HARES

To the insular Britisher there are only two sorts of hares, the brown

and the blue. Possibly they cross breed, but naturalists are mostly

opposed to this view. However, if they do not cross, the writer has seen

specimens in Caithness which he could not assign to either race. Nowhere

else in Scotland does there seem to be much ground inhabited by both

species.

The blue hare is not only a creature of the moors, but of the top moors.

The brown hare never goes up there by any chance but he often occupies

moors of low level bordering the cultivation. In Caithness the highest

tops are usually not very high, and the blue hares are often found on

the moor only a few feet above sea-level. Consequently there are

opportunities for cross breeding which in the other counties rarely

exist.

Hares are said to be very prolific, but as a matter of fact they

increase only very slowly: what they might do in more favourable

circumstances is another matter. One writer affirms that when a brace

was confined in a walled garden there were 57 hares counted at the end

of one year. That is possibly correct, and yet the hare does not breed

well in confinement, which is the reason that parks are more often

devoted to deer and sheep than to hares, even when they are nominally

hare parks. The late Lord Powerscourt introduced brown hares into his

park in Ireland, where they did not increase; and the late Mr.

Assheton-Smith, of Vaynol Park, introduced the blue Alpine hare there.

In Ireland the latter is indigenous, but does not in winter change to

white, with tips of black upon its ears, as it does in Scotland and upon

the Continent.

_Country Life_ has lately reproduced a photograph of a family of six

brown leverets, and it is evidently wrong to affirm that from two to

five is the limit of numbers produced, as was done in _Country Life’s_

Shooting Book. Seven is the greatest number reported, but this requires

confirmation. What has given the impression that two or three are the

usual numbers produced is the fact that the hare does not seem to

confine herself to one nest. All her eggs are not put in one basket, and

this is instinctive wisdom; for little leverets give out a good deal of

scent even when quite young, and are easily found by foxes and dogs.

Cats are not fond of ranging the open fields, but prefer hedgerow and

covert, so that they are more dangerous to young rabbits than to

leverets, which are generally placed in the open fields without any sort

of nest or other protection than the great space about them.

Very large bags of hares have frequently been killed. Lord Mansfield’s

Perthshire bag of blue hares once reached very nearly 1300 in the day to

five guns, and over 1000 brown hares are said to have been killed in the

day quite recently. That the author has not verified, but formerly they

must have been nearly as plentiful in Suffolk and Norfolk as they are

now in parts of Bohemia and Hungary. Count Karolyi, for some years

Hungarian Ambassador to the Court of St. James, once attempted to make a

record: he killed to his own gun 600 hares in five hours’ shooting. It

is not this unique feat for which Hungary is most noted, but for its

constant supply over a large number of days. There they do not usually

kill hares during partridge shooting, but delay the big drives until

November. Nevertheless, at Tot-Megyr, six days’ shooting by nine guns

produced 7500 hares and 2500 partridges. Probably Mindszent, in the

south of Hungary, holds the record for a day at hares, for 3000 were

killed there by Count Alexander Pallavicini’s ten guns.

Big bags of hares are no new thing in that country, for as long ago as

1753 over 18,000 hares were killed with equal proportions of partridges

in 20 days’ shooting by 23 guns, including the Emperor of Austria and

the Princess Charlotte. In Suffolk, in 1806, a complaint of the number

of hares left on one estate was followed in the early spring by the

killing of 6012. Whether this slaughter satisfied the farmers or no is

not stated. Probably the biggest shoots of hares occur in the United

States, where the animals, almost precisely like our own brown hares,

are called “jack rabbits.” They have become so troublesome to farmers

that the latter turn out in regular armies when the “trouble” becomes

worse than usual, and the “jack rabbits” are done to death in countless

numbers. Another kind of hare found in the States is the “cotton tail,”

which in all outward appearance is precisely like our common rabbit,

except that it does not burrow. It is the perquisite of the nigger dog,

and if he is there, of the nigger dog’s master.

The “jack rabbits” give splendid coursing and a fine scent for hounds;

the “cotton tails” do neither, but gun-dogs invariably point them. The

hunting of the hare is probably the oldest of all sports now practised.

It was rated high by Xenophon more than three centuries before the

Christian era, and Xenophon would have made an excellent master of

harriers in our day if we could have induced him to leave his nets at

home. The fox never took precedence of the hare until earth-stopping was

invented, and without it the former would even now be the less worthy as

a quarry.

The brown hare prefers the open country to the woods, and is never found

in the latter until haytime and harvest have driven it out of the

fields. Even then it may take to a fallow field in preference to the

woods, and the author has known a little 10 acre field to have more than

100 hares in it upon such an occasion. In wet dripping weather—that is,

when the drip falls from the trees in covert along with the falling

leaf—hares prefer to make forms in the open fields. These they will

return to daily for weeks together, unless they are disturbed. But if

they are put off their forms they do not often come back to them again,

but make new ones. Consequently, if it is desired to have a great day’s

covert shooting, including hares, the open country should be beaten for

them several days before. The fact that they are disturbed will send

them into the coverts. On the other hand, after the coverts are beaten,

not a hare will be found in them for some time, whereas all the

pheasants that are left alive will be back to roost the next day at

latest, unless they have been driven to coverts that they know and like

equally well.

