Originally Posted by las
Cottontails have roughly a 10 year cycle, snowshoes about 13. It can vary a couple years either way, depending on weather, predators, forage, how hard they crash, and maybe some other factors.

So wait a couple, protect your orchard and ornamental trees meanwhile, shoot the crap out of them, and you will be fine. smile

I always found interesting that a couple Canadian studies have shown that the number one predator on snowshoe hare babies under the age of 2 weeks is the little red pine squirrel.

One difference, (there are several) between hares and rabbits, is that rabbits keep their babies all in one nest, at first, while snowshoes stash their several babies singly in different locations. Dunno about Jacks. Those are hares also, right?
We have a lot of whitetail jack rabbits around here which are often mistaken for snowshoes. The mistake is so common that many people who've lived in the high desert all their lives don't even know there is a whitetailed jack. They think they're all snowshoes which don't live here at all. Whitetails live at higher elevations than blacktail jacks and turn white in the winter, which blacktails don't. Of course jacks are hares but I've never heard the term 'jack hare'.
Another difference between rabbits & hares is that hares have a 2 week longer gestation than rabbits so the young are born more fully developed. Rabbits are born naked and with their eyes closed while hares are born fully haired and with the eyes open. Hares are ready to leave the nest much sooner than rabbits. With some exceptions, rabbits nest in a burrow while hares just make a form, which is just a depression under a bush or something, to give birth.

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