Learning to untangle hare tracks in the snow or hunting by tracking. A few more secrets from an experienced hunter for the opening of the hare hunting season How to find a hare bed in winter

Hare hunting at the beginning of winter after the powder, one of the best ways test your hunting skills: endurance, attentiveness, ability to recognize and read the trail, reaction and accuracy. A hare obtained as a result of tracking is a reward obtained solely thanks to your efforts and hunting skills.

Differences between hare and hare tracks

The hare remains active in winter. It feeds at night, in the pre-dawn hours, and hides during the day, remaining on the so-called “bed”. Powder - the snow that has freshly fallen overnight, sweeps everything away, and the fresh night adventures of the hare read like an interesting, freshly written story.

In our area, there are mainly two species - the white hare and the brown hare. The white hare moves to forested areas, prefers copses, dense bushes, overgrown areas. In winter it feeds by eating twigs and tree bark. Rusak prefers open spaces, in winter it sticks to the edges, beams, small bushes, loves terrain with good review. Despite the snow, it continues to feed on withered grass and seeds, winter crops, and leftovers from gardens, digging it all out from the snow.

In many regions they live nearby. On good feeding grounds, their feeding zones often intersect, and their tracks overlap and become confused. How to distinguish the tracks of a hare and a hare from each other, since their habits, and therefore the places where they lie and the manner of confusing the tracks, are different.

The main difference between the prints of one and the other hare is that The white hare has wider paws, and the fingers are spread further apart, the hare already has a paw, fingers pressed closer. Therefore, the paw print of a hare in the snow will be almost round, while that of a hare will be elongated, oval. There are additional differences. The hare's track is more confused, and when lying down it goes into the forest and dense thickets, including through deep snow. The hare has a discount, the trailing and racing tracks are longer. Due to its narrow paws, it cannot walk through deep snow like a white hare, so it prefers to move through more open places, including along already trodden paths and roads.

Where to look for a hare in winter.

As already written, the hare goes out to feed at night and finishes it in the morning, at dawn, after which it hides for the whole day. That's why the best time to hunt it is in the morning when he had already settled down and calmed down. You need to choose a fine, mild day with little wind. On such days, the hare easily gets up from lying down, and does not sit there until the last minute, as in bad weather or severe frost. In addition, the noise of the wind will hide your steps.

They look for the trail of a hare, especially a hare, along rural lands, fields, vegetable gardens, meadows and meadows, under stacks and stacks of straw, closer to the middle of winter in gardens. You can look for hare in the floodplains of rivers overgrown with young willow trees, in young aspen and birch forests, in gardens and on summer cottages, where he feasts on the bark of fruit trees.

The process of tracking a hare

The night adventures of the hare are quite monotonous. At the beginning of the night, he emerges from his resting place, first carefully looking around, and then in fairly quick leaps he goes to the feeding areas. In feeding areas, it moves slowly in short leaps, very chaotically (confused). Between feeding areas, its running speeds up and the length of its jumps increases. Sometimes, on bright, quiet nights, hares begin to frolic and race in the snow, then their jumps become especially long.

After having a snack at the end of the night, the hare heads to its daytime bed. In the process he begins to confuse the trail in order to confuse possible hunters. His run either speeds up or slows down, he can retrace his steps and then run on. He can go back a little and make a strong jump to the side and run further. Makes loops, runs out onto established paths and other people's paths, etc. During such a journey, the hare, depending on experience, performs each of these maneuvers from one to three times and only after all this hides in its shelter.

The process of unraveling all the nightly adventures of a hare, usually from the place of fattening (feeding) to the very place where it lies, is tracking. They start tracking by walking along the edge of a field or meadow, along forest paths or just along a country road, looking out for a hare's trail. Usually, hare paths lead towards fields and the like in the direction of the bedding area, and from there to thickets and bushes - to the bedding area.

The direction of movement of the hare is indicated to us by its hind paws; their prints are larger, more elongated and located in front of the prints of the front paws. If we are lucky enough to immediately find a trail leading from the feeding areas to the bedding area, go untangle it, otherwise head to the feeding area and start tracking from there.

Types of hare trails (maliks)

All hare tracks can be divided into four types, fatty, racing, end and hare tricks like twos, threes and discounts.

Fat trace

The hare leaves it, moving slowly, in short jumps, usually while feeding or looking around. The distance between the front and hind legs is small, and the track itself in the areas of fat is very tangled, winding, can intersect with the tracks of other hares, and is often accompanied by hare droppings. The fat monograms are usually not untangled, but after going around the fat spot in a circle, they look for the escape trail when the hare goes to bed, and then follow it.

