Plague proportion means that the ground is litterally covered with them. Dad said that if you went outside and clapped your hands it looked like the hill side was moving. He told me of hare drives in southland where a number of farmers would get together and moving toward a central point that had been proof fenced would drive the hares and they would regularly get over 2000 animals in the 'trap' before they proceded to kill them by walking forward with a movable skirt behind the animals they would use clubs and step over the dead to keep reducing the area in to the trap as they kept after the live ones.
Rabbits were a different prospect and required a lot of shooting as they have the underground warrens where the hares (your jackrabbit I think) are above ground dwellers. Th problem was that no-one could afford the shooters so the problem was made worse and with 5 rabbits eating as much as one sheep the ground was so intensely grazed by the rabbit that it had to be destocked of the sheep and cattle so income was severly compromised. Aparently Grandparents house also burnt down in 1935( I have thier Morris chair which Grandad used as his kitchen arm chair till his death in 1972 and was about the only thing saved from the house. It had been a wedding present for them in 1921) and there were no financial reserves left to keep farming and like many others in the depression they had to walk of the land.
