Have we done a rabbit/hare theme recently? Generally, they provide my wife and I with a lot of recreation and a lot of great meals. If I count the feral domestic rabbits and the diminutive pika, we have 7 different Lagomorphs in Idaho. Snowshoe hares, white-tail jacks, black-tail jacks, mountain cottontails, pygmy rabbits, and the two mentioned above.


Baby Mountain Cottontail


Summer Snowshoe Hare


Black-tailed Jackrabbit


Summertime White-tailed jackrabbit


Miss Lisa hunting Mountain Cottontails.


Jack

Getting the kids out there....

Excellent atrapper -

Couple of fine-looking offspring you got there. Good on you for gettin' 'em out!

Jack

Thanks Gulo. Interesting read about the many rabbit/hares you have around. I had no idea. In Minnesota I'm only aware of cotton tails and snowshoe hares and maybe the occasional jack rabbit.

Do any rabbit species in the lower 48 get tularemia? Ticks? How far south of Alaska does tularemia and the ticks that spread it reach?

Hey Gulo, we enjoy hunting our Eastern Cottontails quite a bit

I thought that tularemia occurred when the cycle was on the down swing. Bad stuff!

Very nice photos, everyone .

the rabbit tick or Haemaphysalis leporispalustris is quite common to extreme on snowshoe hares, around Winnipeg it has not been found on our Eastern Cottontails ( 3500 sample! )
Snowshoes always go back to a form to rest and this tick can go through it's cycle.
One Halloween I collected 2 snowshoes and looked that them the next day, there was well over 3000 of these ticks on them and everyone had to be looked at because they are quite similar to Ixodes with their mouthparts.
One of the white tailed jackrabbit that I collected holds down the weight record usually used in publications , since it is in a museum.
Bushmaster posted some rabbit pics last spring and you can see the ticks on the rabbits ears.

Sharon that Jackrabbit leaping in a bound sure drives home to me. Took a photographer out once and he got that pose, moments before the 12 guage did it's collecting. The book Mammals of NA by Wrigley has the illustration in it.

Color change is about complete....and just in time! Snowed a couple of days ago...

N50, I'm amazed how fast they can run, and for how long. I've seen Saluki coursing hounds running them, and it amazes me how long they run and often get away from the hounds. Love seeing the snowshoe hares, and cottontails.

The heavyweights in the bunny family. Picture taken on banks island this past July when I was up there deconstructing a weather station. The wide open terrain can be misleading on judging size and distance but take my word these bunnies are about the size of a fox

Must be good food source for them there on Banks Island!

martentrapper - Yes, tularemia occurs in the mountain (Nuttal's) cottontail as well as other Leporids. It also occurs in mice and voles, and once, it occurred in me! Not a pleasant malady, to be sure. Many years ago I collected some ticks in Alaska from red-backed voles. Found that they are known in western/interior Alaska with the line running basically from Fairbanks to Aniak, with ticks being found south and east of that line. I suspect in the 30 years since that demarcation line was known, the line has moved farther north.

Ryan -

Are those Arctic Hares or Tundra Hares? I know both are big. These white-tailed jackrabbits down here get rather big as well (heavier than most of our foxes), but I don't think they are nearly as big as Tundras or Arctics. Neat photo. Thanks.

Arctic hare. We had between 4-10 in sight during the entire deconstruction project.

Thanks Ryan.

Yelp here in Virginia to

Rabbits have been scarce in the areas I hunt in north central and southeast PA for many years now. Clean farming techniques create a lack of cover and increased predation from the high red tail hawk and coyote population in the southeast and bobcats plus an expanding fisher population in north central are the main reasons.

A friend with excellent beagles let me tag along a few years ago. We were in excellent cover but it was -4 degrees that morning and terrible scenting conditions. The dogs did the best they could but only had a few runs and I was the only guy to get a bunny.





One of my old labs fetching a rabbit that we flushed during a bird hunt.



Another incidental that a buddy flushed out of the thick stuff on a pheasant hunt last month. I only had time to throw the gun up slap the trigger twice before he disappeared. I thought I missed him until the dog picked him up. First one in a while.

I have limited experience with jacks but a fair amount with Arctic’s. Not too sure arctics are noticeably larger than jacks!

I always have some rabbit snares in my pocket when running the trapline in winter.Its easy to hang a few snares in the well used runs when I come across them and pick up supper.
The snowshoe hares here are real meat eaters and will get in marten trapsets on the ground.One reason boxes in trees are more effective for marten.
Snowshoe rabbit fur is a nice fur and useful.I have developed a method of tanning them that makes the leather considerably stronger and more durable than conventional tanning methods.