Jim, most of the snowshoe hunting hereabouts is plinking head shots with a .22. Those who use shotguns are looked upon as greenhorns regardless of their ages. Hounds rarely. A gut-shot rabbit is a stinking mess. Our rule is that if you don't kill with a .22 through the head, if blood or other is below, it's cleaned right there, you holding the legs, the poor-shot skinning and cleaning, into plastic bag, a fraction of whole animal weight.
As for Canadian regulations, canvasback accurately reflects the contradictions that so often make the law appear as an ass, like the American on my homepage yesterday charged for a pencil drawing his six- or seven-year-old daughter made of a "gun" in school. During exactly 70 years of hunting I've never met a game warden nor seen unwarranted abuse of gunners by misguided or vindictive authorities. It happens, of course, as everywhere.
