The snowshoe hare is Michigan’s snow-country rabbit. Of 553 records, the overwhelming share sit in the Upper Peninsula, Keweenaw and Chippewa counties lead by a wide margin, and Isle Royale National Park alone accounts for more than a quarter of the state total.
Feet built for deep snow
Oversized, densely furred hind feet let a snowshoe hare run across powder that swallows other animals, and its coat trades summer brown for winter white each fall. That wardrobe works only where snow lies deep and long, which is why Michigan’s records hug the Lake Superior snow belt. Dense young forest, cedar swamps, and spruce thickets supply the cover it needs by day, and Pigeon River Country State Forest Area, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and the Hiawatha and Ottawa national forests mark that habitat on the map.
Quiet months are cover, not absence
Hares do not hibernate; they sit tight in form beds under low branches through the worst weather and browse twigs and bark at night. Records run highest from May through July, when hares feed in the open on fresh growth and the first of the season’s litters, a doe may raise several between spring and late summer, begin to move on their own.
Status in Michigan
NatureServe ranks the snowshoe hare S4, Apparently Secure, in Michigan, and the species is native to the state’s northern forests. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
