The white-tailed jackrabbit is North Dakota’s open-country hare, and its 235 records sketch the northern plains almost corner to corner. The heaviest counts sit in the northeast, Cavalier County with 55, Walsh with 24, and Cass with 38 along the Red River Valley, with a steady scatter west through Burleigh and Stutsman and out to Bowman and Stark in the southwest.
A hare that outruns its problems
Jackrabbits are true hares, not rabbits. They never burrow, instead resting by day in shallow forms scratched under grass or stubble and trusting their camouflage until a threat comes close. Then the machinery takes over: a flushed white-tailed jackrabbit can hit 34 miles per hour and bound 16 feet at a stretch, so open prairie, pasture, and cropland suit it precisely because there is nothing to hide behind. Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the Little Missouri National Grassland, and Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site anchor the record’s western grassland flank.
White against the snow
Like other northern hares, this one molts from summer brown to near white for winter, keeping only its black ear tips, and North Dakota’s counts peak in January, the busiest month of the year. The pale coat hides a sitting hare against snow but shows it plainly on brown stubble between storms, and the animal stays above ground and active all season, feeding on bark, alfalfa, and winter wheat exposed above the drifts. A second rise in records through spring matches the February to July breeding season, when several males chase a single female in open chases across the fields.
Status in North Dakota
NatureServe lists the white-tailed jackrabbit as SNR, Unranked, in North Dakota, with a globally secure G5. The species is native across its range here, and USGS NAS does not treat it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
