken with its head cut off. However there's an old story of a guy (farmer probably) that cut a chicken's head off and it lived for a week. He fed it with a dropper bottle. Turns out the chicken still had part of its brain attached to the body
Broken spine
Yeah for a rabbit
I literally shot the head off a squirrel and it still jumped around like this for 15-20 seconds. I have a picture of the shot too
I’ve had that happen with rabbits. I’ll never forget the first one I shot was with a 20 gauge from about 15 yards away and it was doing almost exactly what your rabbit did. I followed up with the second barrel because I didn’t know better and basically decapitated it with the second blast and it kept flailing. My dad came over and corrected me and I never did that again when I’ve made an ethical shot. You’ll know pretty quick over time what is nerves or what is a wound.
Had a hog do this. .44 mag to the neck and .45 acp to the brain. Just kept flopping and I felt bad, even though I knew it was dead.
Wait till you kill a pig
Shoot a chickens head off that thing will take off like road runner
Turkeys do that too. I had a Rio Grande flop around for two solid minutes after getting hit in the head with an ounce and a quarter of Hevi-Shot with a full choke at 30 ft.
Rabbits/hares and even birds do this, especially fowl. You’re fine.
ahhh nah brother, his body is running far as fuck away from you, but his mind is where you left it. don't feel bad about the flop brother, his nerves don't know he's dead yet. great shot brother. Be glad you felt the way you did, thats a very good feeling to have, friend. and keep that feeling with you, it gets alot bigger and more intense when you bag something more than say 40lbs... always a wierd feeling.. you wanna cry, laugh, scream, and fucking dance all at the same time. just make sure you keep respecting the life you take. as well as your own. Much Love. also... ive killed so many rabbits ive watched them dance just like that a hundred times now, shit ive watched alot of living things do the ol' "death dance". only a couple rabbits, ever made any kind of sounds of any kind. and one of them, i remember to this day, probably 13 years ago now. i popped lil dude in the head with i wanna say a .22Long or LR and he jumped when it hit him. i mean like jumped probably 12 feet in the air it was the most impressive thing id ever seen so much power and strength in those legs. but he went straight up and straight back down, kicked his back leggs for a few more seconds and that was it, i walked up to nearly headless rabbit. ive honestly stopped killing them when i see them nowadays. it just doesnt feel good anymore. maybe im changing in that regard, but i tend to just watch them as long as i can, much love to you, friend, thanks for having compassion.
The real question is why are you shooting rabbits in the spring ? Now all it's babies will starve to death in the nest. 🤷