The Hare

The hare is the ultimate challenge to a gazehound’s running ability. Rabbit, fox and coyote hunters may disagree initially but the evidence is irrefutable once you’ve tried them all. The best hares (usually jackrabbits) have more pure speed than the others and are the equal of both the fox and coyote in high-speed endurance. In agility they are just a “hare” behind the cottontail and are easily superior to the coyote and most fox. Only in fighting ability are they easy game, as any hound but a small whippet should dispatch a hare with ease. The fact is — the best hares are uncatchable. They’ll beat greyhounds at the sprint and salukis over the distance and have moves that make them literally untouchable by the finest hounds on the plains. To watch such a hare in action is pure joy and is one of the things that keeps hounds and hunters coming back for more.

Hares differ from rabbits most precisely in their longer gestation period at the conclusion of which their young are born furred with eyes open and well developed. In contrast, rabbit young are born bald, blind and helpless.

Blacktail jackrabbit.

Hares are generally larger than rabbits with longer ears and legs. Their ears, besides alerting them to an enemy’s approach, also function in heat dissipation. This is the reason for a desert hare having ears two to three inches longer than one ranging the northern plains.

A hare’s eyes are positioned at the sides of its head enabling the animal to see to the front, sides and even behind with some ease. This is one reason why the hare can make that last second turn in the nick of time.

Hares get their incredible speed from their incredibly long legs. The back legs in particular are long and well angulated with lots of length to the hock. Like a gazehound they have an inordinate amount of muscle in relation to bone size and this muscle is concentrated in the loins and back legs. Few animals in nature — the cheetah, ostrich, various antelope, race horse, greyhound — can exceed or match the speed of the hare, and all are many times the hare in size. Nature is full of great wonders but surely one of the greatest is how she has evolved a creature weighing only 7 lbs. that, amongst its best specimens, can exceed 40 mph and hold it for a mile or more! Add a phenomenal ability to change direction on the run and regain a new line at sprint speed and you have the courser’s ultimate challenge.

Naturally, hares are double suspension runners and they rely on running ability to stay alive. They do not live in burrows or brush piles but in a form — a mere depression in the ground — and they will rarely hole up. The hare has an instinctive confidence in her running ability which says, “catch me if you can!”

One rarely sees a hare until she moves. They are very well camouflaged in repose — what the naturalists call protective coloration— but the light colored fur behind their ears and on their hips makes them blatantly obvious once they get up and run. This is directive coloration and the sudden change from the invisible to the obvious is part of the thrill of coursing hares. One walks for hours seeing nothing. Suddenly there’s the hare! — eight pounds of bounding bunny accelerating right from under your feet!

By any reckoning the jackrabbit is a true hare and most hare hunting with sighthounds in North America means jackrabbit hunting. A lively debate is sparked anytime someone says that one species of jack is faster than another, or, claims the jackrabbits in one state or region are the fastest of all. Thirty-plus years of experience, and a few thousand jackrabbit races, suggest to me the following observations.

Jackrabbits can vary greatly as to speed, endurance and agility and the differences are due mainly to the vagaries of their environment and natural selection, not species. The slowest jackrabbits I’ve run (I’m speaking of rough averages here; there are always exceptions) were the ones I started with in south Texas. My two salukis could easily outsprint most of them. They could outlast almost all of them. But probably 3 out of 4 of these blacktails escaped because in that habitat they could often make it into some brush inside of a mile.

I moved to northwest Minnesota and found the larger whitetail jacks there clearly faster and more enduring than the blacktails in south Texas. But I could catch about the same percentage with the same dogs because running room on the open prairie was almost unlimited. I started talking about how, “whitetails are faster than blacktails.”

These days I hunt in southwest New Mexico, the hares are blacktails, and they rival those northern whitetails in speed and endurance. Not surprisingly, we’re running on wide open grasslands where a hare must be exceptional to survive.

Whitetail jackrabbit

Whitetail jacks average roughly one third larger than blacktail jacks. By reason, all else being equal, a 9 lb. whitetail should be faster and more enduring than a 6 lb. blacktail, just as a 55 lb. greyhound should have a better top end and more distance than a 30 lb. whippet. But I can’t say for sure because the very best hares of both species are faster than anything I can turn loose from the slips.

