Marciano | Angus Gardner

"Spring is a great time to see hares. Hares don’t burrow like rabbits, they simply scrape a small dent in the middle of a field and rear their young almost in plain sight. Last year there was a real bruiser living in a field behind our house. He seemed to have two pastimes - making fun of my dog Obi (like he was bating him to chase him, just so he could make Obi look stupid, which he did relentlessly) and of course boxing.

Males box each other to gain dominance and Marciano (as I started to call him) was a real champ. He was 5 and 0 last Spring and undefeated. He was much bigger than the other hares here on the farm and sometimes just stood up in the middle of the field, bold as brass even as Obi and I approached him as if mimicking DeNiro in Taxi driver - ‘you looking at me?’ - I tried to capture ‘that look’ in his portrait - that kind of ‘who’s next?’ attitude" - Angus