The following article was printed in
Natural History Magazine, February, 1993,
reprinted December 1996, Small Pack Option Magazine,
and then reprinted, with permission in,
Better Beagling Magazine, August 2017 issue and
The Rabbit Hunter Magazine, July 2017.
It is now reprinted here for your reading pleasure with permission from
Mr. Charles Harris at Natural History Magazine.
It is now reprinted here for your reading pleasure with permission from
Mr. Charles Harris at Natural History Magazine.
On the Allegheny
from
Joe Ewing, High HareMan of the
Big
Woods Hare Hunters of the Allegheny.
Mr. & Mrs. J. Taylor
USO Sponsoring
Member Since 2011
Hi Joe
While
browsing through my notes, I found this interesting study and thought you could
use it in your columns.
Those
red squirrels are a menace and I use Ramis to solve my problems.
Enjoyed
the chase.
Keep
in touch.
Jim
Proud
to Support our Troops
A while back I received this note
from Big Woods Hare Hunters of the Allegheny charter member Jim Taylor of
DuBois, PA. A true sportsman, master
hare and rabbit hunter, Mr. Taylor has mentored many hare hunters, including
this reporter.
The article he relayed to me was
one I sent to him back in 1997. The twenty-year-old
article which Jim saved all these years was a photocopy of a December 1996 Small Pack Option Magazine
article which was reprinted from a February 1993 edition of Natural History Magazine.
At the suggestion of Mr. Taylor,
and by popular demand, I wish to share “HARE-RAISING ENCOUNTERS” with the
readers of Better Beagling Magazine. Some old-timers may recall reading the report. I will be adding pictures from my archives
and I hope everyone enjoys the story.
With
permission from Mr. Charles Harris at Natural
History Magazine, the Big Woods Hare Hunters of the Allegheny are proud
to present…
HARE-RAISING
ENCOUNTERS
by Mark O’Donoghue and Susan Stuart
From Natural History, February 1993,
copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc., 1993
Squirrels killing hares? Squirrels have certainly been seen raiding
bird nests, but we knew of no researchers who had noted squirrel predation of
hares.
Our study of the ecology of juvenile snowshoe
hares began in 1989, in Canada's Yukon Territory. Our work was part of the Kluane Boreal Forest
Ecosystem Project, a cooperative research effort of three Canadian
universities, whose aim is to examine the structure of the vertebrate community
in the coniferous forests of the north.
Our 125-square-mile study area was typical of boreal habitats found
across a broad band of Canada, Alaska and Eurasia. Spruce forest, broken occasionally by small
natural clearings and aspen stands, dominated the landscape. A patchy and often dense understory of
willows and bog birch provided ideal cover for the hares. Throughout the northern part of their range
in Canada and Alaska, snowshoe hare demographics undergo dramatic fluctuations
at fairly regular intervals. These
fluctuations are often referred to as the ten-year cycle because the hare
populations reach very high densities (one to four hares per acre) every eight
to eleven years, almost simultaneously across North America. Then, over the
next few years, hare populations plummet.
They fall as low as about one hare per 200 acres and stay at that level
for several years, after which the cycle begins again.
 |
| A Pennsylvania Boreal Forest. |
Researchers vary in their explanations of why
the hare cycle occurs - some support a predator-prey cycle, others cite a
hare-vegetation interaction. All major
studies, however, have noted the same demographic changes in hare populations
over the course of the cycle. Whether in
the Yukon, in Alberta, or in Minnesota, the survival rate of juveniles is the
single most important factor responsible for increases or decreases in the hare
population. However, the rate of
juvenile survival measured in previous studies was always of hares older than
one month. Younger hares were difficult
to find in the field and did not enter the live-traps set by biologists. The purpose of our research was to determine
the survival rates of hares from birth through their first days and weeks and
to investigate their ecology.
When we started research, our challenge was
to locate some leverets. Young hares are
well camouflaged, and, unlike rabbits, which give birth in relatively conspicuous
nests or burrows, hares are born in well concealed depressions, often under
logs or shrubs. To be certain of having
animals to study, we placed pregnant female hares in individual pens for a few
days before they were ready to give birth.