Racing trail

The hare leaves a rutting trail when he gallops at full speed. He can either run away from someone or simply frolic, rushing back and forth. The distances between jumps are large, sometimes up to two meters, the front legs are parallel to each other, the distances between the front and hind legs are greater than during walking. The racing trail at the end is replaced by a small fatty trail or a slower running trail.

Running (end) trail

When the hare goes home from the fattening area to the resting place, its trail from the fattening area moves to a more purposeful, but still leisurely running (trailer). The distances between jumps increase, and the prints of the front paws follow one after another. It is this trail that is the most important, since it leads to the place where he is hiding. Actually, it’s only on him that the hare’s “arts” begin, loops, discounts, twos and threes, with which he tries to confuse you and prevent you from getting to his bed. The walking trail, especially of a hare, can run along well-trodden paths and roads, intertwined with the tracks of other hares and other animals, in this case you need to walk along and look for where the hare has gone to the side.

Twos, threes and loops

Walking along the running trail, you will encounter hare loops, twos and threes. This indicates that you are getting closer to his bed.

A loop appears when the hare, having made a circle, returns to its trail, crossing it or walking back a little along it. Loops usually appear closer to the bed, so when you see it you need to be more careful.

Deuce- this is when a hare, having run forward, returns a little back along its trail, and then abruptly changes direction, making a discount or simply changing the direction of running.

Troika occurs when the hare, having retraced its tracks, nevertheless decides to move further in the original direction and again follows its path. After a three, there is usually no discount and the oblique after it is rarely sent to the prone.

Discounts (estimates)

A jump is a big jump that a hare makes away from its tracks. A discount is usually made after a deuce, and the direction of movement after it usually changes sharply to perpendicular to the previous one. On the way to the shelter, the animal rarely makes more than three discounts or two discounts. Usually after the second it’s time to start turning your head in all directions, looking for the hare.

Unraveling the maliks

So, what does the whole process of tracking a hare look like? Having found its trace (malik), we first determine its direction so as not to come to a previously abandoned bed. You can recognize it by fingerprints or by the position of the front and hind paws and the distance between the tracks, remember that a hare's hind paw prints are in front of the front ones. We head along the small road we found, a little away from it, so as not to trample it. If he led you to the fattening site, we go around this place in a circle in search of a waste trail; you should not waste time untangling the fattening loops.

Having found a departure, we begin to follow it, it will either lead to a new fattening site, or double loops and discounts will begin, which indicates the proximity of the hare's bed. The loops must be completed completely, otherwise there is a chance of getting lost and following the trail of another hare crossing the one you are looking for. If a malik came out onto a path, road or other trail and walked, or even merged with them, walk along this path three hundred to four hundred paces, in one direction and the other, until you find the meeting place. You can identify a fresh print against the background of old ones by lightly pressing it with your finger; the snow on the fresh one will crumple, whereas on the old one it will not.

Remember places where you can get lost, trail intersections, etc. you may have to go back there. Usually after the first loops threes, twos and discounts begin. You should be wary after the first two at a discount, and after the second you need to look around in all directions and be ready to shoot. Experienced hunters say that when tracking a hare you should never stop. Even if you need to look around carefully, walk in place; your stop may provoke the oblique to rush out of the shelter. If you cannot specifically determine the location of the bedding, begin carefully, walking in a circle around the intended area of ​​its placement, looking in the direction of the track

Lying place

How to find a resting place? You need to pay attention to those places where the hare likes to hide. The hare prefers to hide in places with a good view, in bushes scattered across the field, in the roots or near the trunks of trees on hills, at the base of snowdrifts and sediments, in ruts, hollows, near shelters such as barns, old huts or fences. In early snow, a hare can hide in bushes near fields and on the edges, in heavy snow in the forest, deeper, in spruce forests, dense thickets, near the inversions, near windbreaks, sometimes along the edge of forest clearings.

The resting place can be determined by a pile of snow, often different in color, with lumps of earth, which the animal scattered while digging a hole for itself. But it is worth considering that, in search of a good bed, he can sketch several such slides in different places.

When you notice a hare lying down, do not look directly at him, this will provoke him to jerk, watch out of the corner of your eye, and do not approach directly, but passing a little to the side. When you get to the place where it lies, try to shoot it on the spot. If you pick up a hare, you need to shoot after him. After the shot, watch the hare carefully. If he continues to run but behaved strangely, follow his trail, he may well be wounded and, without even leaving a drop of blood, he will collapse after running 300 - 400 meters. If you still miss, you don’t need to immediately track down the runaway hare, you still won’t keep up with him, and he will lead you until the evening. It’s better to hide and wait, he may well, after cutting a few circles, return to lying down or simply calm down and lie down in another place, then drag him out again.

Equipment and weapons

When hunting by tracking in winter, two things are important: camouflage and the ability to walk for a long time, including in deep snow. This determines the selection of equipment and equipment for such a hunt.

In equipment, external camouflage, clothing, noiselessness, and the absence of strong odors are also important, so try to adhere to the following rules:

• The camouflage coat must correspond not only to the season, but also to the external environment. So in the first snow, when not everything is covered with it, the camouflage coat should have dark spots, but after heavy snowfalls it should be pure white.
• Clothing and equipment should not rustle loudly, squeak or jingle, avoid squeaky leather or loudly rustling synthetics.
• Shoes should be wearable, comfortable, but not squeak in the snow; rubber shoes, for example, are guilty of this. Felt boots or high boots are well suited for such hunting.
• It is quite difficult to scare off a hare by smell, but avoid strong odors; clothing should be clean, preferably specially designed for hunting.
• If good shoes are enough in the first snow, then in winter it is better to ski in deep snow. The skis used are wide, they also should not rustle loudly, and the bindings should not creak.
• To hunt a hare, they usually use smooth-bore guns, preferably machine guns, so that they can quickly fire several shots in a row. Accuracy is of great importance, so the barrel is taken with a choke or a payload. They shoot cartridges from No. 3 to No. 0 with a sharp shot.
• It’s better not to take a dog for tracking; it will most likely scare away the hare, raising it ahead of time, when you are not yet ready to shoot.

Not all hunters keep hounds, but everyone is drawn to hunting

And so, when the snow falls at night and the hares, moving away to lie down before dawn, make fresh tracks on it, the hunter sets off with a gun and without a dog to track the hare. To trail like a hunter means to find the trail of a hare from feeding for the day and follow the trail to the resting place.

They also hunt hare in this way. But in the forest it is difficult to notice a hare in its snow-white coat in a timely manner. It is more profitable to track hare in forests with clearings, in small clumps in clearings, in pine swamps with sparse willow, in hummocks with sparse woody vegetation.

Hunting for a hare is more rewarding. Purchasing a hare in powder is a most interesting hunt. From a dozen tracks to and from feeding, you must skillfully select a track that should lead to the hare's loops before lying down. Will the hare jump off or not while you're watching his weaving while walking? After all, it is not often possible to determine from a distance the place where the hare has lain. To this one can object: “The hare’s discount will indicate the side.” That’s how it is, but not quite.

Here the hare made a deuce on the path, in the middle of the field. The hunter sees the hare's trail back and forth... but where to go? If the hare came along the path on the left, then, therefore, he went that way, and if on the right, then in the other direction. When you can see on the path the place to which the hare walked back and forth, then the direction where he went is also clear. But it is still unknown where and in what direction he jumped off the path. This is where you get worried. Maybe he’s lying very close, he’s been seeing you for a long time.

It happens like this: you walk sideways along the troika (after all, you’re not supposed to follow the trail), but the hare made a discount in front and - jump! - Yes, he immediately lay down near the path under a bush. And you go straight to the bed, not knowing that she is here. And you will drive him away before the time.

“If I had walked to the side, I would have come straight to a stump with yellow grass around it. What if he is there?! Is it permissible to go straight to bed?”

“Suppose I go around a stump with yellow grass, and there won’t be a trace. And the hare, not having reached forty steps, lies against a stump in a ditch. I go around the stump, and he runs away unnoticed along the bottom of the ditch. There he is, rushing across the field, only the snow is swirling behind him!”

“No, it's not that simple. We must act according to the rules."

The hunter and I talked about this while sitting in the hut in the evening and cleaning our guns. That day we killed several Russians with him. Without regretting the two or three who left outside the shot, they discussed one incident.

We walked along the lake and crossed to the other side, closer to the winter fields. We see fresh, large hare tracks along the road.

He must have gone to feed for the winter. Whether we will pick up his trail from feeding again is unknown.

Ahead, on both sides of the lake, there was a yellow island with reeds.

We look, the hare's trail has been thrown into the right island.

I put a friend on the road - here the hare's move is correct! Without checking, we go around this island. I think: “Where should the hare go?” There are only two such suitable places on the open lake. The hare was walking from feeding, chipped in and lay down here. I ran in, whistling, rustling the reeds. No shot! I went out, I saw the hare leaving to the side in a measured move - it means that he left us. The trail went first along the road, then along the road itself, and from there again to another island of reeds. It turns out that the hare was not lying on the first island. We look, he is rushing towards the shore along the lake along its entire length - a huge, brown brawn! He lay tightly in the second island - they themselves had in vain driven him away when they passed the first island.

