If you’ve spotted a furry, long-eared creature hopping through your Wisconsin yard or woodland trail, you’ve likely encountered one of the state’s three distinct rabbit species.
While many people use “rabbit” as a catch-all term, Wisconsin is home to the adaptable Eastern cottontail, the color-changing snowshoe hare, and the increasingly rare white-tailed jackrabbit.
Each species has evolved unique characteristics that help them thrive in different Wisconsin habitats, from suburban gardens to remote northern forests.
Understanding these differences not only enriches your nature observations but also helps you appreciate the ecological diversity right in your backyard.
1. Eastern Cottontail
The Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) is by far the most common rabbit you’ll encounter across Wisconsin. These medium-sized mammals have become synonymous with suburban and rural landscapes throughout the state, thriving in areas where human activity creates ideal habitat conditions.
Physical Characteristics
Eastern cottontails typically measure 14 to 18 inches long and weigh between 2 to 4 pounds. Their most distinctive feature is the fluffy white underside of their tail, which flashes like a cotton ball when they hop away—hence the name “cottontail.” Their fur is a mottled brown-gray color on top, providing excellent camouflage against soil, dried grasses, and brush. Unlike hares, cottontails have proportionally shorter ears and hind legs, adapted for quick bursts of speed through dense vegetation rather than sustained running across open terrain.
Pro Tip: Look for the rusty-orange patch of fur on the back of a cottontail’s neck—this is a reliable field mark that distinguishes them from hares, which lack this coloration.
Habitat and Range
You’ll find Eastern cottontails throughout Wisconsin, from the far southern border counties all the way up to the central regions. They prefer edge habitats where forests meet open fields, as these transition zones provide both food sources and protective cover. Cottontails excel in human-modified landscapes, making homes in:
- Suburban yards with ornamental shrubs and gardens
- Agricultural areas with crop fields bordered by brushy fencerows
- Parks and golf courses with maintained grass and scattered trees
- Old fields growing up with brambles, multiflora rose, and young saplings
These rabbits don’t dig extensive burrow systems like European rabbits. Instead, they rest in shallow depressions called “forms” hidden under vegetation, logs, or brush piles. During harsh winter weather, they may temporarily shelter in abandoned groundhog burrows or hollow logs, but they don’t hibernate.
Behavior and Diet
Eastern cottontails are most active during dawn and dusk (crepuscular), though you might spot them at any time during overcast days or in areas with minimal human disturbance. They’re primarily herbivores with seasonal diet variations:
- Spring and Summer: Fresh grasses, clover, wildflowers, garden vegetables, and tender shoots
- Fall and Winter: Tree bark, twigs, buds, dried grasses, and whatever green vegetation remains accessible
Common Mistake: Many gardeners assume rabbits eat their vegetables out of malice. In reality, cottontails are simply opportunistic feeders taking advantage of the most nutritious food sources available—your carefully tended lettuce and beans fit that description perfectly.
One fascinating cottontail behavior is coprophagy—they produce two types of droppings and re-ingest the softer, nutrient-rich pellets directly from their anus. This allows them to extract maximum nutrition from their plant-based diet, similar to how cows ruminate.
Breeding and Life Cycle
Eastern cottontails are prolific breeders, which compensates for their high predation rates. The breeding season in Wisconsin typically runs from March through September, with females (does) capable of producing 3 to 4 litters per year. Each litter contains 3 to 8 young (kits), born hairless and blind in shallow grass-lined nests.
Mother cottontails visit their nests only twice daily—at dawn and dusk—to nurse their young. This behavior evolved to avoid attracting predators to the nest site. Many well-meaning people mistakenly “rescue” baby cottontails thinking they’ve been abandoned, when in reality the mother is purposefully staying away during daylight hours.
Conservation Status
Eastern cottontails remain abundant throughout their Wisconsin range and are classified as a small game species with regulated hunting seasons. Their ability to adapt to human-modified landscapes has actually expanded their available habitat. However, they face numerous predators including foxes, coyotes, hawks, owls, domestic cats, and even large snakes.
2. Snowshoe Hare
The snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) represents one of nature’s most remarkable examples of seasonal adaptation. These northern specialists undergo a dramatic color transformation twice yearly, making them masters of camouflage in Wisconsin’s forested regions.
Physical Characteristics and Seasonal Changes
Snowshoe hares are notably larger than cottontails, measuring 16 to 20 inches long and weighing 3 to 4 pounds. Their most defining feature is their oversized hind feet, which measure 4 to 6 inches long—nearly a third of their body length. These disproportionately large feet function like natural snowshoes, distributing the hare’s weight across a larger surface area and allowing them to stay on top of deep snow that would cause smaller animals to flounder.
The snowshoe hare’s most spectacular adaptation is its seasonal color change:
| Season | Coat Color | Timing | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Summer | Rusty brown to grayish brown | May-September | Blends with forest floor, soil, and tree trunks |
| Fall Transition | Patchy brown and white | October-November | Molting period as day length triggers change |
| Winter | Pure white (except black ear tips) | December-March | Camouflage against snow and ice |
| Spring Transition | Patchy white and brown | April-May | Return to summer coat as snow melts |
This remarkable transformation is triggered by changes in day length (photoperiod) rather than temperature or actual snow conditions. In years when snow arrives late or melts early, snowshoe hares can find themselves temporarily mismatched with their environment—white against brown ground or brown against white snow—leaving them vulnerable to predation.
Key Insight: The snowshoe hare’s color change isn’t just about the outer fur. Their entire coat from skin to guard hairs transforms, with pigment production shutting down in fall and resuming in spring through a complex hormonal process.
Habitat and Range
In Wisconsin, snowshoe hares occupy the northern third of the state, particularly concentrated in mature coniferous and mixed forests of the northern highland region. Their southern range boundary roughly follows Highway 8 across the state, though isolated populations may exist slightly further south in suitable habitat.
Ideal snowshoe hare habitat includes:
- Dense stands of young conifers (spruce, fir, hemlock) providing overhead cover
- Swampy areas with thick understory vegetation
- Regenerating forest areas 10 to 30 years after logging or fire
- Mixed forests with abundant shrub layers and fallen timber
Unlike cottontails that tolerate human presence, snowshoe hares require more remote, undisturbed forest habitat. They create an extensive network of trails through their territory, using the same paths repeatedly to move between feeding and resting areas. In winter, these trails become packed-down highways through deep snow.
Behavior and Diet
Snowshoe hares maintain a more active lifestyle than cottontails, remaining mobile throughout even the harshest Wisconsin winters. They don’t hibernate or seek underground shelter, instead relying on their insulating winter coat and behavioral adaptations to survive subzero temperatures.
Their diet shifts dramatically with the seasons:
- Spring and Summer: Fresh green vegetation, grasses, forbs, clover, and leaves from shrubs and young trees
- Fall: Transition to woody browse as herbaceous plants die back
- Winter: Almost exclusively woody material including bark, twigs, and buds from willow, birch, aspen, maple, and conifers
During winter, snowshoe hares can survive on surprisingly poor-quality food by processing large volumes and practicing coprophagy to maximize nutrient extraction. They’re capable of reaching vegetation up to 3 feet high by standing on their hind legs, and even higher when snow provides an elevated platform.
Population Cycles
Snowshoe hare populations are famous among ecologists for their dramatic 8 to 11-year boom-and-bust cycles. During peak years, hare densities can reach 600 to 1,500 animals per square mile. These population explosions are followed by crashes where numbers plummet to 10% or less of peak levels. The cycles are driven by complex interactions between hare reproduction, predation pressure, food availability, and stress-induced physiological changes.
Wisconsin’s snowshoe hare populations follow these same cyclical patterns, though less dramatically than populations in Alaska and Canada. Predators that depend heavily on snowshoe hares—including Canada lynx, which historically ranged into northern Wisconsin—experience corresponding population fluctuations.
Breeding and Life Cycle
Snowshoe hares breed from March through August in Wisconsin, with females producing 2 to 3 litters per season. Each litter contains 1 to 7 young (leverets), averaging 3 to 4. Unlike cottontail kits, snowshoe hare leverets are born fully furred with eyes open—a precocial adaptation that allows them to survive in more exposed northern environments.
Mother hares nurse their young only once per day, at dawn, visiting each leveret separately where they lie hidden in the vegetation. This strategy reduces the chances of predators discovering multiple young at once. Leverets are mobile within days and fully weaned by 3 to 4 weeks.
Important Note: If you encounter young hares in the wild, observe from a distance but don’t approach or handle them. The mother is likely nearby and will return at dawn to nurse. Human scent and interference can cause abandonment.
Conservation Status
Snowshoe hares are classified as a game species in Wisconsin with regulated hunting and trapping seasons. While not threatened, they are sensitive to habitat loss from forest fragmentation and climate change. Warmer winters with less consistent snow cover create increasingly frequent mismatches between their white winter coats and brown landscapes, potentially increasing predation vulnerability.
3. White-Tailed Jackrabbit
The white-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii) represents Wisconsin’s rarest and most specialized lagomorph. Once common across the state’s western prairies and agricultural lands, this species has declined dramatically and now persists only in limited areas of northwestern Wisconsin.
Physical Characteristics
White-tailed jackrabbits are the largest of Wisconsin’s three rabbit species, measuring 20 to 26 inches long and weighing 6 to 10 pounds—roughly double the size of an Eastern cottontail. They have extremely long ears (5 to 6 inches) and powerful hind legs built for speed and endurance. These jackrabbits can reach speeds of 35 to 40 miles per hour and execute leaps of 15 to 20 feet, making them one of North America’s fastest land mammals.
Like snowshoe hares, white-tailed jackrabbits undergo seasonal color changes, though less dramatically:
- Summer coat: Grayish-brown to buff-colored with lighter underparts
- Winter coat: White to pale gray, often not as pure white as snowshoe hares
- Consistent features: Tail remains white year-round (unlike black-tailed jackrabbits), ear tips are black in all seasons
The extent of winter whitening varies by individual and location, with northern populations typically achieving more complete color transformation than southern populations.
