Wisconsin sits at the southern edge of the snowshoe hare’s range, and the state’s 118 records show it. They concentrate in the Northwoods, with Vilas County well out in front and Bayfield, Douglas, Price, and Rusk following along the Lake Superior lowlands. Nicolet National Forest and the Northern Highland State Forest hold the largest named shares.
Built for snow country
The snowshoe hare takes its name from oversized hind feet that spread its weight over deep snow, and its coat molts from brown to white each fall and back each spring, a change timed to day length rather than temperature. It keeps to dense cover, thickets of young conifer, alder, and regenerating cutover, where it crouches rather than runs until the last moment. Across the boreal north its numbers rise and fall in famous multi-year cycles, and Wisconsin’s Northwoods mark the bottom edge of that world.
Winter is when it shows
Records build from October through December and hold high through February, when leaf fall opens the understory, hares stand white against the first bare ground, and their tracks write across every fresh snowfall. Summer counts fall away as the animals keep to thick cover in plain sight of no one, though a smaller May pulse comes with the year’s first litters.
Status in Wisconsin
NatureServe ranks the snowshoe hare S3, Vulnerable, in Wisconsin, reflecting the state’s position at the edge of its range. The species is native here, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous.
Full species profile
