[Linda G.]

Although there are still pockets of areas up here that have snowshoes, most of those in extreme northern Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan and Emmet counties, I don't know of anywhere in the Lower that's "crawling" with hares-just too much loss of habitat and too many predators.

Bunnies, surprisingly, appear to be on the comeback throughout the north tho...and you'll find most of those right around houses.

Your best bet to really get into good numbers of hares is in the UP, although you need to be prepared for "pockets" there, too. Lots of martens, coyotes, owls, eagles, bobcats and other things that are always after them.

 

[Linda G.]

If you've ever been up to northern Ontario, and seen the really really thick black spruce, tamarack, and hemlock swamps, you know what snowshoe habitat is. Except in the UP, there really isn't much of that left in Michigan anymore.

There's been an aborted effort to restore snowshoe hares from the UP to a couple of counties of extreme northeastern Ohio for the last five years or so, but that's done now, I remember reading something about it in MON last year.

It was ridiculous anyway, I've seen those poor hares in that part of Ohio, there's simply no habitat for them, and they're all sitting ducks for all the predators down there.

They've also tried to restore them to parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia, I would think that up in the mountains they'd be a little bit better off, but still...

I've seen them sitting in people's front yards in November in Ashtabula County in Ohio and around the edges of farm fields when they're already turned white, it's sad.