Game Commission Asks Rabbit Hunters to Help
HARRISBURG – Calling all cottontail rabbit and snowshoe hare hunters: the Game Commission needs your help, not on one front, but two.
The agency has questions about Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus 2 (RHDV2), and about snowshoe hare distribution and coloration. By providing answers this fall and winter, hunters can help shape rabbit and hare management in the future.
It’s easy to get involved, too.
Report mortality events
RHDV2 is a highly contagious virus posing a serious threat to the state’s rabbits and hares because it can cause mass die-offs – 75-100% of local populations – when and where it becomes established. There is no specific treatment for RHDV2 and it can remain on the landscape for months.
Early detection of RHDV2’s possible presence, and the immediate removal of suspect carcasses, is the best way stop its spread.
The Game Commission is asking hunters – and anyone else, really – who finds two or more dead hares or rabbits at the same location with an unknown cause of death to report that by calling 1-833-PGC-WILD or by using the Game Commission’s online Wildlife Health Survey reporting tool at https://www.pgcapps.pa.gov/WHS.
Domestic hare and rabbit owners with questions about this disease should contact their veterinarians, who can in turn report suspect animals to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Health at 717-772-2852, option 1. Calls can be made anytime 24/7.
RHDV2 poses no human health risk. Multiple sick or dead hares in one place also can be an indication of tularemia or plague, though, and those diseases can cause serious illness in humans. So the public should not handle or consume wildlife that appears sick or has died from an unknown cause. Keep pets away from such specimens, too.
The virus has only been detected in Pennsylvania once before, in a domestic facility in Uniontown, Fayette County. It has never been found in wild populations.
Become a snowshoe hare cooperator
The Game Commission is trying to better determine just where snowshoe hares exist on the Pennsylvania landscape and if they’re still turning all white in winter, as they’ve traditionally done to better blend in with snow and thereby escape predators.
The vehicle for getting answers is the agency’s snowshoe hare cooperator program. Entering its third year, it works like this: hunters sign up to participate by emailing their CID number or name, mailing address and phone number to hares@pa.gov. They’re provided a pocket card, among other things, on which they’re asked to record the dates they hunt hares, the county or Wildlife Management Units (WMUs) they hunt in, the number of hours hunted, and the number of hares flushed and number harvested.
Additionally, they’re asked whether those hares were all white and, if not, what they looked like. That’s because Pennsylvania is one of the few states where brown hares have been reported in winter and the only state where unique winter pelt patterns, such as brown eye rings and brown ears, have been detected.
Hunters send in answers using a postage-paid mailer at season’s end. In return, they get a newsletter each fall providing summaries of survey results (see last year’s at https://www.pgc.pa.gov/Education/WildlifeNotesIndex/Documents/HARE%20NEWSLETTER2023.pdf) and updates on hare management and other relevant topics.
The cooperator program has already revealed some interesting data, such as hunters are flushing and harvesting hares in more places than had been detected using other methods. But the more hunters who participate in the program, the better, more complete, the information collected will be.
That’s true with RHDV2 monitoring, as well. More information from more people in more places is better than less.
So if you’re passionate about hunting rabbits or hares, or just enjoy seeing them, here’s a chance to get involved in conservation in a tangible way.
