Like a hare goes to bed. Hunting for a hare

Among the abundance of ways to hunt a hare, hunting along a malik (the entire night path of a hare, displayed in the snow) is one of the most popular. And although the effectiveness of such a hunt is quite high, it requires experience and certain knowledge in order not to get lost in the abundance of traces that the hare is so skillfully able to confuse.

It is important to note that trail hunting is an excellent substitute for hunting with a dog. The only difference is that the hunter himself needs to unravel the hare tracks. Novice hunters, having tried this method of hunting for the first time, cannot recognize the malik the first time and figure out where the animal could have gone. The key to hunting success is the experience you gain over time. But so that you know how to read the tracks of a hare in the snow and avoid simple mistakes, we have prepared this article.

Traces of hare and hare

As a rule, hunting for fresh malik is carried out on a hare, and there are several reasons for this. Firstly, white color the white hare makes it almost invisible to the hunter, and secondly, this type of hares confuses tracks very well, and it is sometimes difficult to determine its location. Even if you find a place for the day of the animal, the likelihood that it will go unnoticed is very high.

In this regard, if you live in an area where both types of hare live, it is very important to be able to distinguish them by malik. The key difference is that the hare's paws are slightly rounder and wider than those of the hare. Wider paws contribute to the fact that the animal moves faster on loose snow. The paw prints of the hare are more oval and long, as they are on average larger than their relatives.

Traces of hare and hare in comparison

Time and place of hunting

It should be noted right away that it is very difficult even for an experienced hunter to determine when the animal was in place, if before that there had been no powder or strong wind for a long time. You can trail all day and still not see the beast. Therefore, in order for the hunt to be successful, it is worth going out on it immediately after a good snowfall or strong wind, which the old malik could cover.

When hunting in fresh snow, be prepared for a lot of walking. Therefore, if the snow level is high, you need to prepare hunting skis in advance. Since skiing is not only faster, but also easier.

You need to go hunting as soon as possible after a snowfall. If it snowed at night, then morning is the most right time. The fact is that if you go out after lunch, you may simply not have time to find a trail and track down the “oblique” one, since the winter day is very short, and you need to walk long distances. Also, after a snowfall, as a rule, warm weather persists, contributing to the fact that the hare does not lie as sensitively as usual, and lets the hunter closer to him.

Trailing process

The search for "oblique" must begin with the places of its fattening. They feed near fruit trees, winter, and the remains of cereals in the fields. The fact that there was an animal at the place of the fattening will be evidenced by the many traces left in the snow.

When you have found such a place, you should go around it in a circle and find the exit point of the hare. This place will definitely be, since the animal never arranges a day in the feeding grounds. You need to follow the trail a little to the side, and do not trample the malik, since the hare, in order to confuse the tracks, can make a circle and return to its original place. In most cases, animals confuse trails in the following ways:

1. Makes loops on the snow of different sizes.
2. Can return to the trail several times and change its direction.
3. It may not return for a day in the footsteps of other hares.

In the process of trailing the "oblique" you may have situations when the hare's tracks intersect. There is a possibility of passage of two different individuals, but most likely, such a loop was performed by the same animal in order to confuse the tracks. If you find such loops, do not rush to switch to a new path, as the hare may make discounts (jump off to the side).

Loop crossing example

It is important to understand that the farther you are from the “oblique” fattening site, the more careful and cautious you should be. As mentioned above, you need to go a little to the side, as you may not notice the discount of the beast to the side. In the process of tracking, every hunter should know that during the day, the hare lies down with its muzzle in the direction from which the wind blows.

It is important to remember that the hare lies a little away from its path. If you walk along the path and look only straight ahead, most likely you will not meet the “oblique” one.

Malik and his types

The success of hunting by tracking in the snow directly depends on how correctly you can read the tracks of the beast. Let's look at what the tracks are and what they can tell the hunter.

What do the tracks of a hare look like in the snow

Estimated or discount

These traces are distinguished by a large distance from each other and are located at a large angle to the original trace. As a rule, the hare leaves estimating traces before going to bed for a day, and their number ranges from 1 to 5. The key feature of the estimating traces can be considered that the prints of the front paws are together.

fatty

Fat traces can be called a pointer to the place of hare fattening. As a rule, there are many of them at the feeding place and they cover certain territory. Fat tracks differ from the usual ones in that their paw prints are close to each other and often merge. It is from the place of detection of fatty traces that tracking on the animal begins in winter.