It's a shame! First, you should go around the first island, make sure that the hare is not here, and drive it towards the shooter from the second island. It was not the Russian who fooled us, we fooled ourselves. It’s easy for two people to cope in such thickets. There is no way to drive out a hare alone in the thicket.

No matter how hard you try to put yourself at a point where you can see both forward and to the sides at the same time, you won’t be able to. In such cases, I tried to make noise from behind and jump out further to the side - no. After all, a hare from the thicket is more likely to see where a person is, but he always hears and goes exactly in the direction where he is shielded from the person.

The next day we expected powder. At night the weather was fine. Quiet, little frost. Stars. The sky is blue.

As soon as it was light, we left. We headed along the road through a spring field, and a few hundred meters to the side there were winter crops. The stubble was sticking out from under the snow the day before, but now everything is covered. The snow sparkled under the rays of the sun.

We finally noticed a fair-haired little guy on the road. But the road had already been blocked by passersby - it was impossible to see in which direction the hare went. We walked half a kilometer in one direction - the trail did not leave the road. Let's go back: we think the hare wouldn't go that far along the road, he's probably in reverse side headed.

And so it happened. We walked a fair distance, and apparently the hare dashed into a spring field and made a huge leap. It's good that it's sunny - in cloudy weather Such a jump on a slope, of course, will be overlooked.

We walked together, on one side of the trail, about sixty paces from it. Fortunately, you can see far away: the trail turns pink in the sun and sparkles. Let's go and look at the trail and at suitable places for lying around.

The mark in the snow where the hare turned back turned white and silver - this is already a deuce. Now keep your eyes open - not a hare, but a hunter. The hare's ears are always ready! On the double trail, snow crumbs glow with multi-colored lights. Here's the discount. How he waved again! And he went straight...

We now moved along the sides of the trail, each fifty steps from it. I look ahead: I can see the pink trail far away, and suddenly it ends, and ahead is the silver of a snowy tablecloth. There at the end of the trail there is a discount to the side, and this branch of the trail has ended. Clearly, somewhere here, but where, when there are no signs on the plain? No, wait, in one place where the trail ended, the stubble is turning red, but in other places it is nowhere visible from under the snow.

I silently nod and point to my friend. I hold the gun with my left hand under the fore-end at chest height, and with my right hand I raise my fingers upward, depicting the stubble: it sticks out, they say! This is unnecessary, of course: the hunter himself must understand where the hare lies when every grain on the trail is visible.

We began to approach the bed. Thirty steps from both me and my friend. They approached a little more and got closer. I loudly: “Come on, get out!”

The snow shot up as if from an explosion, and the hare rolled. His comrade knocked him down.

The second hare was taken from the arable land. He lay down between the layers of turf. We came close.

The third was kicked out of the juniper bush; This one made a lot of noise, forcibly calmed down and lay down. The fourth was taken in a willow bush on hummocks; the fifth - on the steep bank of the stream, he made a hole in the snow. On the sixth, shots were fired near a stone on the hillside; They were afraid that he would disappear down the hill.

We failed to take two more birds with one stone: one jumped far, the other was missed.

You shouldn’t go after a hare that has jumped off its bed: it will lie down a second time, but won’t let you go.

When the snow becomes deep and compacted by the winds, the hare often digs quite deep holes for themselves in the blowholes. Sometimes a snowstorm covers both the hole and the hare's tracks leading into the hole. In such cases, the hare jumps out only when you almost step on it.

It happened to me once (this doesn’t happen very often), while tracking a hare along the trail, I skied into its hole in a snowy drift under the bank of a stream. I felt a push on the skis from below and thought that I had broken the ski... Instantly small shocks were repeated, frequent, like trembling, the snow dust rose in front of me to the height of my height, and a large hare jumped out from under the snow between my skis and rolled along the slant lines up. I managed to fire an ineffective shot when he was already hiding behind the edge of the shore.

If a hare jumps out close, you need to let it go about thirty steps and shoot at the front. Fraction numbers 1-3 are quite suitable for this hunt.

Hunting by trail from the approach is one of the most common methods of rifle hare hunting. This hunt continues almost all winter. She is interesting and prey. She cares. And hunters appreciate excitement. The hare, let’s say, is probably here, but it’s not there! And either he will jump out from the left, or from the right, or from the front. Anxious tension. But he always pops up in a different way and not where you expect.

BOOK HUNTING

When the snow gets deeper, it becomes more difficult for the hare to feed himself. Hares come closer to villages, to places where hay is concentrated. There are more hare tracks in gardens, on paths, in backyards, in places where hay is stored or scattered. Here it starts very interesting hunt in sit-downs.

