Snowshoe hares are having a banner year. In early December I spent some time in the western Adirondacks, and it seemed like there were snowshoe hare trails everywhere. A bounding hare-like its cousin the cottontail rabbit-typically leaves sets of four prints in Y shaped arrangements. The two larger rear prints are usually even with each other and widely spaced while the smaller front prints are behind the rear, staggered, and placed along the center line of the trail.
In the photo at the right (direction of travel from right to left) the hind tracks are the larger and somewhat triangular prints on the left side. The right front print is near the center of the photo and the left front print is behind it toward the right edge of the frame.
The hare that made the tracks above didn’t sink very far into the snow, so it’s easy to see all four prints. But when temperatures stay low and the snow keeps falling there may be a foot or more of light, fluffy stuff on top that doesn’t offer much support. That’s the way it was during my recent Adirondack visit. Even the snowshoe hares were sinking deeply at every leap, and their landing patterns didn’t look the same.
In the photo at the left a bounding hare traveled from bottom to top, leaving a triangular hole each time it landed. At each landing the front feet plunged into the snow at the narrow lower part of the triangle. The more widely held hind feet–each foot spread out laterally for maximum support–landed just past the front feet to form the wide upper part of the triangle. The width at the widest part of these craters can approach twelve inches.
Snowshoe hares, like cottontails, tend to use the same travel routes repeatedly. This creates trails that offer firmer footing and easier movement, like the one shown at the left. I’ve read that these trails help the hares escape from predators, but I’m not sure about that. Maybe the predators can move more easily as well.
Snowshoe hare populations are known to go through cycles of abundance and scarcity. These cycles are especially pronounced in the Boreal forests of Canada, where population numbers of the Canada lynx are closely tied to the abundance of hares. The Adirondacks host a greater variety of both predators and prey–although there are no lynx–and population fluctuations don’t reach the same extremes for either prey or predators. But when hares are more abundant than usual, as they seem to be in the western Adirondacks this winter, young fishers, coyotes, and bobcats–the main predators of snowshoe hares in this region–are more likely to make it through their first winter. I hope to visit the same locations over the next few months, and I’ll be paying special attention to the tracks and signs of all the animals in the web of relationships that includes the snowshoe hare.