The Tracker's Handbook by Len McDougall

Author:Len McDougall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

This snowshoe hare demonstrates the effectiveness of its white winter coat. (Photo courtesy National Park Service.)

Hare and rabbit scats are generally spherical, about 0.25 inches in diameter, first excreted as green pellets (brown in winter, when diets consist of dry, woody bark and twigs), then reingested and excreted a second time as brown balls from which all nutrients have been extracted. This process is called cecal fermentation.

Sign: In winter, sign includes stripped, barkless shrubs such as sumac, dogwood, and willow. Neatly clipped grasses and stems are seen in summer. Trails are often regularly used and well packed; trails in snow may be trenches more than a foot deep, enabling hares to run fast through troughs too narrow for predators to use.

Vocalizations: Hares are normally silent. Mothers purr while nursing; newborns whimper and whine; the alarm cry is a prolonged squeal. In all cases the calls of hares are lower toned than those of a rabbit. When battling over territory, combatants growl and hiss. Thumping a hind foot repeatedly against the earth is both an alarm and a ploy to entice hidden predators into revealing themselves.

Life span: Few snowshoe hares die of old age; most become prey to a host of predators. Average life span is 4 years.

Diet

The snowshoe hare’s diet is broadly varied but normally vegetarian, including grasses, vetches, asters, jewelweed, strawberry, pussytoes, dandelions, clovers, and horsetails. In winter, snowshoes forage for buds, twigs, smooth bark, and the tips of evergreen twigs. If plant foods are scarce, they have been known to raid traps baited for carnivores to get meat.

A notable trait among leporids is their need to eat the same food twice. Much of the hare’s diet is tough cellulose, and because most of the hare’s digestive processes are contained in the lower gut, foods must be eaten, excreted, then reeaten to extract all available nutrients. Called “cecal fermentation,” this process permits the hare to quickly ingest plants where feeding may be hazardous; then the hare can retire to a safe location where the plants can be completely digested at leisure.

Although considered food by most carnivores, snowshoes are good survivors, a trait that can be seen in the lack of fat on their bodies. With a broad diet that encompasses most vegetation, as well as carrion when times get hard, the hares have little need to carry food reserves on their bodies. But they do need to maintain a lean and muscular body that can outrun fast predators, such as the coyote. Early frontiersmen for whom hares and rabbits were a winter staple often suffered from “rabbit starvation” by winter’s end. Fat malnutrition occurs—as it did with the Lewis and Clark Expedition—when fat is lacking in the diet, even when plenty of other foods are available.

Mating Habits

Breeding season encompasses the summer months, beginning in March, when testicles descend, and extending through August, when testicles retract and go dormant. Males pursue females by their pheromonal scents, frequently congregating around receptive does in groups. Mating contests between males resemble boxing matches: Both contenders rise on their hind legs and bat at one another with sharp-clawed forefeet.

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