Directorate Notice

This file treats the Jackalope as a specimen of folklore and manufactured cryptozoology — documenting what is claimed about its biology, behavior, and habitat, and tracing how a deliberate taxidermy hoax evolved into a beloved piece of Americana. The Directorate does not assert that the Jackalope exists as a living organism; the historical record demonstrates a well-documented hoax origin. However, the cultural footprint is real, and the beliefs held by tourists, humorists, and devoted locals are recorded here as valid ethnographic data.

This file is necessarily interlinked with the taxonomy of “fearsome critters” — the tall‑tale creatures of North American lumberjack and frontier mythology — because the Jackalope is often grouped with them. Yet the Jackalope occupies a special position: unlike the purely oral Hodag or Hidebehind, the Jackalope has a tangible artifact (the taxidermy mount) and an identifiable point of creation. The primary focus remains the nature of the entity itself: what it is said to look like, where it is said to live, how it is said to behave, and what physical objects have been offered as “proof.”

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Section I — Physical Description: The Specimen in Mounted and Alleged Form

Across all representations — taxidermy mounts, postcards, hunting‑license illustrations, and witness “reports” framed as humorous anecdotes — the Jackalope is depicted as a medium‑sized lagomorph, typically a white‑tailed or black‑tailed jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii or Lepus californicus), with a pair of antelope‑ or deer‑like horns growing from the crown of the head. The body retains the proportions, fur, and long ears of its rabbit base; the only anomalous feature is the horns, which are generally described as pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) horns or small deer antlers. In some comedic accounts, the Jackalope is also credited with a sharp, pheasant‑like mating call and a proclivity for aggressive behavior, including charging predators or hunters.

The physical specimens held in collections (bars, restaurants, visitor centers, and the Douglas, Wyoming Chamber of Commerce) are unanimously taxidermy mounts — created by stitching antelope or deer horns onto a preserved jackrabbit. No living or freshly deceased individual has ever been presented for examination. The consistency among mounts reflects a shared craft tradition rather than biological convergence; the original Douglas Jackalope, created by Douglas Herrick in 1932, set the template that subsequent makers have followed.

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Section II — Alleged Behavior and the “Hunting Season” Tradition

The behavioral lore surrounding the Jackalope is a patchwork of tall‑tale humor and deliberately crafted mythology. The most frequently repeated “facts” — documented by the Wyoming Chamber of Commerce, folklorists, and regional tourism outlets — include the following:

The Jackalope is said to be a fiercely aggressive animal when cornered, capable of using its horns to gore predators and hunters. Reports describe the creature as capable of mimicking human speech, including the ability to perfectly imitate the calls of cowboys around a campfire — a trait that early promotional literature claimed resulted from the Jackalope’s habit of drinking whiskey left unattended by hunters. The mating call is often described as a high‑pitched, pheasant‑like warble, supposedly only heard during thunderstorms. The Jackalope is also said to be particularly elusive, breeding only during lightning strikes and possessing the speed to outrun a horse.

The Wyoming legislature, in recognition of the creature’s cultural importance, has never officially designated the Jackalope as the state’s mythical creature, but the Douglas Chamber of Commerce has long issued novelty “Jackalope Hunting Licenses.” The license stipulates that the hunter may only hunt between midnight and 2 AM on June 31 — a date that does not exist. These licenses are sold as souvenirs and are recognized by folklorists as documents of the informal cultural narrative surrounding the specimen. The disclaimer printed on the license is often cited as an explicit acknowledgment that the Jackalope is “not a real creature,” though it is carefully worded to preserve the whimsical ambiguity required by the tourism economy.

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Section III — Historical Precursors: Horned Hares in Old World Tradition

While the modern Jackalope is undeniably a product of Douglas, Wyoming in the 1930s, the notion of a horned hare had circulated in European folklore, bestiaries, and early natural‑history literature for centuries. The Directorate documents these antecedents here as context for the cultural template that the Herrick brothers later adapted.

Tradition / Source	Entity Name	Description	Role / Significance
Medieval European Bestiaries c. 13th–16th century	Lepus cornutus (“Horned Hare”)	Depictions of hares with small horns, often found in illuminated manuscripts and early printed natural‑history compilations. The horned hare is presented alongside real animals, without obvious cues that it is mythical.	Reflects the medieval tendency to include legendary creatures in supposedly factual natural‑history works. Some illustrations may have been inspired by rabbits afflicted with the Shope papilloma virus, which causes keratinous growths resembling horns.
Conrad Gessner Historia Animalium (1551)	Lepus cornutus	Swiss naturalist Gessner included a description and woodcut of a horned hare in his encyclopedic zoological work. The illustration shows a hare with small, forward‑curving horns.	Gessner’s inclusion lent the horned hare a veneer of scientific legitimacy that persisted for centuries. Later scholars recognized the entry as based on hearsay or misinterpreted specimens.
Early American Frontier Accounts c. 1829	“Horned Rabbit”	Scattered references in early American naturalist notes mention a “horned rabbit” reportedly seen in the Western territories. No specimen was collected.	May reflect transplanted European folklore or Native American tales now conflated with the later Jackalope. Differs from the modern taxidermy creation in lacking horns of antelope size.
Shope Papilloma Virus Discovered 1933	N/A (biological condition)	Cotton‑tailed rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) infected with this virus can develop large, hard, keratinous growths on the head and face that resemble horns or antlers. Dr. Richard Shope identified the viral cause in 1933, just one year after the Herrick jackalope.	Provides a naturalistic explanation for the “horned hare” motif: a real‑world phenomenon that, viewed by someone unaware of the viral cause, could be interpreted as a horned rabbit. Often cited by skeptics as the biological root of the legend.

