Karen Wils photo A snowshoe hare with its white winter coat.

ESCANABA — He moves across the snow like a silent, white ghost with whiskers.

A snowshoe hare is a very special wild animal to me. The very first column I ever published in the Daily Press was about “Herbie-the-half-ear.”

Herbie was a snowshoe hare that lived near our family’s camp when I was a teenager.

According to our camp log, Herbie lived about four years in the beautiful cedars, tamaracks and pines on our property. That is a remarkably old age for a hare in the wild.

As I explained in that first column about Herbie, I don’t know how he came to have one of his ears mangled and half missing. Maybe be managed to escape from the owls talons or the sharp claws of the bobcat. Or maybe he meet with some nasty thorns or barbed wire, but whatever happened he lost the most part of one ear.

I first noticed Herbie with his odd half-ear look when one of my beagles chased him out of the cedar swamp and down the logging road right in front of me.

Naturally, I thought Herbie would be short lived.

But for nearly four years my hounds were able to find him by his favorite nook. A great run then commenced between the tamaracks and the pines all the way to Hunter’s Brook. Then back they came.

I suspect Herbie was a male hare because of the big loops he’d run. He sure made beagling fun.

Herbie lived in the 1970s, and he had tons of descendants. Snowshoe hares thrived in that area for years.

Now they don’t.

As an avid outdoors person who spends a great deal of time in the woods around Delta County, I know that the hare population is down.

Some people don’t know the difference between the hare (varying hare), which turns white in the winter, or the eastern cottontail, which stays brown all year long.

Cottontail numbers are on the rise. Snowshoe hare numbers have plummeted.

Some of the reasons for fewer hares might be climate change, and less snow cover to protect the white hares in winter.

Since less people trap and hunt for furs, there are many more predators to feed.

Whatever the reasons, I sure wish the hare population would rebound. Whether you hunt with beagles or a camera, a snowshoe hare is a beautiful creature to behold. They are a symbol of the Northwoods.

If you get a chance, put on your snowshoes and wander in the snowy woods out there. If you see a big footed, fluffy, white ghost with whiskers, get a picture and wish him well.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.