Am old hunt word "first snow" gives the feeling of the fluffy lightness and odorous freshness. It sounds like the call of a horn, the poetic charm of the first snow goes through the whole life of a hunter.

On the first snow they hunt either with hounds or independently - by the trace of a grey hare (so called tracking).

The tracking of a grey hare - is a real art, which a hunter seizes during process a continuous experience. But even the most refined art of a tracer is a success only then when there are suitable conditions for the hunt. The main conditions facilitating success during tracking are good weather and good first snow.

If the snow thickly and plainly covering the land stops in the evening, a hare, got hungry during a day, goes out for eating at night, leaving long printed trace on the fresh and clean snow. But when it stops snowing only before the sunrise, a hare doesn`t got up at all or makes only a short run. It`s clear, that a long run - a grey hare goes for a long distance during a night - is more advantageous for the hunting.

In warm, mild thaw weather a hare lies hardly and to come to him at a shot-distance is naturally easier. If the weather is frosty a hare usually doesn`t allow a hunter to approach it.

However, there are exception: in some days a hare jumps out of its lying place out of the shot-distance but in frosts it is lying like being fettered. So far as all the beasts are very sensitive to the weather changes the first case can be explained by the coming frost the next night and the second one - by turning of frost into the thaw.

A hare almost never lies in the open field, it constantly chooses some shelter: a small ravine, swept together snow, small holes, bush, welds and so on.

If the weather is windy a hare lies down always some where in a calm place, with a muzzle to the wind (wind blowing along wool doesn`t make a beast cold so much). As a hare is lying with a muzzle to the wind it is necessary to come to it from back, against wind, not to be noticed by the beast.

To understand hare`s traces, which are sometimes everywhere in the field, it not easy. For example, if there is no snowfall for some calm days the number of traces is continuously increasing and skills and keen sight are demanded hare to distinguish a fresh trace from the old one.

It is almost impossible to hunt in field during snowdrift, it blows away and fills up any traces.

If even the smallest stars - snowflakes are distinguished on the trace it shows that the trace has lost it`s freshness. If hoarfrost decorating with such a splendour trees and bushes is settling on the trace with hardly noticed crystals - they are noted by an attentive tracer as an evidence of the old trace.

Settling on every thing. The hoarfrost is especially noticeable on the things which are projected. In this case it enlarge there sizes. The hoarfrost settles not only with its plain side but also with its edge. Thats why all the things covered with hoarfrost have rough, bristly look.

This feature of hoarfrost helps to distinguish the old traces, which could be accepted for the fresh ones, if they hadn`t been covered with hoarfrost. Thanks to the surrounding of a prickly bolster of hoarfrost such traces look shaggy from a distance.

The days when hoarfrost settles are more often misty, with lilac heavy light which hampers the examining of the trace.

It`s better to trace the grey hare during "dead first snow", marked by the depth of snow and by "shortness". This first fall of snow filling up all the traces makes snow space clean, life less ("dead"), and only quite fresh traces leading usually to the lying place of a beast revives it. The tracing of a hare by fresh trace of "the dead first snow" almost always is successful. A hare goes only by jumps, putting his longer back paws before the front ones.

The hunters divide a hare trace into fatty, moving and racing trace.

A fatty trace is trace left on the place of feeding (growing fat). A compact, dense, complicated pattern of fatty traces almost defies understanding and a hunter ignoring these traces tries to find a moving trace, that is to begin tracing itself.

Tracing of a grey hare is extremely interesting, fascinating and beautifull.

To trace a hare is necessary in the early morning by fresh, clear and accurate trace.

At the edge of forest not going out to the field you find a hare`s trace at last, it`s like keeping a fragrant warm of hare`s paws. The hare seemed to go quite calm by light and regular jumps. From the edge it went to the valley, at a jump crossed an unfrozen stream and at the same regularity it went on along the forest border. Had jumped to the road the hare sat down - the prints of the back paws are clear on the snow - and then it moved along the track left by a lorry - a print of a twisted elastic tyre.

A trace has been lost: it`s necessary to move on along the road calmly, to look for a possible note to look attentively at every bush, every strip of weeds. There is a cabbage field not far away. Knowing the hare`s habits it is possible to be sure. That exactly here a hare will make its giddy jump. And it`s write so: it about at a distance of 10 steps the 4 slanting small holes sooner changing into dense chess muddle are seen. A grey hare - obviously for a long time - gnawed cabbage heads then out of the other edge of the field it returned to the road, rose to its back paws, lent an to the world and hastelessly moved again to the cabbage field.

After "the growing fat" the hare jumped out to the field making huge jumps: 4 holes are endured almost in a straight line, in a chain.

A grey hare made here a short turn, even stumbled - there is a dotted half-round on the snow - moved back by the same trace ("looped"), and then threw himself to the bush again.

On the winter crop fields adjoining the copse it left some more loops and at last rushed among the birch trees and bedded somewhere: there is no any coming out trace out of the copse. The hare is somewhere here, closely...

The final successful of the hunt during tracing depends on the caution and reasoning of every step, on every second readiness to a hard shot to a hare jumped out of some jumper bush.

A grey hare stretched on the snow is very beautiful: its dense gray hair combined with gold, a black belt along its back and amber flashing inside its eyes.

And there is pale dim winter light around in which our native Russian forest are blue-coloured in their calm dream...