The Snowshoe Hare

By Al Lowe
Contributor

This animal is found right across Canada, from coast to coast. It is a true hare, and not a rabbit, even though we often call it the Snowshoe Rabbit. (It used to be called Varying Hare)
This hare is one of the most important links in the whole ecology of Canada. It is a staple diet for a whole host of predators - foxes, wolves, Lynx, hawks, owls, fisher, to name a few. To counteract all of his enemies, he has some protection of his own. For one, his hearing is marvelous - those big ears do serve a useful purpose. He is a fast runner, having been clocked at over 30 miles per hour. And he can make some prodigious leaps if he has to - 10 feet or so at a single bound. Those big feet also help him - to run on top of even fluffy snow, while his long-legged enemies flounder.
Snowshoe Hares have some very peculiar habits. For one thing, they ‘dance’ in the moonlight. A number will come together, and go into a communal spasm of jumping, thumping the ground, and bouncing over one another. In the spring, mating dances are even more frantic. The males jump and bounce several feet in the air, stand on their front feet and so on, all to put on a good show for the little lady. This kind of mating dance, among English hares, gave rise to the expression ‘mad as a March hare’.
Young hares are called leverets, and are born fully furred and with their eyes open. They are able to move about on their own in a few hours. This is altogether different from the true rabbits.
Hares are vegetarians. In the summer, they eat almost anything green. In winter they depend largely on bark and twigs of young trees. A hare can reach up to about two feet, so in winters with a fair snowfall, they may be able to clear the underbrush up to five feet or more.
The Snowshoe Hare has a very pronounced cycle of about 10 or 11 years. The population builds up to a very large peak, and then suddenly crashed to nearly nothing. Some examples from the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1924 fewer than 1,000 pelts were sold, but in 1942, about three cycles later, more than nine million went on the market. A combination of overpopulation with its associated over browsing, starvation, and the easy spread of disease is thought to cause this fairly regular fluctuation.
If you see a fairly big ‘rabbit’ about three pounds or so, and pure white except for his ear tips, then you have the Snowshoe Hare, Lepus americanus. In the summer, he will be nearly all brown again.
Snowshoe Hares are very common, all through Northern Ontario.