As for the antelope jack, I’ve spent exactly 5 days running the critters, all in the same locale, and we have just two successful courses to describe. The hounds and I can describe many other courses where the Arizona hares got away in the brush. Based on that, I stand by what I said about the antelope jack. But my experience is too limited to form much opinion. Since I live just a few hours drive from antelope jack country I’m taking my admitted lack of experience as an incentive to get over to Arizona and learn more about coursing the antelope jackrabbit. I know of some fairly open grasslands habitat where they may be found and I want to see one go where she’s got room to run.

Other factors besides open space influence the quality of jackrabbits on the run. Mature jacks run better than the immature ones. Healthy jacks run better than those hit by tapeworm cysts, “wolves” (botfly larvae) or other maladies. All jacks run better in mid-winter when they’re feeding on dead vegetation than during warmer months when they are eating the green stuff; jacks living in and around alfalfa fields are often an easy pick-up for even average hounds. In wet weather jacks will often pick up clods of dirt on their feet and they may become easy pickings. Jackrabbits will go through population cycles in any given locale. When they’re plentiful a certain percentage will be easy marks. When they’re scarce, you’re dealing with hard survivors and it seems they can all test a hound’s best pursuit.

Some variations are unexplainable. I’ve run many blacktail jackrabbits around Roswell in eastern New Mexico. As to speed and endurance I’d rate them as good but clearly inferior to our southwest New Mexico variety. In both cases the hares live in wide open country, at about 4,000 feet elevation, a dry climate (8 to 12 inches annual precipitation) on natural range grass, and both populations have been pressured by coursing hounds for 100 years. Yet Milt Garrett of Roswell says he has caught 12 or more Roswell jacks in a row with his pack of greyhound/saluki hybrids. Nobody catches 12 jacks in a row anywhere from Las Cruces to the Arizona line. In mid-winter, it’s rare to catch two in a row.

Hard jacks, wherever they are found, are a houndman’s dream, precisely because they can’t be caught. As someone famous once said: “One’s reach should always exceed one’s grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” The best jacks will always be out of reach.

This is the jackrabbit most people are familiar with for it is the most wide ranging species and the one most often pictured in magazines and books. The blacktail is brownish gray with a certain amount of black flecking to the coat that in some individuals gives a bluish cast to the fur in sunlight. These hares with the dark bluish cast are sometimes referred to as “bluesides,” and there is an interesting bit of folklore on the southwestern plains that says that these so-called “blueside” jacks are a separate species and extremely fast. I’ve been taken by this folklore myself on occasion. When your pack has just been badly outrun by a real good blacktail jack, you can say: Damn! — never got close to that one; must have been one of them bluesides!”

The most distinguishing mark of the blacktail jack is the heavy black stripe down the rump and tail, whence comes the name “blacktail.” Some subspecies also have a black patch on the nape of the neck.

This is a slender, racy hare, averaging 17-21 inches in length and four to seven pounds in weight. The largest I’ve hefted, excluding pregnant females, was an 8 1/2 pound doe. As with other hares the doe is generally larger than the buck. The ears are 6-7 inches which is a lot of ear for a small mammal. Indeed, it was for its ears that these hares were originally called “jackass rabbits”, later shortened to jackrabbit.

As game for coursing the blacktail is superb as it is wide ranging, usually plentiful over its range, runs very well and almost never holes up. Generally they’ll sit tight in the form until the last minute, giving the dogs a good start. Their speed varies with individuals and the locale but many are very fast and enduring. They are the most elusive of the jackrabbits. The best moves I’ve seen hares put on dogs were mostly by blacktails.

Like other hares, blacktails are active at night, from evening until early light. You usually won’t see one at all during the day unless you force it out of its form. At one time there were blacktails in New Jersey and Massachusetts. These were imported some years ago as field trial game for bassets and beagles. Unfortunately, the importations didn’t take in the long run; the last I heard few if any jacks remained in either state.

All said, the blacktail jackrabbit is a dandy hare, very able on the run and due to its prevalence probably the most commonly coursed animal in the states.

The whitetail jack is also a wide ranging species. Her range is more northerly than the blacktails’ and they are found all across the Canadian prairies. Though generally plentiful the whitetail does not usually get as populous in a particular locale as does the blacktail.

You can tell a whitetail from a blacktail easily by the markings. This hare is more gray than brown, even in summer. She will turn white or pale gray in winter depending on how far north a particular whitetail is found. Her tail is nearly twice the length of the blacktails’ and, as the name implies, it’s white, above and below, all year. And when the whitetail gets up to run she takes long bounds, sometimes bouncing off four feet at a time like a mule deer, and she will flag that white tail at you. The blacktail takes shorter leaps and tucks her black tail under her rump as she moves away. That white flag or black stripe is an obvious identification.

