Hunting Management Rules and Habitat Improvement for White and Brown Hares

Game management practices can be rounded out with a set of hare management rules tailored to hares.

What forestry work benefits the mountain hare?

For the mountain hare, the following forestry measures are beneficial:

• Encouraging dense growth of trees and shrubs that hares feed on.
• Felling aspens for winter browse.
• Winter feeding with hay and bundles of leafy twigs.
• Placing "post-type" salt licks at a rate of one lick per 100 hectares of hare-occupied habitat.
• Positioning feed and salt licks exclusively in forest types with a cover of mosses or sedges, where the risk of infecting hares with various helminths is minimal.
• Work is needed to control the numbers of fox, lynx, and stray dogs and cats.

What forestry work benefits the brown hare?

Under modern farming methods (the simultaneous ploughing of large continuous tracts of agricultural land), the most essential forestry measure for the brown hare is improving the protective cover of the habitat:

• This is achieved by creating shelter (remise) plantings of shrubs or tall herbaceous plants along gullies, roads, sandy stretches, and other ground unsuitable for ploughing.
• Where woodland patches occur among fields, their edges are especially convenient places to establish shelter plantings.
• For the brown hare, measures to regulate the use of chemicals in agriculture are extremely important. Seed dressing, dusting or spraying crops with pesticides, and improper application of chemical fertilizers to the soil can be lethal to these animals.

Winter feeding of the brown hare

A programme of winter feeding can also be recommended.

• Building shelters for feeding the brown hare with hay and grain screenings. Feed should be laid out under shelters or in boxes set along field margins, in ravines, and on fields where remnants of harvested sunflower, corn, and cabbage survive.
• Salt licks are best set up in the same spots. At an average hare density, one feeding station serves 100–200 hectares of hare habitat.
• In regions with deep-snow winters, clearing winter greens with a snow plough is very useful.
• The numbers of fox, wolf, and stray dogs and cats should be kept in check.

How should the hare harvest be set?

Equally important in hare management is strict regulation of the harvest, adjusted to the state of the population.

• When numbers sit at the optimal level, the harvest is planned to remove every animal above the optimum that remains after breeding. In this case the average harvest rate can be 30–50% of the autumn population.
• When hares are below the optimum, the harvest should be cut to 10–20% of the autumn count.
• Where good habitat holds fewer than 10–15 animals per 1,000 hectares, hunting should be prohibited altogether until numbers recover.
• Where hares exceed what the habitat can support, the harvest must be increased to bring numbers back down to the optimum as quickly as possible.

How different hunting methods shape the harvest

Quantitative harvest limits are not the only tool for regulating hare numbers. Choosing different hunting methods serves the same purpose, because the sex and age composition of the animals taken varies markedly from one method to another.

• In hunting hares with hounds, males clearly dominate the bag. Males lie less tightly than females, rise from their form more readily as danger approaches, and hounds therefore find them faster by picking up their fresh trail.
• In still-hunting and tracking, the opposite happens. Females, which hide more, allow the hunter closer and fall to the gun, tend to dominate the bag. When breeding stock is female-heavy, the overall population increase is higher.

Consequently, to speed the growth of hare numbers, hunting with hounds should be promoted.

When excessive numbers need to be reduced, methods without dogs are preferable, namely:

• tracking,
• still-hunting (more detail: hunting hares without a dog),
• hunting on the flush.

Seasons, dates, and how to read local rules

Hare hunting operates within fixed open and closed periods, and those dates are set by the relevant state game department rather than the individual hunter. Across North American jurisdictions the same logic applies to every game species: agencies such as the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the Wildlife Resources Division in Georgia, and the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources publish annual hunting and fishing season guides that list open dates, bag limits, and legal hours. Big game and small game seasons, migratory bird seasons, and special primitive weapons seasons are staggered so that harvest pressure never falls on one window. Legal hunting hours are typically defined relative to sunrise and sunset, and youth and children hunting programs often carry their own dates and mentored-hunt provisions.

Licenses, permits, and required documents

A valid hunting license and any species-specific permit or tag are the baseline legal requirement before taking any game, including hare. In the United States, licenses are bought through state portals such as Go Outdoors South Carolina, and fees vary by residency, age, and privilege. Deer hunting seasons and tag requirements, quota hunts, and lottery drawings for high-demand hunts all flow from the same permitting systems, and hunter education requirements or a completed hunter safety course are usually a prerequisite for a first license.

What arms and equipment are legal?

Legal hunting arms and ammunition are defined by species and season: shotguns and centerfire rifles for most small and big game, with specific turkey and deer hunting ammunition rules and firearm restrictions during deer firearms and elk firearms seasons. Fully automatic weapons are prohibited for hunting everywhere. Bowhunting equipment regulations govern draw weight and broadhead design, bow hunting arrow drug restrictions bar poisoned or drugged arrows, and tree stands and temporary climbing devices carry their own attachment rules on public land. Hunter orange safety requirements apply during most firearms seasons.

What methods and means of take are restricted?

Restrictions on the means of take exist to keep harvest fair and populations healthy. Prohibited hunting methods and equipment commonly include roadway hunting, hunting from motor-driven transportation, and all-terrain vehicle use off designated routes. Hunting near dwellings is limited by distance, hunting near floodwaters or fire is barred, and alcohol consumption while hunting is prohibited. Rules also cover baiting and bait distribution, use of dogs in hunting, and hunting safety and training for dogs.

Which chemical and explosive methods are banned?