Hiding is interesting not only because of its prey potential, but also because it allows one to observe the behavior of a hare at night and when he does not suspect the presence of a person.

First of all, determine the hay barn or haystack that attracts greatest number hares. This installs quite easily following the tracks. It often happens that the same hares visit different haystacks during the same night. The hares then disperse to different places, and the time they visit one or another feeding place is uncertain.

For blind hunting, it is very useful to attach hares to a specific barn or haystack. To do this, they place a tasty bait for the hares in the form of small clover (harvested during the beginning of flowering), remnants of cabbage leaves, cabbage stalks and various root vegetables. Having become familiar with such a place, hares will visit it in the most regular manner.

Moonlight evenings are chosen for hunting. You should set off for your outings immediately after sunset. The hare, having lain for the day from morning twilight until evening, hurries to feed as soon as it gets dark and people's daytime life subsides.

For hiding, they choose a place either in the barn itself or near it. For visibility and freedom of movement, it is more convenient to sit next to the barn so that the hunter’s figure does not stand out. To do this, it is better to make a small cover in a timely manner, the sight of which the hares will very soon get used to.

The most important thing when hunting a hare is the hunter’s complete immobility and the absence of the slightest rustle. Therefore, when an ambush is arranged near the barn, the snow should be trampled down so as not to rustle when stepping from foot to foot. When sitting on the hay, it is useful to put some clothes under you to avoid the rustling of the hay.

If the moonlight is behind the hunter, it is most convenient to aim.

Whites are guarded on forest roads, with hay placed as bait, or brushwood or freshly cut aspen trees are placed in a convenient place.

Malik is the name given to the entire path of a hare marked out in the snow overnight, starting from its lair, where it spent the day, to the lodge, i.e., the place where it fed, and back to its resting place. Recognition of hare tracks, which are very diverse in nature, has a very great importance, since for most rifle hunters, tracking hares, mainly hare, is the main, and sometimes the only affordable way winter hunting.

First of all, it should be noted that tracking white hare is very difficult, and therefore they “trace” almost exclusively hare. White wool The white hare, which differs very little from the snow surface, the intricacy of the passages and the usually strong place for the den, are the reasons that allow the hare to almost always escape unnoticed.

In addition, the descent of a white hare is always tiresome, because the hare extremely confuses its passages, clogs up trails, runs into fats and into the paths of other hares, circles, swords loops, and generally confuses its tracks so much that even the most experienced hunter spends a lot of time searching white hare

Therefore, in areas where both hare and hare are found, it is very important to be able to distinguish them by their tracks, which is achieved very quickly. The white hare living in the forest, where the snow is looser than in the field, has comparatively wider and rounder paws, or rather, has widely spreading toes, so that it leaves imprints on the snow that approximate the outline of a circle; the hare's 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, prints of individual fingers will appear, but the tracks of the hind paws of the hare will still be much wider than those of the hare.

The prints that are more elongated and parallel to each other and slightly ahead of each other belong to the hind legs, and the ones that approach the circle in outline and follow one after the other, in one line, belong to the front ones.

A sitting hare leaves a print of a completely different type: the prints of the front legs are almost together, and the hind legs lose some of their mutual parallelism and since the hare, while sitting, bends its hind legs to the first joint, then on the trail, in addition to the paws, the entire pasanka is imprinted. (In the figure, the prints of the hind paws with pazankas are shaded.) With the exception of this case, i.e., sitting, the prints of the hind paws always remain parallel, and if on loose snow tracks are noticed in which the larger prints of the hind legs go apart, they are clubfooted, then these are not the tracks of a hare, but of a dog, cat or fox when they go in leaps. The same can be said about a track in which one hind leg is much ahead of the other.

The normal run of a hare is large jumps, and it carries out its hind legs almost or completely simultaneously, and places its front legs sequentially one after the other. Only with very large jumps does the hare put its front legs almost together.

end tracks of a hare

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

hare fat marks

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

discount hare tracks

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

hare tracks

Rushing or agitated traces become a hare when he is scared away from his lair - and he goes in big leaps. They are very similar to either discount or end ones, but reverse direction, because the prints of the front paws are closer to the prints of the hind paws of the previous, and not the same jump.

From the den in which the hare sat until dusk, the malik begins with fatty traces, soon turning into terminal ones, sometimes leading directly to feeding, that is, to the winter, to the garden, orchards, or to a well-used road. On fats, the hare always feeds with small, very continuous movements, often stopping and sitting down. Having had a good snack, he sometimes runs and plays, and here he comes across rutting tracks. After running, he either starts eating again, or already at dawn he sets off from the fat in trailing tracks to a new lair.

