The Hare
The hare is a single hasher, a pair of hashers, or a group of hashers who reconnoiter (reccé) a route for an upcoming hash run. The hare(s) will then lay a trail from the run site through the local terrain, using shredded paper or whatever environmentally friendly medium is chosen, to guide the runners through the aforementioned terrain.
[Where ever the run may be, it will be marked by some means, be it shredded paper (disappears quite quickly in the rain forests of our area), flour (careful of “Karens” reporting it as some sort of terrorist plot if in built up areas) or chalk, maybe. {** do NOT use spray paint **}]
When performing the reccé the hare will be looking for good places to fool the runners on the day.
As country people will know a hare being chased is very cunning and will leap in the air to beak the scent trails so making it more difficult to follow. A hare will also double back on its trail to further confuse the pursuer. . . . . .
The hasher hare will do the same, with the intention of slowing the faster front runners and allowing the slower runners to catch up.
A false trail, affectionately known as a falsie, by our rules, can be up to 100 meters.
Some hares like to mark the end of a falsie with an ‘X’ cross of shredded paper or a line across the trail.
Medan Hash House Harriers more often just lay the falsie for 100 meters then stop laying paper. This means the runner needs to run another 100 meters to be sure that it wasn’t just a break in the paper (like a hare jumping to break the scent).
Runs in Medan hashes tend to be around 1 hour to 11/2 hours for the first runners. For out-of-town special week-end runs, the main run could be 2 to 3 hours with shorter runs also laid for the less energetic.
One of the marks of a good run is when all runners finish around a similar time, give or take 45 minutes.