There is a critical gap in our understanding of how stressors affect brain organization in natural populations. My objective was to examine the impact of the stress associated with live-trapping on the hormonal and molecular changes of the stress axis of wild snowshoe hares. Capture in live-traps for a short duration (<7.5 h) resulted in increases in plasma cortisol levels with no changes in corticosteroid receptor mRNA expression. However, capture for a longer-duration (<15 h) resulted in significant increases in MR mRNA expression in all hippocampal subfields, a modest decline in GR mRNA in the CA4 hippocampal subfield (20% decline) and in the PVN (16% decline) with no change in GR mRNA in the anterior pituitary. Thus in wild snowshoe hares, a short-term stressor produced the expected stress response but unexpectedly resulted in a much more dynamic change in MR mRNA expression as compared to GR mRNA.