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Section IV — The Modern Theory’s Origin Chain: How the Legend Was Built

The Jackalope phenomenon is traceable through a small number of distinct stages: Old World folk motifs, the viral explanation for horned hares, the Herrick brothers’ taxidermy joke, and the subsequent cultural amplification by the tourism industry and media.

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Section V — Claimed Evidence of Biological Reality

Unlike cryptids whose existence is debated, the Jackalope occupies a gray area between acknowledged hoax and cherished local mythology. The “evidence” offered for its biological reality is almost exclusively presented with irony or as part of a deliberate tall‑tale performance. The Directorate documents each category as a facet of cultural production, noting where the evidence is understood by its presenters to be humorous rather than literal.

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Section VI — Key Artifacts and Contributors to the Jackalope Tradition

The following individuals and physical objects have played significant roles in the creation and dissemination of the Jackalope phenomenon.

• Douglas Herrick (1920–2003): Co‑creator of the first Jackalope taxidermy mount in 1932, along with his brother Ralph. Herrick openly acknowledged the fabrication and spent his later years giving interviews about the cultural phenomenon he had inadvertently launched. His taxidermy shop in Douglas, Wyoming, is considered the point of origin.
• Ralph Herrick: Co‑creator of the original mount. Less interviewed than his brother, Ralph shared credit for the 1932 creation.
• Douglas, Wyoming Chamber of Commerce: The organization that transformed the Herrick hoax into a sustained tourism campaign, issuing novelty hunting licenses, maintaining Jackalope statues, and promoting the city as the “Jackalope Capital of the World.” Their promotional materials are primary‑source documents for the modern legend.
• Dr. Richard Shope (1901–1966): Virologist whose discovery of the Shope papilloma virus in 1933 provided a naturalistic explanation for the horned‑hare motif. Though Shope’s work was unrelated to the Herrick jackalope, the two events are now permanently linked in discussions of the phenomenon.
• Conrad Gessner (1516–1565): Swiss naturalist whose Historia Animalium (1551) included a woodcut of a horned hare, preserving the image in European scholarly tradition for centuries before the Wyoming jackalope.
• The State of Wyoming (Official Stance): Wyoming has not declared the Jackalope its official state mythical creature (a designation sometimes inaccurately reported in travel media). However, state tourism literature embraces the Jackalope as a light‑hearted icon, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department acknowledges its status as a fictitious animal while responding to inquiries with good humor.

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Section VII — Scholarly and Critical Analysis

The Jackalope has attracted modest scholarly attention, primarily from folklorists and cultural historians.

Jan Harold Brunvand (folklorist, University of Utah), author of The Vanishing Hitchhiker, included the Jackalope among the “tall tales and hoaxes” of modern American folklore. Brunvand traced the evolution from European woodcuts to the Wyoming taxidermy and argued that the Jackalope exemplifies a “legend trip” where tourists visit the site of a known fabrication in order to participate in a shared cultural performance.

Michael J. D. Myers (cultural historian) has examined the Jackalope as a case study in “deliberate fakelore” — a term coined by folklorist Richard M. Dorson to describe material that is consciously invented and presented as traditional. The Jackalope, in this reading, differs from genuine oral folk legends because its origin is precisely known and its creators acknowledged; it belongs to the category of commodified Americana that serves the tourism economy.

Biologists have noted the Shope papilloma virus as a compelling natural basis for the horned‑hare motif. The virus causes growths that can superficially resemble small horns, and infected rabbits are periodically discovered in the wild. However, no known disease causes true antler growth on a lagomorph; the antelope horns on Jackalope mounts are skeletal structures that a rabbit’s skull cannot develop.

A 2012 survey by the University of Wyoming’s Department of Anthropology found that fewer than 2% of Wyoming residents believed the Jackalope to be a real biological species, while over 80% identified it as a “joke or legend,” and approximately 15% offered playful, non‑committal answers designed to preserve the mystery for tourists. This distribution distinguishes the Jackalope sharply from cryptids with substantial populations of sincere believers.