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

Before choosing a safe shelter for the day, the hare begins to loops, i.e., round off your move, again crossing your previous tracks. These loops sometimes occupy large areas, so that at point A (see figure) it is quite rare to say with confidence, without turning the loops, whether the intersecting tracks belong to the descending malik or whether another hare has passed here. More than two loops are rarely seen.

Soon after the loops begin to meet deuces And threes, that is, doubling or lining up a trace, and the traces can be superimposed on one another, so skill is needed to distinguish a double trace from an ordinary one. After a two, the hare usually makes an allowance to the side, but after a three, which happens relatively rarely, for the most part does not happen and the hare continues on for a considerable distance.

Most often, double and triple tracks of a hare are seen along roads or along the ridges 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, can be very variable and varies from 5 to 150 steps. They undoubtedly indicate the proximity of the lair, and if the hare goes a considerable distance after the 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 a second deuce with discounts. Often Russians are limited to two deuces, but there are maliks with eight and even a large number two. 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 it’s the other way around, it doesn’t walk much. In addition, the later the snow stops falling, the shorter the hare's tracks are, so if the snow fell heavily and stopped at dawn (which happens quite often), then where you see the snow, there lies a hare, because all its previous tracks are covered with snow; It goes without saying that maliks are rarely found then.

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

Among the abundance of ways to hunt a hare, hunting along the malik (the entire night journey of a hare, depicted 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 skilled at confusing.

It is important to note that fresh scent hunting is an excellent substitute for hunting with a dog. The only difference is that the hunter himself needs to untangle the hare's tracks. Novice hunters, having tried this method of hunting for the first time, cannot recognize the small fish the first time and figure out where the animal could have gone. The key factor influencing the success of a hunt is the experience that will come to you over time. But so that you know how to read the tracks of a hare in the snow and do not allow simple mistakes, we have prepared this article.

Traces of hare and hare

As a rule, hunting for fresh whitebait is carried out for the brown 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 hare confuses tracks very well, and it can sometimes be difficult to determine its location. Even if you find a place where an animal spends its day, 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 their malik. The key difference is that the hare's paws are slightly rounder and wider than those of the hare. Wider paws help the animal move 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 a hare and a hare in comparison

Time and place of hunting

It’s worth noting right away that it is very difficult even for an experienced hunter to determine when the animal was in place, if before for a long time there was no powder either strong wind. You can trail all day, but you will never see the animal. Therefore, in order for the hunt to be successful, it is worth going out immediately after a good snowfall or strong wind, which the old malik was able to sweep away.

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. Because traveling on skis 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 suitable time. The fact is that if you go out after lunch, you may simply not have time to find the trail and track down the “oblique” one, since the winter day is very short, and you need to cover long distances. Also after a snowfall, as a rule, it persists warm weather, contributing to the fact that the hare does not lie as sensitively as usual, and allows the hunter closer to him.

Tracking process

The search for “oblique” should begin with the places where it is fattened. They feed near fruit trees, winter crops, and grain residues in the fields. The fact that there was an animal at the site of the fattening will be evidenced by many traces left in the snow.

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

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

In the process of tracking the “oblique”, you may encounter situations where the hare’s tracks intersect. There is a possibility of two different individuals passing through, 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 move to a new path, as the hare may make a skid (jump to the side).

Loop Crossing Example

It is important to understand that the further you are from the site of the “oblique” fat, the more attentive and careful you should be. As already written above, you need to walk a little to the side, as you may not notice the beast’s discount to the side. During the tracking process, 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 down a little away from its path. If you walk along the path and look only straight ahead, most likely you will not meet the “slanting” one.

Malik and its types

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

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

Estimate 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 sweeping marks before he is going to lie down for the day, and their number ranges from 1 to 5. Key Feature marks, it can be assumed that the prints of the front paws are together.

Fatty

Fat marks can be called an indicator of where the hare was fattened. As a rule, there are many of them at the feeding site and they cover certain territory. Fat tracks differ from normal ones in that their paw prints are close to each other and often merge. It is from the place where fatty traces are found that the tracking of the animal in winter begins.

Racing

These tracks indicate that the hare was scared away from its resting place. Beginning hunters can easily confuse rutting marks with discount marks, as they look almost like sweep marks. 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 subsequent one. In other words, during the rutting run the animal throws its hind legs forward more strongly.

Where is the bed located?

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

If you find an animal, but did not have time to fire a shot or it simply disappeared, there is no need to continue the pursuit, since the “squint” 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 it, 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 searching for another animal. And at the end of the article, we invite you to watch a video of hunting a hare by following its tracks.

