Rabbits with horns jackalope

Where did the jackalope come from? As with many cryptids, there are myths, and there are legends.

Rabbit with antlers real

It created an amusing image that Doug thought could make a funny hunting trophy. And so they did. A rabbit with deer antlers was what started hanging from the walls in Douglas, Wyoming around that time. Soon, word spread of this unusual creature, which found itself visiting even more walls, with the most prominent wall being Wall Drug in South Dakota, which took these things by the truckload.

These pseudo-animals gradually became a point of pride for the town of Douglas, which offered jackalope hunting licenses, then the state of Wyoming. The estimated number of mounted jackalopes that exist, according to author Michael P. Branch, who wrote an in-depth book about the jackalope legend last year titled On the Trail of the Jackalope.

But looking into literature seems to suggest that, if Doug Herrick gave it a context, there was a lot of interesting historic precedent just hanging around, ready to go in case someone wanted to put two and two together. Branch points to a number of other illustrations of horned hares throughout history, including engraver Antonio Tempesta, who includes one in a book that is otherwise filled with accurate images of wildlife, and Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner, who described the animal in his groundbreaking book Historiae animalium.