Go chase a swamp ghost

Chuck Lunn of the Flint, Michigan area with a hefty snowshoe hare.

The sounds came drifting through the cedar swamp like choir bells on Sunday morning. Three golden-throated beagles were on the hot trail of a snowshoe hare, and the white swamp ghost was giving them a hard run on this winter day.
We'd walked into the swamp, and although snowshoe hare numbers are down in the northern Lower Peninsula, we found several tracks. The  dogs snuffled deep of hare scent in each track, and with a beller that seemed to shake snow off the conifers, away they went.
The chase was underway, and this hunt was more to listen to the deep bawls, the tenor yodeling bark of another hound and the steady chop of our strike dog. The cold trailer led the other hounds for 200 yards, and a minute later the beagles picked up the intensity of their barking.

Hound music is the result of beagles on a hot snowshoe hare track.

A hare was up and running, and the hounds passed within 50 yards of me but the snowie made it impossible to see. The cedars were heavily laden with snow, and seeing a white-on-white hare moving through the snow can be exceptionally difficult.
I moved over that way, cut the tracks, and stood by with a double-barrel Lefever 20 gauge. The other hunters were not in position yet, and the hare avoided any human contact. Ten minutes later the bawls and chops had turned and were heading my way once again, and I knew the dogs could be sight running the hare or be 500 yards behind.
The hare blasted through a narrow opening 20 yards away, stopped behind a cedar to look back, and there wasn't enough of the animal visible to shoot at. The hare wheeled, and disappeared following his original circle. Minutes later a shotgun coughed once 300 yards away through the swamp, and then the hounds fell silent.
We'd bagged one of the hares, and we'd already determined that no more than two hares would be taken from this spot. The hounds cast about for five minutes in search of another hare track, and then they jumped another snowie that had been pushed into moving from one area to another by all of the commotion.
Away went the hounds, inhaling snowshoe hare scent like a Hoover vacuum sucking up dirt. We stood, quietly talking as the hare led the dogs on a long oval loop, and a short time later we could hear the bell-like sounds of hound music heading our way.

Hares, when pursued by a small pack of beagles, are tricky & often hard to see.

We hurried to take up positions, and this hare sneaked past all of us, and then the white hare seemed to lengthen his stride. He took the hounds out of hearing, and 20 minutes later we were trying to cut the last set of tracks that had circled past us, and took up our positions.
Hare hunting is usually done in tight quarters where visibility often is measured in feet rather than yards, and we try to find a place where we can see for 10 to 20 yards. I was closest to it, and the dogs were still 200 yards away when I barely saw puffs of snow flying into the air.
The satchel-footed hare was by me and heading toward another hunter. I whistled loudly to alert the sportsman, but this hare was past him before he could raise his shotgun. The beagles dashed by, looking sideways at me as if to ask why I didn't shoot, and they too disappeared through the snow beneath the cedars.
Again, the snowshoe hare managed to elude us, and his circle again took the hounds out of hearing. It wasn't long before we could hear the chops and yelps of the hounds heading our way. I moved 30 yards, took up a different position as I'm certain the others were doing, and I waited patiently.

Look close when the hounds get near as the hare may right in front of the dogs.

The dogs seemed to be within 50 yards when the hare burst out around a low-growing cedar just 10 yards away. He stopped, turned to look back at the trailing hounds, and one shot ended that chase.
We caught up the dogs, put them on leashes, and decided to try another location. We try not to hunt the same snowshoe hare area twice in a year.
The second location showed a few tracks but nothing was fresh. The dogs couldn't pull enough scent from the track for them to follow, and we decided that two hours of listening to a mix of happy yelps of 13-inch beagles is just about as good as a winter day can get.
We ended the day with two snowshoe hares, and countless memories of  the happy sounds of a small beagle pack and the mad dashes of snowshoe hares. This is a pastime where, if a hunter desires, the hares can be passed up in favor of listening to continuous hound music.
To me, even though I did shoot a hare, the sounds of winter silence are best broken only by dog music. It reaches right down into my soul, and gives me ample reason to be standing knee-deep in a cedar swamp on a cold winter day.
It gives me something wonderful to look forward to each winter. A white hare on white snow can be tricky to spot, but if the truth be known, hound music and feeling snow fall down our neck is why we hunt these animals. Taking one or two snowies is important for the hounds, and in many ways, it helps seal our fate for future hunts.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Forget the deer: let’s find some bunny habitat

