Measurements.—A male from Miller's Island, Klickitat County, in the Columbia River, measured: total length 564; length of tail 117; hind foot 156; ear 110; weight 337.5 grams.
Distribution.—Previously found over the grasslands of eastern Washington. Now restricted and scarce except in the Okanogan Valley.
Remarks.—The white-tailed jack rabbit is the largest rabbit in the state, adults measuring 24 or more inches in length. The long legs and long ears accentuate the impression of large size. Its body is more bulky than that of its relative, the black-tailed jack rabbit. In summer the pelage of the upper parts is dark gray and in winter it is white over nearly the entire body.
The white-tailed jack rabbit occurs from southern Saskatchewan south to extreme northern New Mexico, and from eastern Washington east to Wisconsin. A single race occurs in Washington. In eastern Washington "whitetails" favor the hilly, bunchgrass territory of the arid subdivision of the Transition and Upper Sonoran life-zones. In winter they descend to the lower sagebrush valleys.
The principal enemies of the white-tailed jack rabbit are the eagle, coyote, and bobcat. Of 1,186 stomachs of coyotes from Washington, [Sperry] (1941: 11) found that 27 percent contained rabbits, including jack rabbits, snowshoe hares, and cottontails.
In the daytime, white-tailed jack rabbits hide in forms which consist of shallow holes dug at the bases of bushes or beside rocks. They feed in the morning, evening, and in the night along wide, well-defined trails through the bunchgrass. If startled from their forms they dash off in bounding, erratic leaps, skimming away until lost to sight. A whitetail has been timed at a speed of 34 miles per hour ([Cottam] and Williams, 1943: 262).
The early explorers and settlers found the white-tailed jack rabbits abundant in eastern Washington. With the invasion and spread of the black-tailed jack rabbit, and the reduction of native bunchgrass through overgrazing by livestock, the whitetail has become rare. In several years of field work on the Columbian Plateau, I saw none. Near Wallula, the type locality, residents had not seen whitetails for years, but thought there might be a few left "back in the hills." There are thought to be a few left near Ellensburg and Yakima.
Only in the Okanogan Valley are the whitetails holding their own; they are reasonably common there. In winter they come down from the hills on to the sagebrush flats along the Okanogan River in Okanogan County. In January it is not unusual to see as many as five in a day's drive. When, as will most certainly occur, the black-tailed jack rabbit enters the Okanogan Valley, the splendid whitetail may be expected to disappear from Washington.
Because this species has been so reduced in numbers, no distributional map has been included. [Taylor] and [Shaw] (1929: 28) give its range as: "north to Oroville, east to Pullman, south to Asotin, Walla Walla, and Kennewick, and west to Lake Chelan (Manson), Yakima Valley, and Klickitat County." This range is similar to that of the Nuttall Cottontail (Fig. 129).