In the early 1900s the Madeline Plains was home to numerous desert homesteaders. It turned out for many to be a hardscrabble existence, not what they were promised by the developers.
Life on the plains can be challenging. A menace there were jackrabbits. In 1920, the residents wrote their Congressman John E. Raker for assistance and explained the situation. They reported: “As soon as the crops are up and making good progress the rabbits begin work on them. The heaviest damage is done during August. One rancher reported losing 100 acres of wheat last summer. They take this crop in preference to oats and rye. It was reported that 70 tons of rabbit meat [to make tamales] had been shipped last season to the San Francisco market. It appears that the animals cannot be killed fast enough in this region to furnish relief to the ranches.” That is not a typo, 70 tons—the rabbit population had to be epic.
Now to the tamale part. It is not clear who came up with idea of jackrabbit tamales. Don Garate in his history of the Madeline Plains wrote: “Oh they did not make any great deal of money by hunting jackrabbits, but it made a little cash for spending. What they did was to kill the creatures and ship them to the Crown Commission Company in San Francisco, where they were made tamales out of them. The Crown Commission Company paid as high as four dollars a dozen for them. After shipping and handling charges had been taken out by the railroad that left the hunter about two dollars a dozen.
“Two dollars a dozen does not sound like much, but money was real scarce in those days and it did not take long to knock over a dozen of jackrabbits. They would shoot the animals, gut them and put them in gunny sacks. The rabbits would freeze solid in the sacks. Then when they had enough, or after awhile when someone was going to town, they would haul them to the railroad depot.
“The sacks full of rabbits would pile up on the dock at the depot until there was enough to make a shipment on the train. After a couple of weeks, a check would come back in the mail from the Crown Commission Company for each person who sent in a shipment of jackrabbits.”
That’s an interesting report about rabbit hunting – and personal. Jack rabbits were a problem in fields in NW Oklahoma. They came out to graze crops such as alfalfa and wheat which were grown on farms for a profit. Hunting rabbits was a sport in my father’s alfalfa field – at night. Armed men would ride on the front fenders, armed with shot guns or rifles; shot guns, I think. The headlights exposed the prey and the chase was on! I don’t know if that is still done and/or if it is legal.