As soon as the hares were born, we removed the pens so that the mothers
and young could move about freely. We
ear-tagged 850 babies in order to identify them. And, to follow the young hares’ movements
more closely, we glued tiny radio transmitters, weighing approximately one-twentieth
of an ounce, to the fur between the shoulder blades of 254 of the 850
hares. We followed the leverets around
every day, noting as they grew how they fared during their first weeks of life.
Snowshoe hares are very prolific. During the two summers of our study (which
took place during the periods of high hare numbers), most of the females
produced three litters, each with one to nine young. A female averaged about twelve young per
season. Females usually mated again on
the same day on which they gave birth, so the litters were spaced apart only by
the snowshoes hare’s thirty-six-day gestation period.
We were able to watch the births of one
litter quite closely. Sitting up on her
hind legs, the doe gave birth to six young, cleaned them, and fed them their
first meal, all in about fifteen minutes.
She then moved away and did not associate with her litter again during
the rest of the time that they were together in the pen, about ninety minutes.
Unlike rabbits, hares are born well
developed. They weigh approximately two
ounces, are fully furred, and open their eyes within an hour of birth. They also gain coordination quickly and are
soon mobile enough to crawl into a huddle with their siblings. Even before they were a day old, they can hop
fast enough to make capturing them quite a challenge.
Most litters stayed together at the birth
site for three to seven days. The amount
of maternal attention the young hares received during this period varied. Although seldom coming close to their litters,
some mothers stayed within 50 to 100 feet of their young for the entire day and
vigorously chased away red squirrels, ground squirrels, and birds that wandered
too near. Other females stayed
completely away from their litters during the daytime.
 |
| The red dot indicates Kluane Lake in Canada's Yukon Territory.
When the baby hares first ventured out from
their birth sites, they generally moved ten to twenty feet away and hid under
shrubs, leaves and logs. Occasionally we
found one or more hiding together, but most of the leverets remained alone in
these concealed spots, even on the first day away from their siblings.
|
With the help of a colleague, Carita Bergman,
we kept a round-the-clock watch at the birth sites of several mother hares to
determine how and when their young were fed after their litters had broken up. From these observations, and from following
the radio tagged animals, we learned that in their first couple of weeks the
leverets remained in the same hiding places, often more than 200 feet away from
their birth sites and littermates, for more than a week. During their first few weeks, we observed
juveniles nursing once each day, shortly after twilight, which – in the long
Yukon summer days – was usually between midnight and 1 a.m.
In two of the nursing sessions we observed,
the mother hare hopped through the area in which her young were hidden, about
120 feet from their birth site and 90 feet from each other and made high
chirping noise. Then she appeared to
leave the area. The leverets moved from
their hiding places and regrouped at the birth site, where their mother joined
them 30 minutes later. On four other
occasion, the individual leverets gathered at their birth sites with no
apparent solicitation from their mother.
Each time, when the mother arrived at the birth site, she nursed her young
for only about ten minutes before leaving again. By morning, each leveret was back to its
original hiding place. Orrin Rongstad
and John Tester, both of the University of Minnesota, found similar nursing
patterns, as did French and Dutch researchers studying European hares. The European researchers also analyzed hare
milk and found it to be extremely rich and concentrated, which is essential for
animals that nurse their young so briefly and infrequently.
Once the leverets left the birth site, they
seldom returned except to nurse. On one
occasion, a litter of three, seven day old leverets regrouped at their
sheltered “nest” on a rainy day, four days after leaving it. On another, a radio tagged leveret left its
birth site at three days of age and was found during the next few days with the
newborn litter of another female about 200 feet away. The young hare was healthy and gained weight
during this time, so apparently, it was not rejected by its “foster”
mother. While many mammals will only
care for their own offspring, leporids (hares and rabbits) may be an
exception. Researchers studying European
hares and swamp rabbits have also noted cases of females accepting strange
young.
As the young hares grew older, they gradually
ranged farther from their birth sites.
By the age of twenty days, their home ranges approached those of their
mothers in size (four to six acres).
They also began to move more during the daytime. Hares younger than two weeks old could easily
be approached while they remained motionless in their hiding places, but older
leverets fled as soon as we got within ten to twenty feet of them. Judging from their droppings, the leverets
has begun to feed on grass and other herbaceous plants when ten to fourteen
days old, but they continued nursing for another week or two. After this age, most leverets were weaned,
and their mothers had another litter on the way. Juveniles from the last litter of the season
sometimes nursed until they were forty days old, however.
