• Solo • Not by the chin of my harey hare hare!

[Oram Mednix]

10 Cylus 722

There were a number of things unusual about the hare tracks that Oram saw in the fresh snow. The first thing was, again, that the tracks were there at all. Snow had fallen heavily upon Scalvoris in the preceding trials. Not as deep as had fallen the arc previously, when the traveler had had to help stranded neighbors in his camp by bringing them supplies on a sled, yet deep enough to require substantial digging-out, certainly more than a hare was likely to have managed in the interval.

Another thing was how light they were. The snow was starting to pack now, but had been quite powdery as lately as the trial before. Even a light creature such as a hare would have sunk into it at least somewhat, leaving some drag marks, and not just footprints. And the third, and most striking thing about these hare tracks was how far apart the impressions were.

It was easy to see that the animal that had made them had done so on the run. But even a running hare did not usually have such widely-spaced tracks. The interval between the footprints ranged from merely longer-than-average for a hare, to nearly twice the largest the hunter had ever seen before, and Oram had seen a lot of rabbit and hare tracks. That suggested that the hare must have built up to an incredible speed as it ran.

Oram knew only one creature that could have left such tracks. Unconsciously, he touched the ushanka he wore, the last gift his father had given him, nearly fifteen arcs before. He had cared for it sedulously, and it had held up well, although wear and tear was starting to tell on its soft shimmering fur. Crescent hare.

The hunter had not expected to find such so close to home. In retrospect, it ought not have surprised him. They were hares. They had hare habits and hare diets. They were native to this island. And yet, they were rarely seen, and even more rarely caught, even in places where lepids of other sorts abounded. They were exotic and elusive. Their fur was lustrous and much sought-after. And they could reportedly run unbelievably fast.

Oram, however, had a plan for hunting unbelievably fast animals: trap them the same way one traps the slower animals. His father used to say that no animal was fast when it was feeding or watering. That being the case, there should be no reason why Oram could not catch crescent hares in the same sorts of snare pens he had set dozens of times before. He just had to find the right spot, one where the elusive quarry actually ran, as the critter responsible for these tracks before him had run.

[Oram Mednix]

Set up chin-ups; go home for the night.

The immediate aftermath of a snowstorm could actually be a good time to trap quarry, because their usual food sources were likely to be buried, forcing them to come out to look for new ones. The blizzard did bring a few new possibilities with it, though on balance far fewer than it obliterated: the heavy snow would fell branches and even lay whole trees low. These could have green tips in their branches that had previously been out of reach for earthbound browsers. Hares and rabbits loved birch tips, and birch was the most common type of tree in the second-growth forest that covered the former logging site where Oram’s house stood.

With that idea in mind, Oram shuffled through the deep fresh powder in his snowshoes, searching for recently-fallen trees on his property, something the Chief Ranger needed to do in the wake of the blizzard, anyway. He and Skai had already harvested most of the downed trees they had found in Vhalar, including a few that may or may not actually have lain within his property line; he could reasonably assume that any fallen tree he saw now with foliage still attached was new.

The search did not take over-long, perhaps the better part of a break. He found two such trees, along with a third that lay beyond his property. The hare tracks he had seen earlier he found again here, approaching the tree had mentally dubbed Number Two, which was one of the ones on his lot. The animal had slowed to a normal, harelike gait upon approaching. Walking around the tree, Oram saw a second set of tracks. They were similar enough that he could not be certain if they were from a different animal, or the traces of a second visit by the same one.

Oram got to work setting up a snare pen next to the tree. He had trapped plenty of rabbit and hare, and while he had never caught a crescent hare before, he would assume for now that the usual setup would work here: find a bushy bit of foliage that can be approached from several different directions, and set up a collection of snares all around it, well-camouflaged by the dark greenery, baited with the softest birch tips the hunter could gather, subtly and suitably funneled to ensure the quarry would approach the set in a way that took it into the trap, and helped by chin-up sticks, small, sharp twigs stuck in the snow right under the snares, to prevent the hares from nosing under the nooses rather than sticking their necks through them.

Oram set five or six snares in the pen by the time the perpetual Cylus twilight began to deepen into proper night. He would trap the other two fallen tree sites as well tomorrow. For now, it was time to go home, eat some dinner, and get some rest.

[Oram Mednix]

For he can thoroughly enjoy the pepper when he pleases. Wow! Wow! Wow!

Oram was curious about what crescent hares would look like in the wild, having only ever seen their harvested pelts before. From the stories he heard from those who had seen them, crescent hares were hard to see. They were small and shy, like other lepids, and unlike many such almost never came out in sunlit breaks. Moreover, they ran fast, almost unbelievably fast, making them easy to miss when they were on the move.

His curiosity piqued, Oram decided to try something after dinner. He had all sorts of items that enabled him to see things he would not normally be able to. He took his spy glass, along with his night glow gem, the rainbow glass that made the sources of sounds visible, and the glass he had picked up in Uthaldria that showed things giving off heat, all up to the roof of his house. Since his house was built into a hillock, this meant walking up a fairly steep and now treacherous slope. He had made the same trek just a couple of trials before, in order to clear snow from the chimneys. The formerly soft and powdery snow exposed when he had first shoveled a path up to the chimneys had since hardened into an icy crust, so he put on the ice cleats he had won in the recent ice-fishing contest to help him gain traction as he mounted the side of the hillock.