People affect to despise shooting hares, and when they are driven out of

coverts into the open they are of course rather more easy than pheasants

fluttering up at a corner; but in high undergrowth, in covert or out,

they are much more often missed than pheasants. In standing barley they

are very difficult, and if turnips are really high they are not easy

there. But the author has rarely seen clever hare shooting when the

beasts have been driven up to fences in the low country, and up to the

hilltops in Scotland. It is true that if only one or two hares come

together, it is simplicity itself to handle them, but suppose four hares

are each seen 20 yards apart coming up to your stand. If you can kill

the four, you understand woodcraft as well as shooting. If you do not

know the former, you will get one or at most two hares and frighten the

others away. Your object will be to get all the hares nearly together

before you take the farthest off one, then the next farthest off, and

you will have two very much scared hares starting probably from your

very feet for your second gun. The shooting then becomes extremely

difficult, because it has to be very smart indeed. Sometimes, instead of

four you may have twenty hares all within 80 yards, and it has been

known that by shooting at the first within range all the rest have

escaped without a shot. It is the habit of blue hares to follow each

other up the runs through the heather or over the moss and stones; when

one stops, the others seeing him stop too. Consequently, the way to get

them together is only to stop the first hare when he has approached near

and is also out of sight of the others behind, which any little

unevenness of the ground accomplishes. A sharp “click,” which was most

easily accomplished by cocking a gun in the days before the hammerless,

is enough. One stone rapped once only on another will do it. But the

hare must not see that, or any other movement, or he will be off at

once. If he has not the advantage of the wind, and so cannot get the

scent of the guns, a hare would run between a shooter’s legs without

seeing him if he stood absolutely still and bestrode the hare track. But

it is the “absolute” that makes all the difference. Some people say that

a hare cannot see straight in front of it, but this is a mistake; it can

detect the smallest movement although directly in front, and if it will

almost run against you, it will not allow you to walk from the direct

front up to it as it lies in its form.

When hares are wild, they sit high in their forms, and can be seen from

a long distance. However, when they mean to lie close, they are

remarkably difficult to see even upon open ground, except to those who

know what to look for, and the most experienced will often pass them.

Private coursers, especially when mounted, get extremely clever at

finding hares in their seats. In beating for them, when they are not

wild, the drivers who take a straight course will miss three-parts of

the hares, but if they zigzag, making half-turns suddenly, every hare

will believe itself seen and will run.

In beating flat country for hares, very much the same order as in

partridge driving in the open, and as in pheasant beating in covert, has

to be adopted. Stops and flanks are a necessity, but in driving

moorlands a very different system is adopted. The hares there will all

make up hill, no matter which way the beaters walk, so that a continuous

circuit round the hills, beginning at the lowest level and cork-screwing

upwards, is the plan if there are not enough beaters to cover the slope

at one operation. If there are, the beating is done as if it were the

desire to drive the hares along the slope or face of the hill, but as

they will all pass along the front face of the drivers and mount the

hill either near or far on, the guns will take up hidden positions upon

the tops. Any other system of driving blue hares has been found from

experience to be more or less misdirected energy. These animals are not

very much liked in the deer forests, because the deer understand the

hares’ movements as well as if they talked to each other, and a startled

hare usually means also a startled stag in the stalking season. But in

grouse ground the hares should not be kept very low in Scotland. Nowhere

are you very far away from a deer forest and eagles, and the latter are

satisfied to leave the grouse alone if they can get blue hare in summer

and white hare in winter. The Alpine hare is much easier for an eagle to

catch than either grouse or ptarmigan.

As to brown hares, they can only be plentiful where the relations

between landowner and tenant are of the very best. The latter can, if

they like, kill hares all the year round. Good land, a liberal landlord,

and yearly tenancies are the conditions under which hares can thrive.

The author likes to see plenty of them as proofs that the tenants are

not unsportsmanlike, and that the keepers are friendly with the farmers

and enemies to the poachers. Opposites in both cases have not been quite

unknown.

It has been said that hares can be “called up” by poachers. Perhaps that

is so; the only cry of the hare the author has heard is that distress

note that will often, on the contrary, drive away the other hares. If

they will come to call, they must be in the habit of calling. It is the

note of the doe hare that is supposed to be imitated. If she calls her

young she has no cause to call the “jack”; she is found by him by the

trail scent, and is worried far more by his attentions than she likes.

It is not uncommon to see half a dozen “jacks” persecuting one doe hare,

and continuing to do so for hours if not for days together. The “jack”

seems to hunt the trail of the doe when it is hours old, and long after

any harrier would notice it.

The esteem in which the hare was held in the Middle Ages is shown by a

verse attached to an English translation of the Norman-French _Le Art de

Venerie_, by William Twici, huntsman to King Edward II.:—

“To Venery y caste me fyrst to go,

Of wheche iiij best is be, that is to say,

The hare, the herte, the wulfhe, the wylde boor also;

Of venery for sothe there be no moe.”

Who wrote the verse does not appear to be accurately known; evidently it

was not Twici.