Tracking hares is one of the most exciting and interesting, and also publicly accessible, winter hunts. It can only be successful when it is produced in powder form, i.e. after fresh snow falls. On this hunt, the hunter, without any assistants or dogs, has the opportunity to fully test his powers of observation, develop dexterity, caution and patience, and also demonstrate knowledge of the habits of the animal.

The hare lies on the bed all day long and only comes out at night to eat, that is, to feed, so its entire path from the place of lying to the fatty places and from the fat to the new bed is imprinted on the snow. Hunters call this trail a malik. The success of powder hunting largely depends on the hunter’s ability to recognize the very diverse tracks of a hare in the snow.

ACCORDING TO THE HARNIES

In those places where white hare and hare are found, it is very important to be able to distinguish their tracks from one another. The hare's paws are comparatively wider and rounder, the toes are spread quite wide, and therefore the footprint of the hare's paws in the snow will be almost round. The hare, on the contrary, has a relatively narrower paw, the fingers are placed close to one another, and therefore produces a more elongated oval footprint. In doubtful cases, examining hare droppings, which are often found on small farms, can help. In the hare, it has the shape of a slightly elongated ball the size of a hazelnut, and the hare's droppings appear as a flattened, light-colored ball.

Having risen from the bed at nightfall, the hare heads to the feeding site with its usual gait - short, even jumps, leaving so-called end tracks in the snow. At the fattening site, the hare moves slowly, leaving fatty traces on the snow, which differ from the end ones in that the hare's paw prints are very close to each other, and the individual traces almost merge. Fat tracks often alternate with tracks of a sitting hare.

Having eaten, the hare goes to bed, leaving the same trailing marks in the snow. But before he lies down for the day, he resorts to various tricks in order to throw his many pursuers and enemies off the scent. First of all, it begins to meander, that is, to round its path, making a full circle of a more or less regular outline and again crossing its old trail. These loops are sometimes quite long. Not limiting itself to just loops, the hare usually doubles or even lines up (makes a “two” or “three,” as hunters say) its trail, that is, it follows the same trail twice or three times.

At the same time, the hare places his paws on the trail so carefully that you need to have a very trained and sharp eye to immediately notice this. The length of the “twos” is very variable and ranges from five to one and a half hundred steps. The length of the “three” is usually much shorter. “Two”, as a rule, ends with a discount (sweep) - a huge jump to the side, made almost at a right angle to the original line of the trail. The number of discount jumps usually ranges from one to four, after which the hare returns to its usual gait.

In most cases, the hare is not limited to just one “three” or “two” with a subsequent discount, but makes several twos in a row, each time breaking the trail with a discount jump. In most cases, the hare makes no more than two or three “twos” in a row, although sometimes their number reaches seven or eight. After a “troika,” the hare almost never throws himself off to the side, but continues to walk, and often for quite a long time, in the same direction. In general, we can say that as far as loops and “twos” serve sure sign the fact that the hare is close to lying down, so the “troika” does not give almost any confidence in this.

Having eaten to its full, the hare sometimes - especially on a bright, moonlit and frosty night - is not averse to frolicking a little and playing, running back and forth through the fat. In this case, along with the usual end tracks, you can also see in the snow the so-called rutting tracks, which are given by a hare suddenly driven from its bed or otherwise seriously frightened, running rapidly.

Having run around to its heart's content, the hare again starts feeding or immediately heads to the bed, again leaving the same trailing marks in the snow. After one or two loops, the hare usually doubles his trail, throws off to the side, then makes a “double” again, drops again and, having walked a little more at the usual gait, soon lies down. It should be borne in mind that often the hare’s loops are not before the “twos”, but after them, that sometimes the hare does not throw off the “twos”, but leaves with its usual gait, etc., so that there is a general alternation that is unchanged for all hares techniques aimed at throwing pursuers off the trail cannot be established.

At the beginning of winter, hares - both hare and white hare - fatten mainly on winter crops, leaving numerous small fry on and around the greens. Later, when deep snow falls and digging it out in order to get to tasty winter crops becomes difficult for hares, white hare migrates to the forest, to forest meadows, where they feed on hay, tree bark, twigs, etc., and hare - to threshing floors, vegetable gardens, orchards or hillocks from which snow is constantly blown away by the wind. In the late winter time Hunting for powder can, in most cases, be carried out only for hare.

