The eastern cottontail is one of the most frequently recorded mammals in Wisconsin, with 3,922 records reaching 72 counties. Dane and Milwaukee account for the largest shares, and places like Governor Nelson State Park, Wyalusing State Park, and Lake Kegonsa State Park sit well inside its everyday haunts of brushy field edge, park lawn, and hedgerow.
An edge animal built for farm and yard
Cottontails do not dig burrows. They rest in shallow ground depressions called forms and rely on tangled cover, brush piles, overgrown fencerows, shrubby wetland margins, for safety, feeding in the open only within a quick dash of that shelter. Wisconsin’s mosaic of small farms, corridors like the Military Ridge State Trail, and suburban yards creates edge habitat at enormous scale, so the rabbit reads as a creature of settled country as much as of wild land. Around Horicon National Wildlife Refuge and the Kettle Moraine State Forest’s southern unit, records come from the brushy margins rather than deep marsh or solid woods.
Bare ground and breeding season
Cottontails stay active through winter, switching to twigs and bark when snow covers the green forage. Wisconsin’s counts climb sharply from April through July, when does are raising the first of several annual litters and young rabbits, easy to spot and slow to flee, turn up along trails and lawn edges across the state.
Status in Wisconsin
NatureServe ranks the eastern cottontail S5, Secure, in Wisconsin, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
