Fur Trail: Hare Hunting

The sunlight bounced off the snow and shone through the living room windows, lighting the table where I sat at my computer. I looked through the window at the hills across Otter Creek, coated in about four inches of snow and nuzzling a light blue sky. Tawny grass poked through the snow in steep places and deer tracks crisscrossed the yard. A magpie sat on the fence twitching its tail. I pulled my gaze from the window, waited a few moments for my eyes to readjust, then went back to work.

Thirty minutes later I put on my jacket, buckled on my gaiters and followed Duke out the door. He bounded in the snow like a puppy. Deer tracks were everywhere. Piles of scat in the front yard. Partridge tracks across the driveway. I walked across the footbridge over Otter Creek and saw that deer had been using the bridge too. The snow was old enough to crunch underfoot and the wind was blowing just hard enough to roar across your ears when you turned into it, but not hard enough to be uncomfortable. A gorgeous day.

I angled toward a copse of trees with some deadfalls lying at their bases, intending to walk past them and roam around in the hills. Duke ran ahead. He was sniffing around the bases of the trees when a snowshoe hare lept from the cover of the trees and ran forty yards across the open snow, then stopped and stood on its hind legs to watch me. He would have been in easy range if I’d brought a shotgun. The mountain men ate lots of hares and rabbits. Sam Drucker, the archeologist in Pinedale, had told me that most of the discarded bones at the mountain men’s rendezvous site did not come from deer or buffalo, but from hares and rabbits. The members of the Walker Expedition probably ate more rodent than they would have liked – when one of the expedition’s hunters killed a deer on the western edge of the Sierra Nevadas in late October, Leonard remarked in his journal that it “was the first game larger than a rabbit we had killed since the 4th of August when we killed the last buffaloe near the Great Salt Lake.” I whistled for Duke, who smelled the hare but had not seen him yet. He came to me and we walked back to the cabin for a gun.

Dad had taken our shotguns back to Georgia, but I picked up the old .30-30 and jacked a round into the chamber. Zenas Leonard wouldn’t have had anything like this rifle, but this gun had its own place in American lore. A lever-action gun with a short barrel, open sights and a hardwood stock, the Model 1894 Winchester was ideal for carrying in a scabbard strapped to your saddle. The necked-down cartridge was the flat-shooting wonder of the late 1800s – though powerful enough to take down an elk or moose with a well-placed shot, the bullet was light and fast, relative to its contemporaries, which made it excellent for killing at several hundred yards. And it was beautifully balanced. The rifle’s balance makes it attractive even today – throw a Model 1894 to you shoulder and it holds naturally steady. Swing it as though shooting at a moving target and the barrel slides across the horizontal like an expensive Italian shotgun. Carry it by your side with a hand across the action and the rifle hangs, muzzle slightly down, just like God intended. It was designed by John Browning, a gun designer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of whose designs – the Model 1894 rifle, the 1911 style pistol, the Browning Automatic Rifle, the Auto-5 shotgun – remained the templates with which subsequent designers began their work until the very late twentieth century. But of all his designs, and perhaps more than any other rifle, the Model 1894 is the American classic. It is the best-selling centerfire sporting rifle of all time. John Wayne used a Model 1894. If that won’t sell rifles, nothing will.

Our Model 1894.

Duke saw the rifle when I came back out of the cabin and bounced on his front feet in excitement, anticipating that he might have something to retrieve besides a tennis ball. “Hold on, buddy,” I told him, “we have to find him first.” I walked toward the copse of trees where we’d started the hare and looked to the spot where he’d run. He was no longer there. “Stay,” I whispered to Duke and walked to where I’d last seen him.

The hare was probably close – most rabbits, when started, run in a large circle. I looked around as I walked but didn’t see him. The snow where the hare had stood was pockmarked with deer tracks, but before long I found the hare’s prints. Two long prints shaped like snowshoes, then two nearly circular prints from the front feet. His tracks were visibly fresher than the surrounding prints. I followed them for a few yards. They led back toward the copse of woods from which the hare had first emerged. I looked into the trees, stumps, and downed logs that formed the copse. If I followed the tracks into the trees, the trees would limit my field of vision and I probably wouldn’t see the hare until I got close, at which point he’d run. He’d be hard to shoot on the move. But if I circled the trees, the hare might stay put, hoping that I would pass by without seeing him. And if, peering into the woods, I could see the hare before he ran, I’d have an easy rifle shot.

Hunting often troubles the modern conscience. Nothing gets anti-hunters worked up more than hunters defending their passion by explaining that they enjoy being out in nature. “If your aim is to commune with nature,” anti-hunters exclaim, “why are you killing the animals? Go hiking and leave the gun at home!” It’s easy to understand their response. But the experiences are different – so very different. Hiking is a wonderful way to observe nature. There is much to be said for tramping though beautiful country, admiring the views, and watching animals in their natural habitats. But a hiker is only a tourist. A hunter is something else – when you creep through the woods, your footfalls quiet, face in the wind, eyes roving the forest, seeking out game because you intend to kill it, peel back its skin, and digest it so that its flesh contributes to your own, you are no longer a tourist. You are a living, breathing, scheming participant in the food chain. There is nothing else like it.

I circled the copse of woods. The sun was almost directly overhead and the foliage was long gone from the trees, so I could see into the woods. A large trunk, three feet in diameter, lay parallel to my course. I looked along it, focusing at one end of the log, then the next section, then the next. Human eyes often overlook stationary objects when they scan an area, but if you examine the area piece by piece, pausing to refocus your eyes each time, you’ll notice more. Tufts of grass, broken branches, a drift of snow. No hare. I continued the circle. I heard the tinkle of Duke’s collar and I held out my palm to remind him that he was under “stay” orders. Even when footfalls and the sight of a human form won’t spook game, the sound of a human voice may stir them to flight. The wind picked up and the trees swayed, creaking. A magpie fluttered from one limb to another. I stopped to look. There, beside the big log, sat the hare. I should have seen him earlier. His fur was white and grayish-brown, perfect camouflage for his surroundings. He had spotted me but wasn’t sure if I’d seem him. He sat on his haunches. I raised the rifle, cocked the hammer and centered the front sight on his chest. He didn’t move. I squeezed the trigger.

When my eyes refocused from the recoil the hare lay dead, sprawled backward in the snow. The bullet had entered his chest, passed through his chest cavity and upper abdomen, and exploded out his lower back. Lots of damage. Not surprising when you shoot a rabbit with a deer rifle, but at least he hadn’t suffered. Although there wouldn’t be much left of the backstraps, his haunches would make good eating. I backed away and called Duke, who retrieved the hare, then watched eagerly as I cut the meat out with my knife. Duke’s eyes, normally trained on my face when we’re doing something together, never left the hare. I grinned. A part of the food chain.