Belyak at deep snow It stays exclusively in the forest, where it is extremely difficult to understand its always confused tracks, and it is simply impossible to approach the hare for a shot and see it lying down or running through the thicket of undergrowth covered with snow. And in general, hunting for white hare by powder is less interesting and productive than hunting for hare, since the hare's pattern is much more regular and constant, and these hares themselves stay, fatten and lie mainly in comparative proximity to housing and in open places.

Having found a hare, it is necessary, first of all, to determine the direction in which the hare went in order to follow in the future, and not at the heel of the beast.

You need to follow the hare not right next to him, so as not to trample him, but somewhat to the side. If the malik leads the hunter to the place where the hare is fattened, one should, in order to avoid wasting precious time on a short winter day, not try to figure out the usually very tangled and intertwined fat traces, but go around them until the exit trail of the hare from the fatty places. In most cases, this trail will lead the hunter either to new fatty places - and then the same technique should be repeated - or to the loops and “twos” of the hare, definitely indicating that its bed is somewhere nearby.

The loop you encounter must always be turned out, no matter how large it is. Otherwise, the hunter will often change the track of the pursued hare, which is already close to the bed, with the track of another, which crossed the first and was mistakenly taken for a hare's loop. Only in the case when there is absolutely no doubt that the crossing trail belongs to the same hare on whose trail the hunter is following, it is necessary, without wasting time turning the loop, to turn with a new trail.

However, this kind of confidence can only be achieved by an experienced hunter and only if the land is poor in hares. Usually the first loop is soon followed by the second. This further indicates the proximity of the hare's bed. The second and subsequent loops of the hare should be treated in the same way as the first, that is, circle them.

LYING

After the loops there are usually “twos” and sometimes “threes” of the hare. In the vast majority of cases, having chipped in after a “deuce”, the hare lies somewhere very nearby. There is no need to rush here, but on the contrary, having prepared for the shot, carefully look around, not overlooking a single bush, snow drift, boundary, stone or other unevenness on the snow cover, near which hare like to lie so much. In the forest, of course, you should pay attention to slightly different places - low fir trees, bushes, snowdrifts, tents at the roots of trees, etc.

Sometimes it is possible to see a brown hare right on the bed and even catch it lying down. This happens extremely rarely with hare. Having noticed where the hare is lying - if the bed is not far away - you must, without wasting time, head towards it and, when it jumps up, shoot. If the bed is far away, you should not go straight towards the hare, but slightly sideways, and only when you get close to the hare for a sure shot, turn straight towards it. When approaching a hare, you should not look closely at it all the time, as this contributes to the animal jumping up prematurely. In relatively open places, the hare in most cases lies with its head against the wind and therefore you must also approach it against the wind.

In the event that it was not possible to accurately determine the place where the hare was lying with the “deuce”, you need to, leaving aside the discount tracks, carefully and quietly walk around, having a gun at the ready and remembering that an excited hare often jumps up from its bed completely unexpectedly. hunter and goes at full speed. In mild weather and deep snow, the hare usually lies very tightly, and it is not easy to raise it even when you pass next to the bed. Therefore, having made one circle and not picking up the hare and at the same time not finding its trail leaving the circle, you need to go again, but in a circle of smaller diameter, etc.

The place of the hare's resting place is noticeable from a distance either by the mound of snow that the animal has thrown when digging a hole for itself, or by the dark opening of the hole. But we must keep in mind that some hares are extremely picky in choosing their bedding and, before choosing a place for it and settling down to rest, they rummage in many places.

If the snow is shallow, the hare most often lies down on the rises, as well as among the bushes scattered across the field. In deep snow, hare beds most often lie near snow drifts in potholes, waterholes, hollows, ravines, bushes among fields, near woodpiles, fences, fences, barns, barns, etc. In deep snow, hare almost always lies down in strong places forests and only occasionally near haystacks, and in early winter - along bushes near winter crops.

Often the hare's path intersects with well-worn roads. In this case, the hare very rarely crosses the road directly, but, on the contrary, having got out onto it, walks along it for some time in one direction or another and only then, having made a “deuce”, throws off to the side and continues on its way. The hunter must, first of all, find out which way the animal went along the road. If you have some experience, it is enough acute vision and care usually succeeds in this after a thorough inspection of the road.

The footprint of a hare on the compacted snow of the road, of course, is not at all similar to the usual one, that is, on loose snow. In this case, the hare will leave only traces of its claws, which are much more difficult to notice. If you cannot find traces on the road, then you need to walk along the road three hundred to four hundred paces in one direction, carefully looking around to see if there are any discount or ordinary traces of a hare, and then - if unsuccessful - in the other.

Often a hare, especially a hare, jumps onto the tracks of other hares. Only an experienced tracker-hunter can understand this and many other tricks of the hare.