Montana is the northern edge of the black-tailed jackrabbit’s world, and the state has no records of it from 2000 to 2026. Its older records, collected before that window, come almost entirely from Beaverhead County in the far southwest, with one from neighboring Madison. That’s big, open, high-desert country, sagebrush flats and dry valleys, the closest thing Montana has to the jackrabbit’s Great Basin heartland.
A species can be genuinely scarce in a state without being in trouble, and that’s the situation here. NatureServe marks the jackrabbit unrankable in Montana, an admission that there isn’t enough information to judge. The animal is widespread and secure farther south; in Montana it’s a fringe resident of a few warm valleys. An empty modern record also reflects how few people are out counting hares in Beaverhead County.
One of those older records comes from Bannack State Park, in the heart of that Beaverhead country. Picture the animal the way the country demands: open ground under big sky, ears up at dusk.
Full species profile
