Hare vs swampers

[Tsa la gi]

You mean you didn`t see tha horses swing by you?

[Bear Creek Kennel]

Never seen a hare so I can't say about size but we hunt mostly swamp rabbits (cane cutters as we call em) here. They get real big. They do not all run the same tho. Depends heavily on time of year, breeding, rutting, and cover. We have big flooded river bottoms with 500-1000 acre cutovers and pine thickets. Most of them run really big and fast and they do love that water. Will run in it, swim in it, cross it, and get out in beaver dams and tree stumps in it and really give a dog fits. Gotta have dogs that will put real pressure on them to make them come into areas to give you a shot at them.

It's thick, rough, and deep.... But we sure do love it. Nothin beats an all day swamp rabbit hunt. Best day u can have, dogs go home and will not make a bark in the kennel all night, and you will sleep on your side of the bed and not bother mama all night;)

[Lone Pine Beagles]

According to the internet...

Swamp rabbits average 4-6 lbs.

Snowshoe Hare average 2-4 lbs.

[Swamper AR]

Do hares double and do misc tricks to shake the dogs?

[PREACHERS KENNEL]

no they just run real fast ..they turn some and do circles but nothing like a cottontail.. swampers twist alot more than hare,, i seen nthem go out 200-300 yard and never return we had to go to the dogs which was real bad for me lol. i thought i seen gus come by once but wasnt sure, lol.. you know i like ole gus .

[Tsa la gi]

Ah know he wuz walkin on the water

[cojax]

I tried to tell him chuck but he didn't believe me.....

[Shady Grove Beagles]

I've hunted both hare and swampers for a lot of years and I'd say that the swamp rabbits are bigger/ heavier bodied than the hare.Hare with his feet stretched out behind him are a longer /rangier rabbit.
Someone asked if the hare pull tricks like a cottontail does.Where I hunt in northern Maine it's is doubtful that those hare have ever been run by a dog until ours jumped them.
Most times on the jump the hare will go out and make what I'd call a medium circle around the area you jumped him.Sometimes two circles like that with the dogs pushing him pretty fast and hard.These hare then will usually line out and take the dogs almost out of hearing and according to the Garmin while hunting this Fall, a 1,000-1,200 yards out at times.
We had some runs this year of the 2 hour variety with the dogs hammering.Once you've been running a hare hard for 2 hours or more you'll start to see him pull more tricks and cause the dogs checks.Initially the hare's race is all about flight and just staying out in front of the dogs.He can run as fast as he needs to.
After several hours he'll start to tire of the game both physically and mentally and that's when you'll see him start to run like a cottontail.
Hare in deep snow will run their same lanes over and over tracking the snow all up in every direction making it tough on the dogs.
Because hare and swampers are much bigger rabbits than is the cottontail I would have to believe that they give off considerable more scent.That and their more open running style and area they will cover during a chase can make for some petal to the metal running.
I've had some real good hard pounding runs on swampers.They will reach out and cover some ground but I think what makes them so challenging is how they use the environement they live in.Rather than just flat out running they use a lot of tricks around the water.
In my opinion nothing can top a hare for running stamina.If you have the right dogs and the conditions are right you can run him for hours.I read in an old hound book [ might have been Willet Randal's "Patchwork Wilderness" where they referred to the hare as the "King" of all game chaseable.

[BB Beagles]

I think dogs that are use to running in the northern parts would take some time to adjust to southern climates or vice versa, but hares are bigger than a swampers even though my granddaddy told me stories of back in the day they use to tie swampers to there belt loop and there head drag the ground. Gotta love them old stories. Majority of swampers we kill go around 5 lb. I believe hare are longer body but don't know about weight wise.

[rabbithunter30]

Alot of people think the hare run longer distance than swamper, i have never ran hare but i can say this ive run swamper & cottontail all my years of rabbit hunt'n and i dont see a hound having any problem run'n any of the 3 if conditioned right. As far as distance i've personally put 7+ miles on my hounds run'n a single swamper. But to answer your question Glenn i think if a hound is conditioned right and has a brain between his ears he can any of the 3. JMO

[northernhare]

Snowshoe Hare are athletes!!!

[Alabama John]

BB,
Your granddad was right and some still carry them that way. Cut an opening along the back leg tendon right above the foot and run your belt through it. Old time game pockets in hunting jackets were for quail hunters and were not big enough for one Cane Cutter, much less several.

[NorWester1]

MOUNTAIN HARE!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=444Py8qKkEY

[adirondackjoe]

i've never run a swamper. love to someday. bucket list. i do know hares though. been running them for over 40 years. i can tell you for a fact that if you have a cottontail dog, you've got a hare hound.i've seen days a hare didn't leave a 50 yard circle.when the next one ran the gps went from yards to miles. run them in late feb or march and sometimes they don't circle at all. i've had them leave the swamp we started him (buck?) cross a frozen river,cross a highway, train tracks and into a swamp we didn't know existed. kind of a pain, but we sure have found some good ground that way. (march hare?) anyway, just my 2 cents after 40+ years of it.

[Shady Grove Beagles]

Adirondakjoe
You are so right about running hare in March.I can remember many times jumping a breeding buck rabbit that had left his home range in search of doe rabbits.Most times they wouldn't even circle but would head right out of hearing.We'd be waiting for them to bring him back and they weren't coming back.This was before tracking collars and we'd have to pick up their tracks and snowshoe after them.Sometimes to find them a mile away and they'd been circling that hare over in that swamp for an hour out of our hearing.