An evening distress call from my brother in law Neale, saw me drive the mile to his house with my Career 707 .22 air rifle, after he had seen a couple of rabbits munching through his recently planted lettuce plants. He had scared them off, but now they were back again.

Whispering, Neale pointed to the area beyond his green house, where a small lawn stretches back to the wood behind, saying that just before I arrived, he had seen three from the bedroom window overlooking the garden. Operating the under lever trigger mechanism to cock and load the Career, I crept forward using the greenhouse as cover. I still had not seen them, but with the rifle raised, moved forward again around the side. There they were 15 yards away, feeding on the lawn. The largest had its back to me and I fired down into the upper chest, watching it jump forward and then roll over.

Before I could take another shot, the others had bolted behind the lower shed into the wood. My Career 707 .22 is powered up to FAC spec at 28 ftlb and firing H&N Barracuda Hunter Extreme 19 grain pellets, is as effective as a rimfire rifle out to 40 yards, while being safe to shoot within the confines of a garden.

Neale took me down to the scene of the crime, a veggie plot boxed in with orange plastic, showing me a hole that had been gnawed through. This had been to keep the local cats out, but these rabbits had no respect for cats, or human fences. After his spring planting, rabbits had got under the side fence and demolished his crop. We saw a pair of rabbits and I shot them, then reinforced the fence, problem solved.

He had only just planted out his winter lettuce plants at the weekend, only to see them gone the next day. “How did they know they were there?” I suggested that they had probably been coming in every day to eat the apples, or the lawn, but the lettuces were too good to miss. Droppings everywhere backed this up.

Refugees from a new housing complex along the street, that had replaced a small holding, the rabbits had now made their home in the wood at the bottom of the garden, and had scraped out a channel under the fence. Blocking this off will only be a temporary measure, I think the rabbits are there to stay and will soon forget the loss of their kin. The answer is a fine wire fence around the veggie plot, or more visits with the Career 707.