Once atop the summit, the hunter tried holding the spyglass up to his eye while placing the night glow gem in front of the objective. He hoped that this might enable him to see in the distance with the benefit of the gem’s night-vision, but he was disappointed; he couldn’t get the setup to form a clear image, only getting indistinct outlines, no matter how he adjusted the glass or the night glow gem. He got similar results with the other two lenses. After a while, he gave up. Lenses were tricky, and interacted in odd, counterintuitive ways. If he wanted a spyglass that could see in the dark, he would need to try something less obvious.

The next morning, Oram found that one of the snares in his pen had caught something, but on inspection it was just an ordinary rabbit, with dull whitish fur and short legs. That was fine, still something he could use; the fresh meat would be a welcome break from all the sausage, dried beef, and smoked fish he and Skai had been eating since the blizzard. Nonetheless, he was still after the crescent hare. Looking around the snare pen, he noticed that his intended quarry had apparently not returned to this spot.

Rabbits and hares moved about in the winter months, he recalled. They didn’t hibernate. That might explain in part why crescent hares had chosen to make an appearance in this area now. And with that in mind, it made sense that they were still exploring, looking for various food sources and warren sites. Thus, Oram did the same.

Riding about on Cold Cut, Oram located promising looking tracks at one of the other fallen trees. That discovery, while reassuring, did not change the plan that he had already settled on: he would set snare pens at all the fallen birch sites he had found, including one new one that he discovered on this outing. Doing so took most of the trial, as well as most of the twine he had on hand (having been effectively snowed in since the 5th, he was starting to run low on some supplies). Just before setting out, he told Skai to leave the fresh-fallen birches alone for the time being, not to harvest any wood or bark from them nor disturb them in any way. The caretaker grunted in agreement; he hadn’t been planning on trudging through the deep snow on his bad leg, anyway.

Setting the snares took most of the afternoon. By the time he got back to the house, Skai was cutting up carrots, onions and potatoes for rabbit stew, muttering that if Oram *did* continue catching the things, they’d run out of pepper to put in the stew pretty soon.

[Oram Mednix]

12 Cylus 722

When Oram next rose to face the early icy mists of a new trial, it had been seven since the heavy snows had come, and five since they had stopped. Even though the ground and air were far too cold for the snow to melt, and although the sun lay hidden behind a moon, yet settling and evaporation slowly shrank the drifts that blanketed the ground and hid most of the greenery. Oram noticed a few dark spots starting to peek through the white that had not been there a few trials before. A couple more trials, he realized, before the receding snow would once more start to reveal more feeding places for the rabbits and hares of the wood to explore and exploit. Then it would be far more difficult to entice them to the handful of snare pens he had set up. He hoped that those next couple trials would prove productive.

With a silent, and admittedly somewhat belated, appeal to Karem for a prosperous hunt, Oram set out to examine his pens. In the first he found yet another rabbit, another regular one, albeit with a pretty nice white coat. The next two pens had yielded nothing, although tracks suggested the crescent hares may have been there in the night. Oram’s spirits wavered a bit when he saw that. Had the hares rejected the pens for some reason? Had they been able to sniff out the traps? All he could do was reset with some fresh birch tips and hope for the best.

Oram then visited his fourth and last snare pen, the one at the site he had only just discovered yesterday. There, at last, he saw a welcome sight: two hares, with unmistakably longer legs and ears than the rabbits from earlier, and more greyish, silvery fur, were caught in the snares. Upon examining them, he saw that one was male and the other female. A mated pair, perhaps? The hunter hoped not, as taking out a mated pair all at once would make it harder for the critters to establish themselves in the area. But it was too late to trouble with that. For now, he had two hares. He compared their furs to that of his hat; they definitely had the same silvery sheen. He was as sure as he could be that these were crescent hares, even though, apart from the aforementioned clues, they were indistinguishable from normal hares. And the furs were beautiful, whatever they were; they would fetch a good price.

After resetting the snares at this last pen, Oram took the two hares and put them in his sack with the rabbit, then headed back to the house. He had never eaten crescent hare before; he wondered if they tasted any different from other hares and rabbits.

[Doran]

Oram:

Knowledge:
[Appraisal] Identifying and assessing a crescent hare’s fur.
[Cooking] Rabbit stew needs pepper!
[Hunting] Rabbits and hares don’t hibernate.
[Hunting] Heavy snowfalls bury most food sources, which is a great opportunity for trapping.
[Logistics] Make sure you have enough stores for when you get snowed in.
[Science] (Optics) Lenses are funky and hard to arrange successfully.

Loot: -
Lost: -
Wealth: -
Injuries: -
Renown: -
Magic XP: -
Skill Review: Appropriate to level.
Points: 10

- - -

Comments: First of all, I’m glad that you used an animal that was developed for ST – the Crescent Hare – rather than a normal rabbit. Oram was definitely lucky to have found the tracks of one of those elusive critters, and what more, it constitutes a good challenge, even for an experienced hunter!

I like that you incorporated a calendar event into this thread and mentioned the (few) good sides of a blizzard in addition to the bad sides, and I enjoyed the description of Oram shuffling through the snow in his snowshoes and setting up his traps – your descriptions were pretty detailed!

Oram gives me the impression of being resourceful. It’s unfortunate that he didn’t manage to see a Crescent Hare, despite all of his items. Fortunately, two of them ended up in his snare pen later on. I have to admit, I wonder if they taste different from normal rabbits as well.

I’d love to read a Crescent Hare cooking thread sometime!

Enjoy your rewards!