how to hunt snowshoe hares

First, have it be 4 months ago when there was snow everywhere.

Then find a boreal forest region.

Look up the historic range of snowshoe hares, pay attention to maps that show habitat loss due to climate change.

Get angry at climate change.

Overlay the snowshoe hare range maps with maps that show young aspen growth.

Next look for 0-5 year old aspen forest next to coniferous swamps.

Drive out in the morning and start looking for tracks and scat.

Get into the type of young aspen stands that make walking in a straight line difficult. Think walking with your shoulders dipping in and around young trees. If you’re not getting frustrated with the terrain, you’re not in snowshoe hare habitat. If it’s too easy to walk in a straight line unimpeded, you’re not in the right spot.

Hope for fresh snow that just stopped to show the freshest tracks.

Hope for snow in general.

Realize you’re looking for a white animal against a white background with vertical grey/green aspen trunks bisecting your field of view.

Again hope for fresh snow and follow tracks.

Let me backtrack before going into the woods put a compass around your neck and figure out where north is in relation to your car. Then turn on “go and track” in OnX. Start recording. If you get lost you can always follow your track back out. Also note on OnX where your car is and where the major roads and other landmarks will be before entering the super dense woods. Again if it’s not dense, you’re not in the right spot.

Another trick for OnX is to turn on the game birds layer. The areas marked for grouse often correlate with snowshoe hare habitat.

Start walking and pay attention to humps sitting on snowy hillocks. Snowshoe hares don’t burrow necessarily so they may be sitting in a slightly elevated position looking at you. Go slow and scan the immediate horizon. Don’t neglect right under your feet as well, sometimes they stay still and won’t move until you are right on top of them.

Scat, it’s going to look like an oblate spheroid, think M and M vs. marble.

Look for horizontal motion against the vertical tree trunks. This is where the dense young aspen growth, helps you. It makes it easier to see the white blur across the gray/green trunks.

Watch where they stop running, they aren’t necessarily still running and you can’t see them. They probably just stopped exactly where you last saw them. They will probably lead you in circles.

Back to looking before they move hopefully. They just sort of appear. When you look at enough snow and your eyes get used to the patterns of the snow pack, the first time you see a hare it will just look slightly off and different. Something just looks off. Pull up your gun and peep through your scope. You’ll see something hairy where there should be smooth snow. It’s a slight texture difference that you just have to see a few times and train your “game eye” You’ll also look for their black eye, against a white rounded hump.

Gun choice - Ruger .22 WMR with a scope. Check on everything that looks slightly different through your scope. Nine times out of ten I found myself looking at a piece of birch bark that looked off against the white snow. Or a black-ish knot in a downed log framed against the vertical aspen trees.

Also I should backtrack and thank my best friend, he taught me all of this. Well some I figured out on my own, or he told me and I didn’t hear him and I pretended I figured it out later.

Our choice is headshots to avoid meat waste. Makes it more sporting and ethical.

If you are lucky enough to find and harvest a snowshoe hare. Our preferred method of cleaning is to skin them, quarter them, break off the feet, cut out the backstraps and discard the rest to the coyotes.

A simple recipe for a rabbit stew will come in a future blog post.