Cottontail Cover Patch (11 Plants) | Spring 2027

A thick, thorny cover strip for cottontails, for small-game hunters in the Dakotas and Minnesota. Sea buckthorn for thorny cover, Rocky Mountain juniper for evergreen cover, and golden currant.

Sea buckthorn and juniper come as separate male and female plants, and these are seedlings, so the sex of each one is unknown until it blooms. Plant them all together to give yourself the best odds of both.

How to Plant It

Plant a strip at least 15 ft. wide, with shrubs 3 to 6 ft. tall covering a fifth to half of the area, next to the grass or field edge rabbits feed in. Sea buckthorn suckers hard, which is the point here, but plant it where that's what you want.

Keep it away from your fruit trees. Rabbits girdle young fruit trees in winter, so don't put a rabbit patch next to your orchard, and guard every young trunk.

Keep junipers away from your fruit. Rocky Mountain juniper hosts cedar-apple rust and its cousin rusts, which also hit crabs, hawthorn, serviceberry, pears and mountain ash. University of Minnesota Extension says keeping junipers a few hundred yards away cuts the problem down, though spores can travel farther.

Is Planting This Baiting?

Growing plants is habitat work. Rules on fruit or nuts you pick, move or pile up vary by state, so check your state's hunting regs before you hunt over it.

For the full how-to (why these plants work, spacing, protection and timing), read our cottontail cover guide.

See our other wildlife bundles on the wildlife orchard bundles page.

Photos: cottontail by The High Fin Sperm Whale (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.