Racing

These traces indicate that the hare was scared away from the place of lying. Beginning hunters can easily confuse racing tracks with discount tracks, as they look almost like running tracks. The key differences are that their number is usually greater than 5, and the prints of the hare's front paws are much closer to the prints of the previous jump than the next. In other words, during the racing run, the animal throws its hind legs forward more strongly.

Where is the bed arranged

We already wrote above that when walking along the malik, you need to be extremely careful and look around, but what places should you pay attention to Special attention? First of all, the animal seeks shelter near low shrubs, fallen trees of young spruces, etc. If there is no vegetation nearby where you can hide, the hare can simply lie down in the field. This will be evidenced by a small hill of snow.

If you find the beast, but did not have time to shoot or it just disappeared, you do not need to continue the pursuit, as the "scythe" can run several kilometers before lying down again. In this case, it is better to look for traces of another hare. When you fired a shot, but are not sure that you hit, you need to follow the trail for 10-20 minutes. If drops of blood are found on the trail, it is recommended to continue the pursuit. If no traces of blood were found in the snow, you can safely start looking for another animal. And at the end of the article, we invite you to watch a video of hunting for a hare in the footsteps.

The hare is a master of confusing tracks, confusing hunters, dogs, foxes. It winds, jumps a whole bunch of tracks, go, figure out where he just stomped. And if he lies down, then with his nose to his penultimate track, in order to see who is hunting him.

I’ll digress a bit and tell you that the hare experience came in handy during the Great Patriotic War. Partisans and prisoners of war, who fled from the detective dogs of the Nazis, in this way - hare - confuse the tracks and evade persecution. Naturally, among them were experienced and professional hunters.

Let's try to follow the trail of the hare. We dress warmly. It is better if we wear a white camouflage coat. You can dress more securely than driven hunting. We will walk slowly, carefully examining each bush. Clothing must be loose. It should allow you to instantly raise the gun. The hare is as fast as the wind! You have a light bandolier, on not a large number of cartridges loaded with shot No. 1 or No. 2. Put on skis. Field. Here is the trail of the hare. You stop and carefully examine the trail. The first step is to decide - who stomped? Hare-hare or hare-white. Trailing a white hare is a thankless task. It will take a walk, feed on the field and go into the depths of a ravine or an impassable thicket of bushes. Easy to scare - hard to see. Do not take without a dog. You begin to remember how the track of a hare differs from the track of a white hare. You don't have to think long.

The hare paw print is sharper and longer. The track of the hare is rounder.

It is necessary to make a reservation: among the hares living in areas with snowy and cold winter, the paws are dressed with longer hair and approach in shape the traces of the hare. In dense snow, the hare's fingers are compressed, in deep and loose snow they are moved apart.

Found out. The trail in front of you is the trail of a hare. You rejoiced. They took out a thermos and drank fifty grams of coffee - for good luck. They sniffed their sleeves and prepared to follow the trail. To be honest, it's a premature decision. It is not enough to determine which hare came up with the idea to inherit in front of your nose, you also need to understand how long the oblique jumped here. Maybe it was before you bought a gun and decided to go into the woods. Hares jumped before you, and will jump after! Their nature is such a jumping. In general, the further into the forest, the more interesting!

You begin to study the trail of the hare again. The questions are different now. If it snowed at night, the morning footprints are fresh. There is nothing to guess here. If it is snowing now, then the freshest tracks are not powdered. But if there was no snow and is not expected, then we must again remember and think something, move our convolutions and think. What do you say? This heavy thing is hunting.

Necessary information for the tracker.

• To determine the prescription of a trace, there is little knowledge: experience, logical thinking are needed. This, of course, comes with time. I am very grateful to the many people who taught me to read. white paper nature. For example, Smolensk hunters, who, jumping out of the car on the move and bending over the ground, reported how many moose passed, what age and what gender they were, when they passed, where and from where they were going.

• Conditions are needed that make it easy to distinguish fresh tracks from old ones - yesterday's ones - or from even older ones. These conditions are created every time the surface of the snow cover is renewed, most often when fresh snow falls or with powder, so in some places a good snowfall is called renovation - with its appearance all old traces disappear. IN open places the same role is often played by the wind, blowing dry snow from below, but not too compacting its surface. With the formation of a very dense wind board, reminiscent of the crust formed after a thaw, many animals walk on a hard snow surface without leaving any traces at all.

• If there is no fresh snow for a long time in winter, a large number of traces of very different age accumulate on the surface of the snow cover. Snowfall, the degree of its humidity, the depth of the snow cover, the size, shape and density of individual snowflakes, the effect of wind and temperature on them, other weather conditions and the nature of lighting are the main reasons that affect the appearance and strength (hardness) of the track, and the appearance and strength traces serve as the basis for determining its freshness.

• If the snowfall ended in the evening or early at night, and the animals leave traces of their full night routes on it, the powder is called long. When the snowfall ends in the morning, and only the last stretches of the paths of nocturnal animals are imprinted on it, the powder is called short. Sometimes they also talk about dead powder. This means that the deep snow completely covered all the old tracks, ended by dawn and retained only the latest - morning tracks. There are still popular powders, when animals run a lot, visiting all corners of their site. There are dumb powders, they are obtained with deep snow and warm weather when animals lie in dens or feed in small areas. Sometimes the snowfall, which began at night, continues in the morning and afternoon. Under these conditions, having stumbled upon a fresh track, one can be sure that the animal that left it is very close.

The snow cover is changeable, and the type of traces of any animal is just as diverse. different conditions. Snow is: wet (airy and wet, touched by a thaw and frozen after a thaw or rain in a crust), free-flowing, frozen, similar to quinine, and feathery - tender and crystalline, settling with frost, granular, like wheat flour or table salt, falling before change of weather in the form of grains, with a mixture of soft snow, and compacted by winds, melted by the action of the sun, frozen to the degree of crust, and another; apart from intermediate species.

Snow seems to us either dull white-chalky - in gray weather with high standing, even solid clouds, then grayish or smoky white, like bad whitewash, then lilac-lead, depending on the height of the clouds and the transparency of the air, then sparkling with pinkish off sun rays or a bluish shade from darkening, like scattered naphthalene.

• Many hare tracks in leaden, hazy lighting can look old, as if they were sewn up from wind and frost. But as soon as they are covered with a mitten or hollow clothing, as simultaneously with a decrease in access to unfavorable lighting, characteristics a fresh trail, - so wrote N. Zworykin, an experienced hunter and observer, in his wonderful book How to determine the freshness of a trail.

Now about tactics and strategy in determining the freshness of the trail.

The animal's paw pushes a part of the snow cover away from its movement. This is a pullout. The furrows left along the course of the beast are called dragging. If the edges of the drag and drag are smoothed (as a rule, from the wind) - the track is old. If the edges are velvety and fluffy, the trail is fresh. If you gently press the bottom of the track with your finger, and the snow under your finger calmly gives in, the track is fresh. If this is done with difficulty, the track is old (frost and wind have fastened the snowflakes into a thin, ice film.) Old tracks have a much thicker film than fresh ones. If in frosty weather individual snowflakes, thrown out by the paw of the beast, managed to freeze - the trail is old. If not, fresh. If grass has been trampled into the trail, pay attention to whether it has risen after some time or is still at the stage of recovery. That is, you need to carefully look at the trail, assess the weather conditions and decide how much time has passed and what the weather has done with the trail. You can leave a trace of your foot or hand next to the trail of the beast, compare how they differ, and draw a conclusion.

Knowing the basis of the trace change depending on weather conditions, the age of the trace can also be determined on sand, clay and ordinary soil.

In our case, you decided that the trail is fresh. (If you decide that the trail is old, there is no point in continuing to write the book further.) You were delighted and began your movement along the trail. A slight frost burns the face. The breeze stirs individual blades of grass on a snow-covered field. Easy to breathe. If you, at least once, went hunting early in the morning and if this day was also the first day of the New Year, such feelings are added to your hunting mood that it is difficult to convey. I want to fly, sing, whistle. I hope you understand me well!

The trail of the hare is changing. He is one, then another. You are confused. The hare is mocking you. But he lives his own life. So, we will learn to understand this life.

Let's analyze the tracks in more detail and try to follow them.

Fatty hare footprint

The hare played tricks on the snow, trodden a small path. Traces of the hind and fore paws are located close to each other. The hare just waddled around, rested. He fed on the bark of a young birch tree, plucked last year's yellow grass, left a small dark pile of litter. For information: the litter of a brown hare is round. Litter of a white hare - looks like a big pill. It makes no sense to unravel the hare's fat trail. The hare will never lie down where he dine. Look around and find the exit track from fattening to prone - it is usually straight.

Hare racing trail

The footprint of a hare left when someone scared him away. The distance between the tracks is more than a meter or so. The direct trail of a hare on a laying ground is calmer and the distance between the tracks is less than a meter. We continue on this trail.

• Rule number 1. We must follow the trail, without trampling it, close by. This is necessary in order to be able to return and once again check the correctness of their reasoning. The hare and his trail began to be cunning.

The hare followed its trail back - this is called a double.

He jumped aside from the path of his tracks - this is called a sweep.

If the reverse track does not trample the previous one, but goes around it in a circle, such a track is called a loop.

In any case, this is the first signal for you to be more careful. You take off your skis, raise the headphones at your hat to hear better, and cock your gun.

• Rule number 2. After the first double, basting or loop, you are already carefully looking around, and your hearing reacts to any rustle. Finger on the trigger.

For some time, from the hare's first cunning, the trail will go smoothly and again begin to wind, sweep and double. Well, here you just have to be on the alert! Hearing and vision are strained to the limit. After the third trouble, you should already shoot at a hare that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and suddenly jumped out. The appearance of a hare is always sudden, no matter how you expect it. The hare, having made a loop, swept and jumped several times to the left of its track (discount), lay down, turning its head to where the enemy could be expected from - head to its track. As you unraveled the second loop, he watched you carefully, patiently waiting for you to turn your back on him.

Having reached the last loop, you noticed with horror that the trail went back. You lost, and soon you will see for yourself. Imperceptibly, with a silent jump, the hare jumped out of the bed and, raising frosty dust, rushed away from you. And here is his footprint. Lying - dug hole, has the shape of a fishing hook. This is the only thing left for you to enjoy.

• To prevent this from happening, you must remember rule number 3. If you are confused and it is not clear to you what to do next, you should not stop on the trail. You need to stagnate in place, simulating walking. Otherwise, the hare will understand that it has been detected and jump out at an inconvenient moment for you.

The hare may not lie down after the first, and even after the second doubling. We must continue to patiently follow the trail, listening and looking closely at the forest or field surrounding you. The meaning of any hunt is who will deceive whom. The hare can even do triples - run three times in its wake.

Maybe, after the first double, we should have stepped back from the trail and went around the probable location of the hare in a semicircle. And it would be even better to do it from the leeward side. Would come closer. Sometimes hares sit very tightly. It is advisable to have binoculars on such a hunt: we reached the loop and examined suspicious places.

If you are alone, you need to move by shuttle, imitating the course of a pointing dog. If there are many, it can be more organized. It is better if the wind is in your face - the hare will not immediately feel your presence. We stretch out into a line, the center goes a little behind the flanks, forming a pocket into which, sooner or later, a confused hare will fall. One hunter walks at a distance of 10-20 meters from another. The hare, raised by the central shooter, shoots from the flanks.

It is forbidden to shoot if the gun is pointed towards a friend!

This type of hunting is for courageous people. Nervous, unbalanced hunters are better off staying at home. They see a hare, choke on adrenaline - they start shooting without understanding who is on the firing line - a tragedy for the whole team. Some local hunters simply do not know what the safety on the gun is for, they do not unload their guns when they drive or go hunting. It was also the case that it ended badly. The guns are loaded with shot. The right (lower) barrel shot No. 3. The left (upper) shot No. 2 or No. 1, in case of a long-range shot.

When passing along the slope of the hill, the need to walk in the pocket disappears. With the same type of undersized vegetation, the hare tries to stay in the upper and middle parts of the hill. The hare does not run down the slope. As I said, the legs are short (but it also happens - with a fright, what you can’t do!).

Favorite hare nesting areas on the slope of the hill earthen depressions, located perpendicular to the plane of the hill.

Photo of traces of a hare

Lives in our country four kinds of rabbits. The white hare inhabits the tundra, forest and forest-steppe zone; hare-hare - the southern half of the European part, northwestern part Kazakhstan and certain areas in the south of Western and Central Siberia; tolai hare, or sandstone, - Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Transbaikalia; Manchu - south Far East. Here we will focus only on the first two, the most common types.

The white hare is especially widespread in our country. The length of his body is from 45 to 65 centimeters, weight is from 2.5 to 5.5 kilograms. The ears are relatively short: curved forward, their ends barely reach the tip of the nose. Paws are wide and strongly pubescent. Summer coat is reddish-brown. Dull coloring helps the animal to escape from numerous enemies (it "dissolves" against the background of forest vegetation). In winter, the hare is snow-white, only the tips of its ears remain black.

Belyak- a forest dweller. Only in the tundra and at the southern border of distribution does it live in treeless spaces, and even then it chooses the most protected places there: thickets of shrubs in river valleys, steppe pegs. Solid tracts of tall forest, devoid of grass cover and deciduous undergrowth, are not very attractive to him. Here, hares are rarely found, mainly on the outskirts of swamps, in burnt areas. The largest number hare reaches in places where Various types forest lands are located in a mosaic pattern - on islands of forest among overgrown clearings and burnt areas, and floodplain forests, thickets along water bodies, on the edges of forest glades, in moist lowlands and other similar places where the herbage develops well and the undergrowth is rich hardwood.

In summer, the hare eats succulent feed- various types of herbaceous vegetation. At this time, he experiences salt starvation: he gnaws the bones of dead animals, horns shed by deer, visits salt licks - natural salt outlets, where he gnaws on brackish soil. In autumn, it gradually switches to branch forages and feeds on them almost all winter. It eats swampy branches and young shoots of soft hardwoods - willows, aspens, birches, and in more southern habitats - oak, maple, hazel. From thicker branches, hares gnaw the bark. If the wind knocks down the aspen in the forest or in the clearing, the hare gather in this place for a feast. After a while all the bitches fallen tree, covered with coarse light green bark, are gnawed by hares. The branches, to which the hares could not reach, “process” the moose, and soon only the white skeleton of a fallen tree remains in the snow.

In addition to branch food, white hare eat small amounts of dry grass among weeds sticking out from under the snow, choose leaves from haystacks left in forest clearings and in floodplains, or pick up shreds of hay on forest roads, confused during removal.

The hare has several broods per year. in Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions- two broods per summer, in more southern regions - three, and in Eastern Siberia, in Yakutia, where the frost-free period is short, - one. The rut takes place in March, and in warm winter even at the end of February. During the rut, males give a voice at night and at dawn, gather several animals together, and fight. The female is sometimes covered by several males.

The hare brings the first brood after 49-51 days of pregnancy: often in the forest there is still snow covered with infusion. Hunters call such early rabbits nastoviks. Newborns weigh 90-130 grams. They are born sighted and covered with hair. On the first day of life, they are able to move, and on the 9-10th day they begin to eat grass. A newborn hare knows how to hide so tightly that you can often step on it.

Shortly after giving birth, the female mates again and brings a second litter in the middle of summer. In the southern part of the Real, the last hares (the third litter) appear already in autumn, in September. They are called deciduous. In years with early cold, there is a large natural mortality in late broods. The number of rabbits in a litter in different habitats is different, on average three to six. It has been noticed that in those places where females bring but three broods, in each of them there are fewer cubs than in areas where a hare brings only PDIN litters.

The number of belyaks changes dramatically over the years. They are prone to a number of diseases, which in years of high abundance cause massive epizootics and high mortality of animals.

The main enemies of the hare are the fox and the lynx. Rabbits are attacked by many birds, even the gray crow. Golden eagle and eagle owl hare are successfully hunted, but these birds are currently so few that their importance as enemies is negligible.

The hare is somewhat larger than the white hare: it weighs four to five, sometimes seven kilograms. His ears are also much longer: bent forward, they go beyond the tip of the nose. In summer, the hare is yellowish-fawn-red, brighter than the hare. In the southern part of the range, its winter coloration does not differ from summer, only the fur becomes thicker and more lush. In the northern part of the range, this hare partially turns white, but its back always remains brown.

Hare- inhabitant open spaces. Favorite places its habitats are virgin steppes, floodplains wide rivers, agricultural coals, small copses and bushes. It rarely enters the depths of coniferous plantations. Sometimes found in close proximity to settlements, where gardens attract him in autumn, and gardens and hay in winter. In summer, the hare eats succulent herbaceous plants, and in winter, various dry herbs and their seeds, goes out to feed on winter, eats the bark and shoots of willow, maple, hawthorn, and penetrating into gardens - apple trees and pears.

The hare breeds more intensively than the hare. He has three litters a year, and in the south of the range in other years even four or five. Pregnancy lasts 45-50 days. The hare brings the first brood in April. In the spring brood there are on average three hares, in the summer there are five. Cubs are born weighing about 100 grams and grow quickly. After two weeks, their weight quadruples and they begin to feed on vegetation.

The hare is less prone to epizootics, especially helminthic invasions, apparently because it lives in open places accessible to the sun, but on the other hand, compared to the hare, it suffers more from predators.

In summer, due to dense vegetation, it is difficult to detect traces of hares. It’s easier to lift the animal itself from the bed or stumble somewhere on a brood of hares, and even then in the thickets you won’t have time to see the flashed animal. In the evening twilight, hares love to run along paths and roads, and if you look closely, you can see the prints of their claws on soft soil. They give out the presence of hares and balls of their droppings.

In winter, when everything is covered with a white veil of snow, patterns of hare tracks can be found both in the forest and in the fields.
Unlike most other animals, hares move only in one gait - a gallop, and the running speed depends on the size of the jump. There are three types of hare heritage: fodder, or fattening, running and ton.

During feeding, the hare moves in very small jumps. Lowers the front paws to the ground, stretching the body, and then, pushing off with both hind legs at the same time, as if pulling them to the front (does not bring the hind legs behind the front ones). Paw prints on the places of fatness are tightly molded to one another. The tracks show that while eating, the hare often sits on its hind legs.

The walking trail of a hare is more or less long jumps, in which the animal brings its hind legs behind its front ones.

Rice. 34. Traces of hares: hare (left) and hare


Rice. 35. Traces of a white hare sitting (left) and running

Op puts them in parallel, and one of the front paws, for greater stability, takes it forward a little. This trace is calm, the soles of the hind legs, as well as on the fat trace, are completely imprinted.

When running fast, especially when the hare is escaping from enemies, he places his hind legs not side by side, but one somewhat in front of the other, as a result of which the prints of all Four paws of the rutting track are stretched in length and lie low in a straight line. With such a gait, the hind legs of an 8-eye do not leave prints of the entire sole (from the claws to the hock), but only one toe, just like the front ones. He runs as if on "socks".

Despite the fact that the hare is larger than the hare, its tracks are smaller. The fact is that the hare - a resident of the forests, Where the snow is more loose, the paws are wider and more pubescent. The narrow paw of the hare is better adapted to fast running. By the way, hunters especially appreciate greyhounds with a narrow, collected, so-called "Russian" paw.

The nature of the heirs of hares is different. The hare moves slowly, in short hops, feeds little by little and at many points. But if the hares find an aspen or its top felled by the wind, they gather in such a place in several individuals, trample the snow tightly here and lull it with droppings. By the middle of winter, white squirrels in their habitats fill a whole network of thorny paths, which their enemies, foxes and lynxes, also like to use.

Rusak moves more briskly, as his hauls are removed from feeding places. The fattening places of the hare are more concentrated and several animals usually gather on them. These hares do not fill trails, since in open places the snow is denser than in the forest, and it is easier to walk on virgin soil.

Both hares are characterized by entanglement of traces before lying down. The hare confuses them especially subtly. In order to throw off the trail of a potential pursuer, he does not go from the place of fattening to the laying place in a direct way. The animal makes “loops”, repeatedly crossing its own track, “bangs”, passing along the old track 20-30 meters in the opposite direction, and “basting” - large jumps to the side. Making a mark, he tries to jump into a bush, a thaw patch, a tussock, a bunch of weeds, to a place where his paw prints are less noticeable. Before lying down, he makes several loops, lashes and sweeps, chooses a lying place in a secluded place and settles with his head to his trail in order to notice the enemy in time and have time to hide unnoticed while he unravels the patterns of his tracks.

Ryas. 36. The path of a hare-hare to lay: - vzvoka; 2 - estimate; 3 - loop; 4 - prone

The white hare also makes loops and sweeps away from its trace, but many times less than the hare. But he climbs into such strong places to lay down that not every predator manages to catch him by surprise.

In the footsteps, you can learn a lot of interesting things about the hare. One winter in the forest on the Onega Peninsula, I read in the footsteps of a small comic scene from the life of this animal. Very tired, I was returning home along a snow-covered forest road.

A hare trail ran along the groove. The hare moved in small leaps, stopping near bushes sticking out from under the snow and tufts of last year's grass. Suddenly in the snow ... a dark failure. This white hare got into the "warmhouse" - an unfrozen swamp. Tonkin's ice could not withstand its weight and broke through. The animal quickly jumped out into the snow, splashed a brown peat slurry over the white shroud, and after such an unexpected bath, quickly rolled forward. Yes, it was not there! Without galloping even fifty meters, he jumped into the wood grouse hole with a run. Apparently, they were both scared.