Habitat and Range
Historically, white-tailed jackrabbits occupied open prairie, grassland, and agricultural areas across southern and western Wisconsin. Today, their range has contracted to scattered populations in northwestern counties, primarily in Burnett, Douglas, and Polk Counties. Confirmed sightings have become increasingly rare since the 1970s, and some wildlife biologists question whether breeding populations still persist in the state.
When present, white-tailed jackrabbits utilize:
- Open agricultural fields with crops like alfalfa, soybeans, and corn
- Prairie remnants and Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grasslands
- Pastures with scattered shrubs and minimal tree cover
- Abandoned fields transitioning from grass to early successional shrubs
Unlike forest-dwelling snowshoe hares or edge-habitat cottontails, jackrabbits prefer wide-open spaces where their primary defense—high-speed running—can be employed effectively. They don’t rely on thick cover or burrows; instead, they use their keen senses and incredible speed to escape predators.
Behavior and Diet
White-tailed jackrabbits are primarily nocturnal, spending daylight hours resting in shallow depressions called “forms” located in tall grass, under shrubs, or against fence lines.
These forms are strategically positioned to provide views of approaching danger while offering some concealment. During rest periods, jackrabbits remain alert with their large ears swiveling to detect sounds from all directions.
Pro Tip: If you’re lucky enough to observe a jackrabbit in the wild, watch its ears. They can move each ear independently to pinpoint sounds with remarkable precision—a crucial survival adaptation for an animal that depends on early predator detection.
Their diet consists primarily of grasses and herbaceous plants:
- Spring and Summer: Fresh grasses, alfalfa, clover, crops, and forbs
- Fall and Winter: Dried grasses, woody browse from shrubs, winter wheat, and bark from small trees during harsh conditions
White-tailed jackrabbits are adapted to thrive on lower-quality forage than cottontails, allowing them to persist in open grasslands where food diversity is limited. Like other lagomorphs, they practice coprophagy to maximize nutrient absorption from their plant-based diet.
Breeding and Life Cycle
The breeding season for white-tailed jackrabbits runs from February through July in Wisconsin, with females producing 1 to 4 litters per year. Each litter contains 1 to 9 young (leverets), averaging 3 to 6. Like snowshoe hares, leverets are born precocial—fully furred with eyes open—and capable of moving about within hours of birth.
Mother jackrabbits visit nursing sites only once every 24 hours, typically at dusk. Leverets remain scattered in separate hiding spots rather than grouped together, an anti-predator strategy that reduces total loss if a predator discovers one young. They’re weaned by 3 to 4 weeks and reach sexual maturity their first year.
Conservation Challenges and Status
The dramatic decline of white-tailed jackrabbits in Wisconsin stems from multiple factors:
| Threat Factor | Impact on Population |
|---|---|
| Habitat Loss | Conversion of native prairie and grassland to row-crop agriculture eliminates optimal habitat |
| Intensive Agriculture | Modern farming practices with early, frequent mowing destroy nests and reduce cover |
| Woodland Expansion | Without regular fire, trees invade grasslands, creating unsuitable habitat |
| Climate Change | Changing snow patterns may affect camouflage effectiveness and winter survival |
| Increased Predation | Open agricultural landscapes favor coyotes and raptors while removing hiding cover |
White-tailed jackrabbits are listed as a Species of Greatest Conservation Need in Wisconsin’s Wildlife Action Plan. No hunting or trapping seasons exist for this species in the state. Conservation efforts focus on preserving and restoring large blocks of native prairie and grassland habitat, though recovery prospects remain uncertain.
Important Note: If you observe a white-tailed jackrabbit in Wisconsin, report your sighting to the Wisconsin DNR. Verified observations help biologists track remaining populations and inform conservation planning.
The species’ future in Wisconsin depends largely on landscape-scale conservation initiatives that maintain substantial grassland areas. Without concerted habitat protection and restoration efforts, white-tailed jackrabbits may disappear entirely from the state’s fauna.
Understanding Wisconsin’s Rabbit Species
Recognizing the differences between Wisconsin’s three rabbit species enhances your outdoor experiences and contributes to informed wildlife conservation. The abundant Eastern cottontail adapts readily to human presence, thriving in suburbs and farms across most of the state.
The color-changing snowshoe hare requires northern forests and represents a specialized adaptation to harsh winter conditions. The increasingly rare white-tailed jackrabbit serves as a reminder of Wisconsin’s prairie heritage and the conservation challenges facing grassland-dependent species.
Whether you’re a gardener dealing with cottontails, a nature photographer hoping to capture a white-coated snowshoe hare, or a conservationist concerned about disappearing jackrabbits, understanding these species’ unique characteristics, habitats, and behaviors allows you to better appreciate and protect Wisconsin’s lagomorph diversity.
The next time you spot those distinctive long ears and powerful hind legs, you’ll know exactly which remarkable creature you’re observing.
