The hunt, which first started in the 1990s and would have killed hundreds of thousands of rabbits over the years will not take place this year and is unlikely to be back.
It was last staged in 2021 and cancelled the last three years because of fie risk and other factors.
The hunt was organised by the Lions Club of Alexandra.
Club secretary Donald Lamont said the writing had been on the wall over the past couple of years and the hunt had never got near to being put on this year.
‘‘The problem is the landowners are not interested in having groups of people that they do not know being on their property,’’ he said.
The farmers did not want people on their land they had no knowledge about, he said.
The laws around liability were unlikely to change in the short term and until they did there would not be a bunny hunt.
The club had to find a minimum of 15 to 20 landowners in the Central Otago area and that had been just too hard to do.
Many farmers were laying poison for rabbits and did not want hunters walking through their paddocks.
Mr Lamont said he did not know how much money was raised over the years, but it would have been a lot.
The hunters, usually about 200 in recent years, gathered at Pioneer Park on Good Friday morning and then left to go to their balloted property and hunt the rabbits.
They would then come back to the park on Saturday afternoon and count of rabbits, hares and other animals.
In the last hunt about 12,000 rabbits were caught.
In 1997, a record 23,949 rabbits were shot by 44 teams.