The oblique swiftly rushed into the thicket, and the suddenly awakened rooster could not even immediately take off. He fell out of the hole, first on one side, then rolled onto the other, and stroked the snow several times with his elastic wings before he rose into the air. This little funny story made me laugh, cheered me up and the road to the house no longer seemed so long and easy.

Hares are of great commercial importance. The skin of a hare is imitated as more expensive furs, and the hair of a hare is the best raw material for obtaining felt. The meat of animals is rich in vitamins and is a valuable food product.

Especially great is the importance of hares as an object of sport hunting. Many sports and hunting farms carry out special biotechnical measures (feeding, arrangement of salt licks, resettlement) aimed at increasing the number of animals.
Shooting of hares is limited by the terms of hunting, and in special hunting farms, in addition, by the rate of production.

Malik is the name given to the entire path of the hare that was marked in the snow during the night, starting from his lair, where he spent the day, to fattening, that is, the place where he fed, and back to lying. Recognition of hare tracks, very diverse in nature, has a very great importance, since for most rifle hunters tracking down hares, mainly hares, is the main, and sometimes the only available way of winter hunting.

First of all, it should be noted that the tracking of the whites is very difficult, and therefore they "trail" almost exclusively the hare. The white coat of the hare, which differs very little from the snowy surface, the intricacies of the passages and the usually strong place for the lair, are the reasons that allow the hare to almost always go unnoticed.

In addition, the convergence of a little white hare is always tiring, because the white hare extremely confuses its moves, fills paths, runs into fats and into the paths of other white hare, circles around, sword nooses, and generally confuses the tracks so much that even the most experienced hunter spends a lot of time searching for hare.

Pale hare footprint	Traces of a hare

Therefore, in areas where both hare and hare are found, it is very important to be able to distinguish them by the trail, which is given very soon. In the hare, which lives in the forest, where the snow is looser than in the field, the paws are comparatively wider and rounder, or rather, have widely spread fingers, so that it leaves imprints in the snow that approach a circle in outline; in the hare, the paw is narrower and less widened, and its footprint is oval, elliptical. When the snow is not very loose, with the so-called printing powder, fingerprints of individual fingers will come out, but the traces of the hare's hind legs will still be much wider than those of the hare.

More elongated and parallel to each other and slightly ahead of each other belong to the hind legs, and those approaching a circle in outline and following one after the other, in one line - to the front.

A sitting hare leaves an imprint of a completely different kind: the prints of the front legs are almost together, and the hind legs lose their mutual parallelism somewhat, and since the hare, while sitting, bends its hind legs to the first articulation, the entire groove is imprinted on the trail, except for the paws. (In the figure, the imprints of the hind legs with grooves are shaded.) Except for this case, i.e., the seat, the traces of the hind legs always remain parallel, and if traces are noticed on loose snow in which the larger imprints of the hind legs go apart - clubfoot, then these are not the tracks of a hare, but of a dog, cat or fox when they walk in jumps. The same can be said about the track, in which one hind foot is strongly ahead of the other.

The normal run of a hare is large jumps, and he takes out his hind legs almost or completely at the same time, and puts his front legs sequentially one after another. Only with very large jumps does the hare put the front legs almost together.

hare footprints

Ordinary hare tracks are called terminal, since with such medium jumps he goes to fats and returns from them.

rabbit footprints

Fat traces differ from the terminal ones in that the paw prints are very close to each other and the individual traces almost merge. They are called fat because hares make them where they feed, slowly moving from place to place, often sitting down.

discount hare footprints

Discount or estimating traces are left by the largest jumps made at an angle to the original direction of the track. The hare tries to hide them, cut off his trail, before he decides to lie down. The number of discount jumps is usually one, two, three, rarely four, after which there are again ordinary, end tracks. For the most part, before the discount, the hare doubles its trail. Discount jumps differ from terminal jumps in the distance between the tracks and in the fact that the prints of the front legs are together.

chasing hare tracks

Race or wake tracks become a hare when he is scared away from the lair - and he goes with big jumps. They have a great resemblance either to discount ones or to terminal ones, but of the opposite direction, because the prints of the front paws are closer to the prints of the hind legs of the previous, and not the same jump.

From the den, in which the hare sat until dusk, the malik begins with fatty traces, which soon turn into trailers, sometimes leading directly to feeding, that is, to winter, to the garden, kitchen gardens or to a well-worn road. On fats, the hare always feeds in small, very continuous movements, often stopping and sitting down. Having eaten well, he sometimes runs and plays, and here he comes across racing tracks. Having run, he either again takes up food, or already at dawn he sets off with fat end traces to a new lair.

