Game encyclopaedia
Hare tracks and signs
Secretive and often motionless, the European hare (Lepus europaeus) is rarely seen, but it leaves clues behind: footprints, trails, droppings, its form and clipped twigs. Reading them tells you whether it is there.
This article covers the signs of presence of the European hare. For the species, see European hare; for its young, see Leveret; for the rabbit, see European rabbit.
Reading the ground
For many secretive animals, and especially for those active at night, presence is established less by direct observation than by signs: footprints, droppings, feeding remains, shelters.[4] The hare is one of them. Its biology and behaviour are described in the article European hare; here we look at what it leaves behind. Hunting vocabulary also draws a distinction between the words: in German, a single footprint is a Tritt and a series of footprints a Spur; the word Fährte is reserved for the tracks of red deer, fallow deer, roe deer and wild boar.[1] The hare therefore leaves a “Spur”, like the squirrel or the fox.[2] Footprints are easiest to read in snow and on damp ground.[1] A single sign on its own remains weak evidence: it is the agreement between footprints, droppings, the form and browsing marks that allows a conclusion.
The footprint
The forefoot of the European hare has five toes, but the inner toe, the equivalent of the thumb, is short and its print appears only very rarely. The hind foot has only four; it is longer and narrower than the forefoot.[3] Field guides give reference measurements taken from average adult males: females and young leave slightly smaller footprints.[1] The European rabbit has footprints of the same shape, but smaller,[3] which makes size the first criterion for telling the two species apart (see below).
The trail: the hare's leap
A hare's trail is recognised by its pattern more than by its footprints. When bounding, the hare sets its long hind feet down in a pair ahead of its shorter forefeet: this is the “hare's leap” (Hasensprung).[2] The two forefeet are not side by side; one lands slightly ahead of the other, and the faster the animal goes, the longer the gap between two groups of prints.[1] The hare has only two gaits, which are in fact very close to each other: it moves in small hops, or it flees.[2] Each group of four prints thus forms a repeated pattern, very different from the trail of a trotting fox: the fox places its feet almost one behind the other, and its trail looks like a string of beads.[2] To read the direction of travel, just remember that the two large hind prints are at the front of each group.
Droppings
Hare droppings look like pellets 15 to 20 mm in diameter; those of the European rabbit look much the same, but are smaller, around 10 mm.[3] They are sometimes found singly, often in twos, threes or fours; they are the size of a small marble, oval or round and slightly flattened, and show fragments of grass, like bits of hay.[4] They are not left at random. In the Atez valley, in Navarre, researchers drove wooden stakes into areas used by hares: the plots marked with a stake held significantly more droppings than neighbouring plots without one, a use the authors link to a social territory-marking behaviour. Over the year, the abundance of droppings varied greatly, peaking in summer.[9] The hare's particular digestion, in which it re-ingests some of its droppings, is described in the article European hare.
15 to 20 mm
The diameter of hare droppings, compared with about 10 mm for the rabbit.[3]
At the foot of a stake
More droppings next to a simple wooden stake, in Navarre.[9]
A field tradition
Oval droppings for the doe, round for the buck; a round form for her, a very elongated one for him: so reports a naturalist from the LPO.[4] No published study confirms this, to our knowledge.
The form
The European hare does not dig a burrow. It shelters in what the French call a « gîte » and the British a form: a simple shallow depression in the ground or in the grass.[6] « Gîte » is also the four-letter word expected in French crosswords for the clue « abri du lièvre » (hare's shelter). To the frequently asked question of whether the hare digs burrows, the answer is therefore no; it is the rabbit that lives in clustered burrows, the warren.[3] How it chooses its shelters through the seasons is covered in the “Habitat” section of the article European hare, and the form where the young are born in the article Leveret.
No burrow
A simple depression in the ground or the grass.[6]
Hare's shelter
In four letters, in a French crossword: gîte.
Runs, twigs and bark
Feeding signs are often easier to find than footprints. The hare and the rabbit cut the stems they browse with a clean, diagonal cut, whereas red deer, roe deer or sheep leave a ragged end; the clipped shoot is often left on the ground rather than eaten.[5] The height of browsing helps to tell the two species apart: up to about 70 cm for the hare, about 50 cm for the rabbit. On bark, the incisor marks are 3 to 4 mm wide, come in pairs and most often run at a slant across the stem.[5] Especially in winter, hares and rabbits clip the twigs of young trees to eat them, and gnaw the bark of trees and of small conifer branches.[3] Finally, within its home range the hare uses regular runs, the paths it always takes in the same places (see the “Behaviour” section of the article European hare).
Hare or rabbit: telling the signs apart
The hare and the European rabbit leave signs of the same kind, and it is confusing the two that raises the most questions. The rabbit's trail differs from the hare's only in size: a rabbit weighs about 2 kg, roughly half as much as a hare, and its footprints are noticeably smaller; only a young hare can leave a comparable trail.[1] Rabbit droppings are smaller, around 10 mm against 15 to 20 mm.[3] Rabbit browsing stops lower down, at around 50 cm against about 70 cm.[5] The surest sign remains the burrow: several entrances close together indicate a warren, and therefore rabbits, whereas the hare has only an open-air form.[3][6] The differences between the two species themselves are detailed in the “Hare or rabbit” section of the article European hare.
From signs to population monitoring
Signs are not just for walkers: they underpin several methods of population monitoring. A review of techniques for estimating hare abundance concludes that dropping counts can be useful locally but are difficult to apply from one habitat to another; spotlight counts on circular plots are judged the most accurate, but difficult to apply widely.[7] In New Zealand, at six sites, a simple count of the droppings present on small plots proved closely correlated (r = 0.987) with the accumulation rate measured on cleared plots, making it a sufficient index of hare density.[8] In Finland, fresh tracks in the snow have been recorded every winter since 1989 on an average of 721 triangular routes, and the index is expressed in tracks per 10 km per day: over the period 1989-2024, the European hare population increased more than tenfold.[10] On open farmland plains, night-time spotlight counting is the reference method. In Germany, the Scheinwerfertaxation, presented as the most reliable method in flat agricultural landscapes with little cover, counts hares up to 150 m from the vehicle, in spring and autumn, and expresses the result in hares per 100 ha.[13] In Wallonia, it is carried out on 1 km sections, with hares spotted up to about 250 m away, and must be repeated for at least three consecutive years: it reveals a trend, and does not allow two areas to be compared.[11] In the Gers, the kilometric index recorded in summer, after breeding, was 1.17 hares per kilometre in 2024, all zones combined.[12] These counts are organised with the departmental hunters' federation: see our guide to restocking brown hares.
At GIBIS
Before a restocking, looking for hare signs helps you get to know the ground; afterwards, the same signs help you see whether the animals are settling in. Our leverets raised at Chatte and our wild-caught hares are presented on the our hares page, and the approach in our guide to restocking brown hares. The photographs in this article show wild hares, not our animals. This article remains independent of our offer.
References
- ↑Deutsche Wildtier Stiftung, *Ratgeber Fährten und Spuren*, Hamburg, n.d., deutschewildtierstiftung.de, accessed in 2026 — Tritt, Spur and Fährte; « Feldhase » and « Kaninchen » sheets; measurements taken from average males.
- ↑Hofmann H., « Spuren im Schnee – aber von wem? », *Natürlich*, no. 1/2007, pp. 20-23, reproduced on waldwissen.net (WSL), 16 November 2007 — Spur and Fährte, gaits and « Hasensprung » of the hare, fox trail like a string of beads.
- ↑Macagno G., « Traces et indices », *Bourgogne-Nature Junior*, no. 3, 2011-2012, Bourgogne-Nature, bfcnature.fr — feet of the European hare, hare and rabbit droppings, twigs and bark, warren.
- ↑Boisguérin J.-C. (LPO Lot), « Fientes, crottes, laissées, miroirs, moquettes, fumées et autres épreintes », Faune France, faune-france.org, accessed in 2026 — signs of presence, hare droppings, doe and buck tradition.
- ↑Forestry Commission, *Small mammals, beavers and domestic grazing species damage to trees: a visual guide*, GOV.UK, published 4 September 2026, gov.uk — diagonal cut, browsing height, incisor marks.
- ↑Kent Wildlife Trust, « Brown hare », *Wildlife explorer*, kentwildlifetrust.org.uk, accessed in 2026 — forms, absence of burrows.
- ↑Langbein J., Hutchings M. R., Harris S., Stoate C., Tapper S. C. & Wray S., « Techniques for assessing the abundance of Brown Hares *Lepus europaeus* », *Mammal Review*, vol. 29, 1999, pp. 93-116 — abstract consulted on gwct.org.uk.
- ↑Perry M. E. & Robertson A. W., « Cleared and uncleared pellet plots as indices of brown hare density », *New Zealand Journal of Ecology*, vol. 36, no. 2, 2012, pp. 157-163.
- ↑Fernández A. & Soriguer R. C., « Evaluación del empleo de estacas de madera como puntos de atracción para la liebre europea *Lepus europaeus* Pallas, 1778 en Navarra », *Galemys*, vol. 19, no. 1, 2007, pp. 23-34.
- ↑Lindén A. & Piha M., *Pienten ja keskikokoisten riistanisäkkäiden kannanmuutokset 1989–2024. Lumijälkilaskentojen tulosraportti*, Luonnonvara- ja biotalouden tutkimus 40/2024, Luonnonvarakeskus (Luke), Helsinki, 2024 — English abstract: counting triangles, track index, European hare.
- ↑Service public de Wallonie, *Comptage nocturne de lièvres : indice kilométrique par tronçons de 1 km (IK)*, version of 4 January 2018, biodiversite.wallonie.be — method and form.
- ↑Fédération départementale des chasseurs du Gers, *Infos Lièvre*, March 2025, chasse-nature-occitanie.fr — results of the 2024 IK counts, ICA and EPP.
- ↑Greiser G. & Martin I. (Thünen-Institut), *Kurzanleitung für die Scheinwerfertaxation ST Ost*, 2nd version, August 2020, for the Deutscher Jagdverband, jagdverband.de.
See also
Gallery
- Wild European hare, illustrative photo (not an animal from the GIBIS farm): Hyppolyte de Saint-Rambert, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
- Wild European hare, illustrative photo (not an animal from the GIBIS farm): Stephan Sprinz, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
See also
A question about the hare?
This article is part of GIBIS's game encyclopaedia, a breeder in Chatte (Isère) since 1951. For a question about the species or about a restocking project, the team answers by telephone or email.