Two or three snowshoe hares used to be common but no longer.

It's almost Christmas, and my back deck has already been shoveled a dozen times. That's right, that often so far this weekand it’s coming down hard as this is being written.

Folks, if you want snow to slide off your metal roof and save you a laborious back-breaking job, get a day of 35 degree temperatures and combine that with 20+ inches of wet snow on the roof, and shoveling becomes more than an ordeal; it can become an adventure in knowing when to duck your head and body under the eaves.

Ice sometimes forms under the snow pack, and as everything begins to warm and wet snow falls on the present load, things begin to happen. Gravity exerts its inevitable force on the snow, and it slowly begins to move.

Snow always moves downhill slowly, and then builds quickly into an avalanche.

Snow doesn't move up-hill. It comes down, and quite rapidly at times and with very little warning.

There is little time to think about falling snow coming off the roof, but know this: the one place you do not want to be is under the snow and ice once it begins plummeting toward the deck. The force of the impact literally shakes the house.

The avalanche begins with a faint creak or two as the metal roof flexes a bit under the strain, and next is a barely audible hiss. If you hear the hiss, you best be ducking for cover fast because the snow will come crashing down in one or two seconds. That's all the warning you get, trust me.

There is very little warning with snow on a metal roof. Creak, creak, hiss and here it comes. If you snooze, you lose this one-sided race. If you get hit by a 50-pound jagged piece of ice on the old noggin, your shoveling days may be over.

Seriously, this year's early snowfall has put a snuffer on my local deer hunting. I shovel every day that it snows, and since my measuring device is attached to my house, I can tell how much snow we get.

We are at between 45 and 50 inches of snow so far.

Mind you, it may not be exactly accurate because some of it may be drifted snow, but I use my back deck railing as a guide. Each morning I look at the railing, and if there is a noticeable amount of white stuff, I measure it before starting to shovel it off.

Since mid- to late-November, we have got 46 inches of snow. I don't care if it all falls straight down out of the sky or blows in sideways, what is on the railing is counted daily in inches. I usually keep close track until we exceed 100 inches of snow and to continue counting is a waste of my time.

One hundred inches of snow is too much of a good thing. By the way we are going, unless the snow slows down, we may be close to that rediculous number before we usher in Christmas.

It's almost too much now right now to easily get around. Me and deep snow, make for a major problem for someone with poor vision.

It has a tendency to cover fallen logs, brushpiles, stumps and other things that continually jump out in front of me, and I manage to entangle my feet in them before falling to the ground in a might splash of snow.

That’s why I love to hunt snowshoe hares. I let hounds circle bunnies to me.

It's one reason why I used to hunt snowshoe hares as often as possible. You'd walk in the cedars, find a single track, sic the beagles on the track, and wait around for the short-legged hounds to circle the hare within shotgun range.

Well, I don't know about you, but the last 10 years has been tough on snowies. They seem to be disappearing rapidly, and finding a spot where it sometimes is possible to shoot one of the ghost hares, has become almost as difficult as walking easily in 30 inches of snow.

All of my old hare hotspots have cooled off, and we're lucky to find one or two hares each winter. In some cases, we head into the cedar swamps without a firearm. We'll let the dogs run the occasional bunny, but shooting the hare is almost a criminal act.

And that, my friends, is a rather sobering thought as hare numbers continue to spiral downwards.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors