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1. The Brown hare: A game animal or pest species?

1. There are two species of hare in Britain; the brown hare (Lepus europeaus) and the mountain hare (Lepus timidus). The former is widespread over most of the agricultural lowlands, whilst on the mainland the latter is confined to the Scottish Highlands, parts of the Southern Uplands, and a small population in the Peak District ^1,2.
2. Brown hares seem to be better adapted to mixed arable and livestock farming compared with mountain hares which cope better with upland heath and forestry^3,4.
3. Animals from both species have been transplanted by man and the present day populations reflect these as much as any natural spread. Mountain hares were present in mainland Britain during the Palaeolithic at a time when they also spread to Ireland. The brown hare seems to have arrived in Britain during the Late Bronze Age or Iron Age and was probably introduced by man from the continent⁵.
4. Both species were introduced to the Isle of Man⁶. During the 18^th and 19^th centuries mountain hares were introduced into Wales, the Southern Uplands and the Peak District. The Southern Uplands population is still well established, the Peak District population is in a precarious position⁷, and the Welsh population appears to have died out in recent years.

1. Hares have certainly been an important quarry in historic times, and hare coursing as a sport was well established in Roman times in Gaul⁸. Dogs such as the greyhound are specially bred for pursuing species like the hare. The presence of former hare warrens indicates that the conservation or protection of this species was important in medieval times.
2. Hunting hares with beagles appears to have been well developed by Tudor times and was popular in the 18^th century ⁸. It is argued that the pre-enclosure landscape, with large tracts of open country and few hedges, suited the sport of hare hunting, whereas the post enclosure countryside with its quick-set hedges was more suited to mounted hunt followers and a quarry like the fox⁸.
3. The smaller mountain hare has also been and remains a quarry for falconry using the larger raptors such as the golden eagle. Hares have also traditionally been snared, netted and shot for food.

1. Brown hares are animals of agricultural land ^3,9,10 and their ecology is best adapted to mixed arable and livestock farming systems which produce a patchwork landscape with crops and grass at different stages of growth. This gives hares short growing shoots to feed on at most times of the year¹¹.
2. During the 19^th century hares were evidently regarded as agricultural pests as well as game since they were included in the Ground Game Act of 1880 (see below).
3. Since the second world war, although commonly still regarded as a minor pest ¹², the general agricultural damage hares inflict has never been serious enough to warrant the MAFF funded research efforts that went into the control of species like brown rat, rabbit or woodpigeon. Furthermore controlling numbers could be readily accomplished by spring shooting.
4. Today in livestock districts hares are not numerous and are rarely considered a pest. In arable areas high numbers of hares on winter corn are considered damaging by most cereal farmers and regular winter culls by shooting are undertaken where this occurs. Although the economic loss to cereals has not been calculated in Britain hares do spend most of the late winter feeding on winter cereals³.
5. Apart from cereals, hares also eat crops such as oilseed rape and turnip. In addition hares can eat high value market garden crops, and will often and kill newly planted young trees and shrubs. Some of this damage can be of economic significance to individual growers.

1. Since Norman times there have been statutes that protect game species. The early the Forest Laws aimed to protect mainly deer and wild boar, and so grants or rights of warren were often conferred on others by the Crown⁸. However, following the Game Laws in 1671 the taking of game of any kind was restricted to those with significant income and property rights¹³. These property rights, and the higher farm rental incomes that landowners were able to justify following land enclosure, enabled them to employ gamekeepers whose duties were to protect game stocks against predators and poachers. These were reinforced through a series of Game Laws after 1832.
2. The Game Laws were evidently effective and numbers of hares and rabbits built up to such an extent that tenant farmers were suffering significant damage to agricultural crops ⁸. Thus in 1880 the Ground Game Act was passed which gave tenant farmers the right to kill hares and rabbits (ground game) on their land at any time of the year in order to protect crops.
3. The Ground Game Act came at a time when cereal prices were dropping (due to imports from the continent and America) which in turn triggered an agricultural depression¹⁰. Some small farmers hence found that their ground game was more valuable than their crops. Thus many small farmers, particularly in the West of Britain found they could make more money from trapping rabbits and hares than from growing cereals.
4. Rabbits tend not to forage very far from their holes so farmers found they could manage local colonies of rabbits on a sustainable basis. This led to a gradual build up of rabbit numbers. Hares ranged more widely than rabbits and ownership was more difficult to establish. Hares were therefore not managed sustainably and populations dropped¹⁴.
5. In an attempt to redress this the Hare Preservation Act 1892 was passed which forbade the sale of hares during their normal breeding season. Specified as March to July inclusive^8,14
6. Thus today hares are not listed in the schedules of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) which covers most birds and many other species, but instead is protected by much older acts such as the Game Laws, the Ground Game Act and the Hare Preservation Act. These are somewhat complex but their general interpretation is described in Parkes and Thornley’s Fair Game¹⁵.

1. Quantitative data on past hare numbers principally comes from details of the numbers shot (bag records). However, there are some data from coursing estates such as Altcar and, more recently, packs of beagles and harriers now provide annual data on hare numbers.
2. Records from the 18^th century are very sparse but Tapper & Parsons¹⁶ show a unique series of bag records from Holkham Hall in Norfolk from the late 18^th century to the 1980’s. Although the series is undoubtedly influenced by the improving technology of firearms, it does suggest that hare numbers were building up during the early 19^th century probably as improved agricultural production provided them with a better level of nutrition.
3. Other data sets from the 19^th century also show increasing numbers of hares but some also suggest the impact of the Ground Game Act (1880). The records for Stackpole Court – a large estate in west Pembrokeshire illustrates this (Figure 1). Here the numbers of hares shot reached a peak in the 1870s with over 800 being killed in one year. Numbers dropped substantially just prior to the Ground Game Act, but certainly they continued to fall from that time until the out break of the second world war by which time they were thought to be extinct on the estate. Records show that the farming on the estate retained its mixed arable livestock character until the second war after which time it was taken over by the Ministry of Defence as a gunnery range and arable farming was stopped. The most likely explanation for these events is that the hares at Stackpole were wiped out by tenant farmers probably using gin traps set for rabbits. (see 1.4.d)





Figure 1. The number of hares shot at Stackpole Court in Pembrokeshire between the early 1820s and the late 1930s. The vertical axis shows the total recorded bag of hares in each year.



Figure 2. Changes in numbers of hares shot from British estates since the turn of the century from the National Game Census. Numbers are the mean number shot per 100 hectares of ground, and vertical lines are 95% confidence limits around the mean. The methodology of The National Game Census is given in Game Heritage ¹³.

4. Figure 2 shows that during the 20^th century bag records of hares were stable up until the second war during which time numbers either dropped, or (most likely) shooting effort was curtailed. After the war hare numbers rapidly increased and hare numbers reached a peak in the early sixties.
5. This peak in hare numbers around 1961 is thought to be associated with the Myxomatosis epidemic which almost entirely eliminated the rabbit population from the countryside¹⁷
6. During the 1960s and 1970s the numbers of hares shot significantly declined. This appears to reflect reduced numbers of hares leading to fewer being shot or a reduced need to shoot them. The decline in hare numbers occurred throughout most of Britain¹⁶ but was also evident in other European countries which had improving agriculture¹³. These changes have been attributed to the introduction of modern arable systems where, amongst other changes, the traditional crop rotation of ley grass and cereals was replaced by a succession cereals with a single break crop¹⁸.
7. Over the last two decades nationally hare numbers appear to have stabilised. This is shown both by the bag records (Figure 2) and in addition returns from beagle and harrier packs (Figure 3).
8. The hunting data collected by many beagle and harrier packs involves one hunt follower being responsible for counting the number of hares seen during the course of a single days hunting. The counts are conducted throughout the season and those hunts participating in the census return a form at the end of the season showing the numbers of hares seen each hunting day. For analysis (carried out by us) the average number of hares seen per day is calculated for that pack for the season. The average for the year is then the average between packs. Since each pack may have around 60 hunting days in a season visiting many localities the amount of ground covered is extensive and sample size large. Although the methodology is less rigorous than are data collected as part of scientifically designed surveys (such as the British Trust for Ornithology’s British Bird Survey), it does provide us with the best annual indication of the changing winter abundance of living hares - as a opposed to a bag record which is a record of a cull.
9. Figure 3 shows the records from a selection of packs in eastern England where hares are relatively abundant compared with packs from south west England where they are less common. In both regions the data suggest numbers are stable and in eastern England there may be a slight increase.



Figure 3. The average numbers of hares seen per hunting day by followers of beagle and harrier packs in Eastern England compared to south west England

10. Hutchings and Harris¹⁹ in a national census of hares in winter, obtained by volunteers walking transects across random kilometre squares estimated the national population of hares in the UK to be around 800,000 animals over winter. In a league table of British mammals the brown hare is 17th most abundant out of a total of 64 – about three and half times as common as the fox²⁰.
11. By comparison with birds, the abundance of mammals can sometimes be misleading because most mammals are secretive and nocturnal. Hares at 800,000 are comparable with magpies which number between 640,000 & 1,180,000 adults in spring.²¹
12. Because of its substantial reduction in population during the 1960s and 1970s the brown hare was included as a Biodiversity Action Plan species on the short list²². The animals overall conservation status however is given as satisfactory at the European level and is not listed as endangered or vulnerable. The Action Plan aims to double the numbers of hares in Britain by the year 2010. Among the various tasks listed in the Action Plan is a review of the legislation relating to shooting but no reference is made to the possibility of changing the animal’s status as a quarry species.

Date uploaded to site: 29 February 2000