The first juvenile hares began leaving their
natal ranges when they were about five weeks old. Those that we could follow usually moved at
least a quarter-mile away from their mothers’ home range. Only 4 of the 850 leverets that we ear-tagged
when they were newborns settled as adults near their birth sites.
Soon after we started following the
radio-tagged juveniles, we began to get some puzzling results. Many of the leverets we tagged were killed
before they were ten days old, and we found almost half the carcasses (80 of
the 170 that died) in trees or in red squirrel middens. Another tenth (18) of the leveret carcasses
ended up, mostly eaten, in arctic ground squirrel borrows.
Red squirrels were abundant on our study
area. They constructed large underground
middens around the bases of spruce trees where they stored their winter supply
of spruce cones. The trees standing in
the middens so typically served as sites for the squirrels’ nests (irregular
spheres of grass in lower branches) and additional storage of mushrooms and
other items they gathered. Ground
squirrels were also common, especially in small clearings, and their extensive
borrow systems dotted the floor of the forest.
At first, we concluded that these baby hares
must have died of other causes and had been scavenged by squirrels. We knew that both red and ground squirrels
sometimes fed on carrion to supplement their mostly vegetarian diet. As our research progressed, however, we began
to suspect that at least some of the carcasses must represent perdition by the
squirrels themselves. For one thing, the
number of stashed hares just kept mounting, beyond what seemed reasonable if
the squirrels were simply scavenging.
For another, we couldn’t think what predator would kill so many baby
hares and then leave them around.
Coyotes and lynx generally leave little behind when feeding on such
small prey. Two other potential
mammalian predators – weasels and martens – were scarce on our study site. And birds of prey, such as hawks and owls
typically either eat their prey at the spot where they made the kill, or carry
it off to their nests or special feeding trees.
Several observations bolstered our
suspicions. During the course of our
study, other biologists working in the area twice observed ground squirrels
attacking and killing young hares. We
also saw one red squirrel carrying a live, wounded levered, and three others
running away from freshly killed leverets.
Just to be sure, however, we tested the scavenging efficiency of
squirrels by placing carcasses of predator-killed leverets on our study
sites. The squirrels only scavenged about
one quarter of them at the same time (early June) that we were finding evidence
of squirrel for more than 85 percent of juvenile moralities. These findings, coupled with our observations
of mother hares chasing squirrels from their litters, gave us strong evidence
that both red squirrels and ground squirrels were indeed predators of snowshoe
hares.
Over the course of the two summers of our
study, we calculated that only about one-third of the baby hares survived the
first two weeks of life. In the end, we
concluded that of those that died, about three-quarters were killed by small
mammalian predators, most likely red and ground squirrels. By contrast, only 5 percent of the
radio-tagged leverets were killed by great-horned owls, northern goshawks, and
re-tailed hawks – animals generally thought of as significant predators of
small mammals. We have evidence from
other research being conducted in the area that young hares sometimes wind up
being gulped down by coyotes and lynx and eaten by northern harriers and
northern hawk owls. Even gray jays –
robin sized birds
known as scavengers – have been seen killing
baby hares.
 |
| A gray jay. |
By the time they are two weeks old, the
leverets are too big and too fast for the smaller, opportunistic predators to
catch. Until then, however, the best bet
for a litter of young hares seems to be to lie low and to split up as soon as
possible, so that if a predator does strike, it won’t be able to feast on an
entire litter. Similarly, the less often
they nurse, the less likely they are to be discovered.
The behavior of young hares and their mothers
makes a great deal of sense when considered as a defense against predators. The
answers we have found, however, have left us with many new questions. Do squirrels prey extensively on leverets
only when they are abundant? Does this
predation have a significant effect on the hare cycle, or would most of the
leverets been killed later by other predators anyway? To answer these and other
questions, we will need to return to the boreal woods at different points in
the hare cycle and see how the leverets fare then. But we are sure that for baby snowshoe hares,
the forest will always be full of danger.
The Kluane
Boreal Forest Ecosystem Project operated from 1986 to 1996 in the southwestern
Yukon. Comprehensive research information
on snowshoe hare and many other animals may be read by googling the Kluane
Boreal Forest Ecosystem Project on the internet.