This complex confusion at the feeding site is called fattening, as hunters say, or - a fat trace. It consists of small, short jumps, never straight.

Before choosing a safe haven for the day, the hare begins to make loops, i.e., round off its course, again crossing its former traces. These loops sometimes occupy large areas, so that at point A (see the figure) it is quite rare to say with certainty, without turning the loops, whether the crossing traces belong to the convergent malik or another hare passed here. More than two loops are rarely seen.

Soon after the loops start dating deuces And triplets, i.e., doubling or building a trace, and the traces are superimposed on one another, so that skill is needed to distinguish a double trace from an ordinary one. After a deuce, the hare usually makes a discount to the side, but after a triple, which is relatively rare, for the most part does not happen and the hare goes further for a considerable distance.

Most often, a double and triple track of a hare is seen along roads or along the crests of ravines, where there is almost always little snow, and at the beginning of winter - in hollows, meadows and only that frozen streams and rivers. The length of twos, both in the same malik and in different ones, is very variable and varies from 5 to 150 steps. They undoubtedly indicate the proximity of the lair, and if a hare walks a considerable distance after a deuce with a discount, changing discount jumps to end jumps, then this is already an exceptional case.

Threes usually do not reach a significant length and the direction after them does not change and very rarely a discount follows them. The discount is almost always made at right angles to the direction of travel; after several discount jumps, several end jumps follow and again the second deuce with discounts. Often, Russians are limited to two deuces, but there are maliks with eight and even a large number deuces. This largely depends on the quality of the powder and the weather: if the powder is fine and the weather is cold, the hare walks a lot; if vice versa - walks a little. In addition, the later it stops snowing, the shorter the hare maliks, so if the snow was heavy and stopped at dawn (which happens quite often), then where you see the malik, there is also a hare, for all his previous traces were covered with snow; it goes without saying that maliki then come across rarely.

The hare digs a lair in the snow, somewhere under a bush, at the end of the path, and crouching, legs crossed, ears laid on its back, turns its nose to where the enemy can always be expected, that is, to the trail.

One of the most interesting and most attractive creatures to hunt in the forests of Russia is the hare. There are plenty of them in our forests and the hare is a common animal, it has a fluffy and pleasant to the touch skin, very delicious meat. Hunting for this animal can take place with the help of dogs or powder. If you decide to hunt down a hare without a dog, then you should know hare tracking rules.
For this you will need:
- attentiveness (you should be focused only on hunting);
- optical sight or binoculars;
- And the most important thing for tracking a hare is the ability to read tracks.
Instruction:

1.
Choose the most suitable weather for hare hunting, best of all - a warm day, because in the cold this nimble animal will not let you get close to him! Remember that the best time to hunt a hare is early in the morning the next day after a small snowfall, because most likely the animal went out to feed at night and left a lot of tracks. If the snowfall stopped before sunrise, then postpone your plans to track the hare, as the tracks will be very difficult to find. Strong wind, which carries snow and hides tracks, can make it very difficult.
2.
Find perfect place, then where hares are seen most often, or consider all local features. At the beginning of winter, hares most often appear near fields where various vegetable crops were grown or near fields sown with winter wheat. By the middle of winter, they are easiest to find in the forest or near housing. Remember that a hare will never lie down in an open field., but will choose a secluded place behind a hillock, snow or in a ravine, positioning itself so that the nose is turned to the wind.
3.
Finally you found the tracks of the hare, in this case, determine where he went. And try not to get confused in the tracks, because when moving, the beast puts out its hind legs first, and then the front ones, so the track can confuse you. As soon as you determine the direction of the hare's movement, take a gun in your hands and follow the trail. And do not forget to inspect the surroundings with binoculars or a scope, it may be that the beast is very close.
4.
Perhaps, on the way you will meet a hare's fattening place, which is very easy to recognize by the many tracks, in this case go around this place and find the tracks that come out of the fattening place, they are called exit tracks. Usually the exit trail is vigorous and straight, follow this trail without trampling it.
5.
Following the exit tracks, you will stumble either to the next fattening place or to the hare's lair, you can find out about this by many loops and deuces. When you meet a loop, go around it, and if you meet a deuce, carefully look around. If you failed to see the hare, go around this place in circles, each time narrowing the diameter of the circle that you go around. Good luck with stalking a hare.

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