Mr Hanning, who delivers the Otago Daily Times, said Stan trapped and hunted rabbits for Earnscleugh Station and other properties for about 20 years , before joining the Molyneux pest destruction board in the mid-1950s.
Stan was born in Palmerston in 1911, and at age 13 left his family and walked to Alexandra's Conroys Gully, where he built a sod and canvas hut.
He worked for fruitgrower Richard Dawson until he was 15, then became a rabbiter.
''My dad was a great trapper,'' Mr Hanning said.
''He used to set 120 traps a day and then go around to collect the rabbits.''
After they were gutted, they were hung in lines on a wire fence and collected in a truck to take them to the local canning factory, where they were turned into canned meat for soldiers serving overseas during WWI. Stan received 4p a rabbit, but with the establishment of the rabbit boards in the mid-1950s they became valueless.
Mr Hanning said Stan then worked for the board for wages from 8am to 5pm and his father would often say there was no incentive to go out of his way to kill additional rabbits [than what he could do during those hours].
''My dad did 30 years with the rabbit board until he retired in his mid-60s.
''He would set the traps each day, depending on the time of year, and they would catch the rabbits by the front leg.
''It was quite a cruel way to catch them, but in those days rabbits were money.
Apart from when they used 1080, they did not use masks or gloves.
Stan and other rabbiters would spend hours gutting rabbits, then eat sandwiches without hand-washing.
''Their immune systems were far greater in those days.''
Stan eventually married Doris Thompson, and they had five children, all raised in Lord Lochie's stone cottage on Chapman Rd where he planted 300 fruit trees.The family had hens and a big vegetable garden as well as plenty of rabbit meat. Stan died aged 90 after retiring to the Ranui rest-home in 2001.
