Has research been done on the flight behavior of jack rabbits? Particularly, when triggered, do they have a tendancy to run a particular direction such as uphill, downhill, cross-slope, etc.?
I am an archeologist gathering information about prehistoric trapping sites and need information on rabbit drives to capture/dispatch game.
All rodents and lagomorphs will flee in the opposite direction to a predator and head for an area that is dark and near a protected wall/enclosure (so called thigmotaxis). As you can see therefore there will not be a tendency to specifically run up or downhill - rather to put as much distance between them and the predator in a place that appears to be safer than open ground.
Well things will vary though. Obviously individual incidents won't necessarily reflect overall patterns, but I did once surprise a desert hare in China right outside its burrow and it took off uphill - but I was downhill of this.
Surely the pattern of evasion is also going to be right down to where the percieved threat is coming from. If people set traps uphill and acted as beaters from downhill, it should work as would vice-versa.
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