Tracking
Fresh snow turns snowshoe hunting into a reading exercise — follow the run back to the form, take a careful shot before the hare bolts. A boreal-country skill set, taught hunter to hunter, more art than method.
Small Game
Snowshoe Hare
Lepus americanus
Photo: NPS/Jim Peaco via Wikimedia Commons (PD) · PD · Source: commons.wikimedia.org
Conservation status
Least ConcernTag difficulty (general)
Over-the-counterVaries by state and unit.
Methods generally used
- Shotgun
- Rifle
The snowshoe is the cottontail's northern cousin — bigger, longer-legged, and built to live on top of snow that would bury a rabbit. Three to four pounds, brown in summer and white in winter (the molt is photoperiod-driven, not temperature-driven, which is increasingly costing them in low-snow years), with oversized hind feet that act as flotation. Snowshoes occupy the dense conifer and conifer-hardwood mix of the boreal and northern temperate forests: spruce-fir, cedar swamps, alder bottoms, regenerating clearcuts where blowdown and stem density give them a thermal and predator break. They follow a roughly ten-year population cycle, classic predator-prey textbook stuff driven by lynx and great-horned owls, so good years and lean years run in waves. Most hunters who chase them do it with hounds — small packs of beagles or specialized snowshoe hounds — because the dense cover that hares need is the same cover that frustrates a still-hunter. The hare runs bigger circles than a cottontail, often a quarter mile or more, and a good snowshoe day is as much a hound day as a hare day. Eating is excellent; meat is leaner and slightly stronger than cottontail.
Where they live
Across the boreal forest from Alaska east to Newfoundland, south through the northern Rockies (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming), the Cascades (Washington, Oregon), the Sierra Nevada (California fringe), the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan), and northern New England south through the Adirondacks and into the Appalachian high country as far as West Virginia. Range is shrinking on the southern edge as snowpack thins.
Habitat
Dense young conifer and conifer-hardwood mix: regenerating spruce-fir cuts, cedar and tamarack swamps, alder bottoms, blowdown tangles, krummholz fringes. Needs stem density of several thousand stems per acre for cover and a winter snowpack to function as designed. Avoids open mature forest.
Methods in detail
Still Hunting
Slow walking on snowshoes through dense cover, looking for the black eye and tip of the ear against snow. Brutally inefficient in deep cover but the only option where hound running is impractical. A .22 rimfire is often preferred over a shotgun for the precision needed at close range against a stationary hare.
Shotgun Over Hounds
Twelve or twenty gauge with #4 to #6 shot for the longer flush distances common in northern thickets. A small pack of beagles or snowshoe hounds works the swamp; the hunter posts on a known run — often a deer trail or old logging spur — and waits for the hare to circle through. Shots tend to be five to twenty yards but often through brush, so pattern density matters more than range.
Legal methods, weapons, and seasons vary by state and unit — confirm with the issuing agency before you hunt.
Photos
GlacierNPS via Wikimedia Commons (PD) · PD
GlacierNPS via Wikimedia Commons (PD) · PD
We're still verifying which game-management units carry Snowshoe Hare.
Outdoors won't publish species-unit assignments until the source agency has been hand-checked.
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