Sunset district

## Rabbit Hunting

West of 19th Avenue is just like wilderness since the Parkside and **Sunset** districts of San Francisco aren't heavily populated. There are literally thousands of jack rabbits, squirrels and the like roaming among the high dune grasses and wildflowers of the undulating hills which stretch all the way to the beach.

George Stanton and his brother Bill, along with their best friends, Gene and Charlie Williams, love the freedom and excitement of gallivanting around the dunes. Hunting is not just a sport. Many people look forward to the wild rabbits, which they are able to capture, to be a part of their dinner. So the fun is also a way of contributing to the welfare of the family.

Early on Saturday mornings, George, Charlie, Bill and Gene along with other neighborhood kids, all meet at 19th Avenue and Judah around 7 am. They bring along all the dogs they could muster up.

To gather more dogs, all the boys begin to yell in unison ~ "Hooy, Hooy, Hooy!" over and over for about five minutes. All the dogs in the neighborhood know this howl. It is the gathering call for those backyard dogs who love to hunt with the boys. The dogs jump over their fences or crawl under them, and with the happiest smiles on their faces and their tails wagging in unison like feathers in the wind, they rush to the meeting place to begin the adventures with their cohorts. Some of the dogs are not allowed to go, so their masters tie them up in the back yards. You can hear them singing their sad songs as their partners run off, leaving them behind.

Actually, the dogs have just as much sense as their masters. They enjoy the hunt and all the kids. The boys start the hunt around 20th Avenue. One of the boys somehow always reports sighting some rabbits in the sage brush "just yesterday," and he thinks that there must be a nest nearby. The boys work their way out to 23rd Avenue and Santiago, then turn west, weaving their way through the bunch grass, sage brush and yellow lupinebrush, chasing and catching the rabbits all along the way. By the time they reach 32nd and Taraval, it's usually around noon time. If they are lucky, they have a nickel between them. With that nickel they go to the Williams Grocery Store and buy a loaf of raisin bread which they split among all the kids so that each one got his share. This is the time the dogs got only water. Then all the kids start toward the gathering place again.

There is an abandoned real estate office at 19th Avenue and Ortega. The kids stop off there to split up the rabbits ~ one for you, one for you and one for me ~ all around until the rabbits are evenly split. If there are any extra ones, they all remember who got it so that the next week the extras will go to the other fellows. They all get their even share and there are never arguments about who get the best of the split.

Sometimes the boys hunt clear down to Mud Lake (at Stern Grove) and then down to Sloat Boulevard which is the site of the Italian vegetable garden belonging to the Largomarsino family. Then they turn back for the trek home.

Everybody is be "dog tired" when they get home, and the dogs, too, collapse ~ totally exhausted, letting out a long sigh of relief. But everybody, including the dogs, is up and ready to go again early Sunday morning! The great outdoors is their playground and Mother Nature is their keeper.