New York is the southern edge of snowshoe hare country, and the state’s 295 records say so plainly. Essex, Franklin, and Hamilton counties, the Adirondack core, dominate the list, and the named places, Slide Mountain, Sentinel Range, Hurricane Mountain, Giant Mountain, and Siamese Ponds wildernesses, are exactly the cold, conifer-heavy ground this hare requires.
Built for deep snow
The snowshoe hare earns its name from oversized, heavily furred hind feet that let it run across snowpack that would sink a cottontail. Its coat shifts from brown in summer to white in winter, a change triggered by day length rather than temperature, and it spends the cold months browsing twigs, buds, and bark where dense young conifers supply both food and overhead cover. The Adirondacks hold New York’s deepest, most reliable snow, which keeps that white coat an advantage rather than a liability.
Two high points in the year
Reports crest in February, when the breeding season begins and tracks lace the snow, and again in June and July, when hares in their brown summer coats feed openly on new growth and the year’s first litters are on the move. Fall and early winter run quiet, the season when a half-changed coat leaves the animal conspicuous and cautious.
Status in New York
NatureServe ranks the snowshoe hare S5, Secure, in New York, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here. At the southern margin of its range, the hare’s hold on New York is tied to the high, snowy country the Adirondacks still provide.
Full species profile
