Obviously, such chunks of habitat are attractive and need not be large to be attractive to members of the rabbit clan. It is sort of like having your kitchen, bedroom, a free bar and a big-screen television in the same room. Why would you want to be anywhere else, especially when all of your buddies are hanging out there, too?

Ideally, most rabbit hunters would like to pursue cottontails in open grass and weed patches, where the hunters can see as well as hear the race. However, for rabbits, the really bad thickets are the closest things to safe havens. Even the most industrious coyote, fox or bobcat would likely go on a field mouse diet rather than tackle such a thorny, no pun intended, situation. Certainly, avian predators like hawks and owls are not prone to going kamikaze into cover that they might not be able to get out of. Rabbits may not be deep thinkers, but they have a sense of self-preservation. They can either live in the thickets, especially those with a built-in food supply, or they can hop around like a Disney character out in the green grass and flowers and be eaten. Not a hard choice, even for a rabbit.

Having called the old homesite covers "small," let me hasten to add that even smaller ones can be equally good if the situation warrants. The absolute hottest rabbit hunting I have enjoyed in half a century of chasing cottontails took place on another overgrown piece of farmland. It consists of a narrow strip with a "straightened" creek that is normally dry in the center. Gullies sprout from the sides like the ribs on a filleted bass, and briar tangles, plum thickets and other unpleasant vegetation have taken over the gullies. Along the creek's original bank the oak trees still stand, most with honeysuckle-festooned wire sticking out from a fence that was nailed there a couple of generations ago when small farms were the rule rather than the exception.

My partner in crime was Jim Melton, a successful country songwriter and musician who is also a beagle fancier and needed a break from his busy life in the Big City. He pointed his dogs into the end of the cover beside where we had parked my truck, and less than half an hour later, we were putting the dogs back into their boxes. The truck had never been out of sight. All that the dogs had to do was drop off in a gully and a rabbit would come out into the creek bottom or out the top where the ground cover was short enough to allow a reasonably good shot.

A quick examination showed that mast that had fallen on the higher ground had long since been consumed by the resident wildlife, but hitting the slopes and especially into the cracks and crevices were still there in sufficient bulk to keep the local cottontails happy and well fed. Without good dogs, we could have walked everywhere that we could penetrate and kicked every brushpile around the fringes and gotten precious little except for some exercise and fresh air for our troubles. The bunnies were back deep in the cover -- and who could blame them?

I have nothing against brushpiles and fencerows. If you are a hunter and can resist sticking your foot in either of them, then you were raised differently from most of us. Once in a while, you will actually boot a rabbit out, but don't count on it unless you are lucky enough to be in an area that is low on predators. Where feral dogs and cats are common, you can just about forget seeing a rabbit, but go ahead and kick the brushpiles: It still feels natural.

There is a saying that goes, "size isn't everything" and never was that more true than when talking about cottontail cover. If it's nasty, full of stickers and dotted with oaks, beech or other mast-bearing trees, then hitch up your brush britches and let the beagles go because the action is about to start.