The American Beagler Forum

me and a couple buddies are tossing around the ideal of trying to go somewhere to hare hunt but we know nothing about it, we were thinking sometime in october or maybe early november?? we have no ideal where we want to go yet but would like a place that has lots of public hunting and hare, if anyone has any suggestions about a place or the best time for rookies to go it would be greatly appreaciated.

Seasons will be different from state to state
Here in Utah you can hunt Jacks year round
Cotton & Shoe season runs from mid Sept to the end of Feb.
A lot of us don't hunt rabbits until the other seasons are over,
which means Jan & Feb, to much can go wrong when other people are doing other things. (Besides, duck hunting is fun too)
I hunt an aria called "the sinks" in northern Utah. (disclaimer: Middle Sink is the location of the coldest temp ever recorded in the Continental US)
-----but that is what makes the place work-------
We only hunt the sinks when there is a high pressure ridge over us and there is an "inversion" in the sinks. Under these conditions while it might be -40-50 deg at the bottom of the sinks, it can be as warm as +30-40 on the sides of the hills surrounding the sinks. This always leads to there being an elevation where all of the rabbits will congragate during the day.

come on out,,, it's a blast

tom

thanks for the offer but we were going to try to keep it around or under 1000 miles and mapquest shows around 1700 for you, anyone in michigan know of any public land I'm not looking for your training ground or honey hole just a few places to run a few fat dogs for 3 or 4 days.

we go to Montana each year in the Summer when it is warm and camp hunt. As good of running as Branko has there. You need no LIc. and there is no season. This year there are lots of Bunnies.

backyard beagler,
Maybe you will have to come up this way, that is if you don't mind running those fat hounds with a few fat hunters! LOL! P.S. Bring snow shoes!
NYH

Hey backyard, I am putting together a trip to Drummond Island this fall, probably in October and would love some other buddies with hounds to go as well...The cost of cabins start around 95.00 a night and up depending on the level of accomodations...great snowshoe hunting as well as bow hunting for whitetails...fishing too...pm me if you want any more info...Tony

Tony,

when are you going do you have more specifics.... Just curious... You can email me if you wish...
ksmith@vernonagency.com

thanks for the replys,
NYH what part of ny are you talking and hows the public land hunting and hare numbers?

Jack I think montana will be a little to far for now but it sound good.

Tony let me know when you have more info, also is there any seasons that we would have to worry about in oct I tried to look and the best I could tell oct would be open with no deer seasons or anything.

I was also wandering for the people that has done this how well does the cottontail dogs switch to running hare?

There is a bow season that begins October 1st and there are deer on the island, but we will be going mainly to hunt hare...cottontail hounds can switch to hare, but they need to be in better shape stamina wise in my opinion to run hare. There are a LOT of hare on the island and the dogs WILL get a workout. We will hunt from first light until about three or so, so the hounds will have to be in shape...The limit is five a day. You can get a three day permit for hunting small game here, thats what my dad does when he comes up from Kentucky...Tony

backyard beagler,
We have public land up the "whazoo" and that has never been the problem thanks to the Adirondack mountains. What has been an issue is the tree hugging do gooders that have kept logging practicaly out of the "park" (as they call it), which has made habitat less than ideal for many years. With little cover and little to eat the hare numbers have suffered. THe good news however is that a person can still find fringe areas where the habitat is better and hare numbers higher. Still nothing like Maine or New Hampshire, but still worth keeping hare hounds for sure. I may have a line on some better spots in the near future thanks to my snowmobiling cousin (have to find on the maps where he was...lol) and if I find them I would be happy to extend an invite. My experience on cottontail hounds on hare have been mixed but with mostly positive outcomes. The opposite has been true with hare hounds over to cottontail, but here again that has only been my experience. Hope this helps a little and is of interest to you.
Good running,
NYH

thanks NYH for the reply, I don't think I have a whole lot to worry about they have run everything else with no problem and I mean everything lol.
I have been looking at some web sites about michigan public land and there seems to be a lot of it the ?? is are hare located everywhere or just in certain parts?

Hare habitat isnt as plentiful as cottontail in the lower penninsula, but the UP (upper penn) has ooodles of hare hunting available...I just like Drummond for its scenery and location, its an Island so its unique and there is Hare everywhere...If you wanted to hunt other than the island, you would try the UP first, hare below the bridge arent as plentiful...I do however have some awesome cottontail running here in lower Michigan...Tony

For some reason, ruffed grouse hunting gets a lot more attention than hare hunting. The state of Minnesota has by far the most ruffed grouse, ruffed grouse habitat, and public hunting in areas that have ruffed grouse of any state. Since ruffed grouse and hare usualy share the same type of habitat, I would guess that Minnesota is one of the top states for snowshoe hare also. No one realy knows because almost no one hunts hare in Minnesota.

If you look at a map of Minnesota, roughly the north eastern 1/3 of the state has snowshoe hare. There is lots of state and national forest in this area along with thousands of acres of paper company land open to public hunting. The paper company land is some of the best hare hunting because it gets cut and replanted regularly.

The only down side is that several hundred thousand acres of this paper company land has been sold to some big land developers in just the last few years. No one realy knows what they plan to do with this land but I'm sure they plan to make money from it somehow. A bunch more paper company land has been leased and sold to private individuals. On the bright side, there have been three or four large tracts of this land that have been protected by permanent easments in the last couple years. This land can never be developed and must be left open to the public forever. It will still belong to the paper companies and will be managed for timber production (good for hare).

All in all, Minnesota is one of the best places a hare hunter can live (or visit). We have an almost unlimited supply of good places to hunt and almost no other hare hunters. If you are interested let me know. I might even be able to put you up and take you hunting.

There is good hare hunting to be had in the North East Lower Pennisula. You could be into hare in about 8 or 9 hours. I would be looking to go a little later than Oct. though. Still kind off warm then, allthough I suppose you might like that idea. I like the first two weeks of Nov. better, bow and bird hunters are not too much of a problem but right after muzzle loader season in Dec. you should be pretty much to yourselves. Another advantage is the hares can be white by then too, and if it does snow you can look for tracks. Email me if you have any questions

thanks for all the replies, we were planning on late October because we aren't sure how our dogs will run hare then you add the snow on top of it if we went later and it could get sucky in a hurry because we have no ideal how our dogs run on snow and I don't want to drive 10 to 12 hours to find out they don't do it very well lol.

hey bluegrass do you have any ideal what week you are planning on going up? we have kinda decided on trying it up there, we are still trying to pick a week but from what I understand all of Oct is open except the 2nd week I was thinking on maybe the third week, we are talking on leaving early Sunday getting checked in and hunting Mon-wed staying Wednesday night and coming home Thursday. as of now we have me and two other guys and maybe one more but no more than 4 men and 1 boy it would be nice if we could get to gather and hunt a day or two also do you have a link to some lodging sites I have found a few but if you have been there before you may know something I don't, thanks Paul