Chemical and explosive methods of take are prohibited outright. No poison, drug, chemical, or explosive device may be used to kill or capture game, and this prohibition parallels the agricultural pesticide cautions that matter so much to the brown hare. Trapping is separately regulated, including furbearer trapping with devices such as the Conibear trap, along with furbearer den and nest protection and the terms of commercial fur harvesting.

When can artificial light and electronic calls be used?

Artificial light, night vision, and electronic calls are tightly controlled and generally banned for most game species. Night vision equipment and thermal imagery are typically limited to specified species such as coyote or feral swine and to defined seasons; electronic calls are likewise restricted, while manual mouth calls are broadly permitted. Armadillo and coyote hunting regulations, along with hog and coyote rules, often carve out the narrow exceptions where lights or electronic calls become lawful.

Rules on federal, state, and private land

Where you hunt determines which regulations apply, and the layers stack. On private property you need landowner permission, and trespassing laws are strict; landowner exemptions grant certain privileges to owners on their own ground. Public hunting takes place on Wildlife Management Areas, national forests and grasslands, and Bureau of Land Management lands, each with its own access requirements, boundaries, and maps. WMA hunting adds general regulations, weapon-type restrictions, lottery and quota hunt applications, feral hog seasons, and penalties for abuse or misuse of WMA property. Named areas such as Crow Creek Wildlife Management Area, Mallard-Fox Wildlife Management Area, Mud Creek Wildlife Management Area, Raccoon Creek Wildlife Management Area, and Swan Creek Wildlife Management Area each publish specific guidelines.

A National Wildlife Refuge is federal land managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, DC, under the National Wildlife Refuge System; refuge-specific hunting regulations are codified at CFR 50 32.20 through 32.72, and refuge headquarters serve as the information resource for hunters. The related National Fish Hatchery System supports conservation, while the National Park Service generally closes parks to hunting. Waterfowl production areas and units such as the Francis Marion Hunt Unit follow their own waterfowl and migratory bird rules.

Trade in game, pelts, and animal parts

Buying and selling wildlife, pelts, and animal parts is heavily restricted, and each species carries its own documentation rules. Wildlife labeling and possession-and-transport requirements govern how a carcass moves, gifting game to another hunter is allowed only within stated limits, and wildlife waste prevention laws forbid letting edible game spoil. Donation programs such as Hunters for the Hungry provide a lawful route for surplus meat, and the trade in furbearer pelts is tied to trapping seasons and tagging.

Limits on keeping, importing, and releasing animals

Possessing, importing, or releasing live wildlife is restricted to protect native populations and prevent disease spread. Animal possession and importation limits, fish possession restrictions, and animal release prohibitions all aim to stop the establishment of non-native species and the movement of pathogens. Nongame species, reptiles, and birds receive protection under separate provisions, and wildlife disease management—including surveillance for Chronic Wasting Disease in deer—shapes how carcasses may be transported across zones.

Counting numbers and checking the harvest

So that game managers understand yearly changes in hare numbers on their ground and can correctly plan the direction and scale of biotechnical measures, along with the timing, methods, and limits of hunting, an annual census of these animals is essential. It works as follows:

• In the most typical habitat of the estate, a permanent sample plot of 200 hectares is laid out. It measures 4 kilometres long and 0.5 kilometre wide. On this plot, twice a year—during the first and last fresh snowfalls—hare tracks are counted along a route and the animals themselves are counted by driving. On snow that is one or two days old, the plot must be walked around its boundaries, a route of 9 km. Every hare track crossing the route is counted, and the counted tracks are then rubbed out.
• Next, beaters line up along the narrow side of the plot no more than 30 m apart. On the leader's signal they walk noisily across the plot to its far boundary, exactly as in a driven hunt.
• After the drive, the boundaries are walked again and the tracks of the hares flushed by the beaters are counted.
• On the same day, track counts along 10 km routes are made in other parts of the estate, ideally in each keeper's district.

A worked example of counting hares

Processing the material and counting the hares across an estate is best shown with a concrete example.

Suppose an estate has 10,000 hectares of hare habitat divided into five keeper's districts of equal size. A sample plot was laid out in one district; 10-kilometre routes were run in the other four.

On census day, 36 hare tracks were counted on the boundaries of the sample plot—4 tracks per kilometre of route—and four hares were driven off the plot, that is, two animals per 100 hectares. This means each hare present on 100 hectares of the plot left, on average, two tracks per kilometre along its boundaries.

Meanwhile, in the remaining keeper's districts, two districts showed eight hare tracks each and the other two showed two tracks per kilometre of route.

With the data from the sample plot, it is straightforward to calculate how many hares occurred in each district and across the estate as a whole.

In the district holding the sample plot, there were two hares per 100 hectares. With a district area of 2,000 hectares, its total was 40 animals. In the next two districts, hare density was twice as high—eight tracks per km rather than four—equalling four hares per 100 hectares. With 4,000 hectares in those districts, they held about 160 hares.

Finally, in the last two districts the number of tracks per km, and therefore hare density, was half that of the plot (two tracks per km rather than four), amounting to just one hare per 100 hectares. With 4,000 hectares in those districts, they held about 40 hares.

The total for the estate came to 40 + 160 + 40 = 240. The census work described above is inexpensive, comparatively undemanding, and easily carried out by any hunting estate.

Its results are hard to overstate, since working with any species of game animal requires, above all, knowing how that species' numbers change over time.

Following sound hare management rules keeps numbers at the optimum and secures rewarding hunting for the future.