You won’t be able to sneak up on the whitetail like you can the blacktail for the larger hare usually gives herself plenty of law and thereby gives the dogs less of a start. At full gallop, Ernest Thompson Seton rated the whitetail at 20 feet per running stride compared to a leap of 15 feet for the blacktail.

The best whitetail jacks can outrun a greyhound in a straight sprint. I’ve seen many blacktails outrun greyhounds but the hounds could usually manage a turn or two before losing ground. But, for an example, I once saw a whitetail get up not ten yards in front of my fastest greyhound, a good hotblood named Sally, while the hound was fresh, the terrain fast, and ten yards was as close as that hound ever got to that hare. That North Dakota jackrabbit began pulling away from Sally with the first step and increased its lead with every stride! I have also known this species to outlast salukis in hard condition over the distance. But then I’ve seen blacktails do that too. This would not be an average whitetail but only the especially good ones. From what I’ve seen, however, I must conclude that there are some whitetails that can reach 50 mph. The best of this species, like the best of the blacktails, simply cannot be caught by any hound.

As I have indicated this hare is less elusive than the blacktail. Still fresh, the prairie hare has excellent moves and will try anything with its four feet to get away. Get one tired and the hounds will pick her up rather quickly, while the blacktail may continue to dodge successfully even approaching exhaustion.

The whitetail jackrabbit will average 6-10 pounds. There are records of this hare reaching 12 pounds or better in some areas. I’ve never seen one caught that was quite that large; the biggest I’ve weighed came in at just under 11 pounds. On the other hand, of the better than 200 I’ve hefted, only one was less than six pounds.

You will find this hare on the northern plains from Wisconsin westward to the high pastures of the Rockies and Sierra Nevada. A splendid hare on the run and, more so than the blacktail, rather good table fare as well.

Antelope Jackrabbit, 10.5 lbs, Arizona 1972

Lepus Alleni

This is the largest and most spectacular jackrabbit. It’s range is small in this country and it is difficult to course where it does exist, but it is such a marvelous hare that it’s worthy of mention here.

The name “antelope” jackrabbit comes from this hare’s white sides and hips, a color trait that resembles that of the pronghorn antelope. There is another species of whitesided jackrabbit (Lepus callotis) which is smaller and lives in Mexico, from the central region of the country north through Durango into extreme southwestern New Mexico. The New Mexico hare is very scarce in this country and is a subspecies, Lepus Callotis Galllardi.

The antelope jackrabbit of Arizona is reasonably plentiful in the south central part of the state and is worth seeing even if you’re not a coursing enthusiast. Besides its size, this hare’s white directive coloration is its most interesting trait. Actually, the hare is not white sided all the time but is a camouflage grey in repose like the other jackrabbits discussed. When disturbed or moving this hare’s grey outer coat turns pure white on sides and hips as the erectile hairs are elevated and the white undercoat revealed. Many will doubt that this can be. Indeed, many think an antelope jackrabbit must be a joke, like the horned “jackalope” one sees on postcards out West. Well, the horns are a joke but this hare with its white color change is not.

Both the blacktail and whitetail jacks have adapted well to the change of natural rangeland into cultivation. But the gregarious antelope jackrabbit, which is often found in veritable communities of hares, is not so adaptable. This is a desert hare and where its natural habitat, which includes the saguaro and cholla cactus, creosote and mesquite bush of the Sonoran desert zone, is cleared off and the land cultivated this species disappears.

My experience in coursing the antelope jack is not extensive. From what I’ve seen I would say that this hare is not the equal in running speed of the better blacktail and whitetail hares. The desert terrain it inhabits gives it sufficient protection from predators that it needn’t be the fastest hare in the country to survive. So it is more due to terrain that restricts a gazehound’s efficiency than the hare’s abilities that makes the antelope jack such a difficult catch for a hound. The best hound for coursing the antelope jack is one with great acceleration, to get up on the hare before becoming unsighted, and who at the same time can run intelligently and use its eyes well in the semi-open terrain.

The antelope jackrabbit weighs 6-12 pounds, with the average about nine and rarely to 15 pounds. The length of body is 22-26 inches with ears that are an incredible 8-9 inches without any black on the tips. This coloration distinguishes this species from the blacktail whose range it shares.

Should you wish to course the antelope jackrabbit you may want to cross the border into the state of Sonora, Mexico. The hare’s range is greater down there and the coursing conditions are more favorable.