The hare that outran seven shots

A single hare dances between the legs of seven hunters, dodging every flintlock shot until it vanishes into the thick undergrowth. This is the story behind the Siebenschussstein, a stone memorial in the Kottenforst forest. The legend captures a moment of shared laughter from a hunting drive in 1888, where the cleverness of the animal won out over the coordination of the men.

In the years that followed, the name Siebenschuss stuck to the land itself. It moved from a spoken anecdote about a narrow escape to a formal designation, eventually appearing on official cadastral maps. The name became a geographical fact, designating a plot of land in Buschhoven.

For a long time, the physical mark of this story was a humble boundary stone. An anonymous hand eventually painted a fat hare onto its surface, showing the creature making a mocking gesture. This folk art transformed a functional marker into a public monument. It served as a quiet anchor for the community's history until 1973, when excavation work caused the original stone to disappear entirely.

With the old stone lost, the local CDU commissioned a replacement. The community did not want the story to fade, so they hired local sculptor Herbert Höhmann to carve a new memorial. He worked from a drawing by the local teacher Adelheid Willers, creating a permanent hare that was solemnly inaugurated in May 1979. This new stone stands firmly in the ground today, holding the space where the old one once sat.

History has a way of circling back. In 1985, the original painted stone reappeared, though it no longer stands alone in the forest. Instead, it has been built into the wall of the workshop building at the Buschhoven forest house. The community continues to weave the hare into its present life: a local street bears the name Siebenschuss, a dialect band named Sibbeschuss emerged in 2012, and the first Siebenschuss archery tournament celebrated the agility of the hare that outran seven shots.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons