Ferreting

[Suffolk shooter]

FB111 invited myself, FG.22 over to his for a days ferreting yesterday, so thought I'd take the opportunity to take my eldest daughter. She loves ferrets and more importantly coming out with me what ever it is I'm doing in the way of country sports. She's already an accomplished Sea Angler (Eh, MC!!), and I have to say is the best Gun dog I've ever seen when shooting Pigeons (Retrieves and even culls if not quite dead).

 

Every Game/country show we go to she manages to find the ferret stand instantly always wanting to hold them and tickle them, so thought why not take her along and show her what ferrets are really used for. Now to some this may not seem a big deal, but when your seven year old has a pet rabbit at home, and you explain to her what it is your going to do with the ferrets, trying to convince her that 'Billy' isn't in any danger is something I've never had to think about before.

 

Any way we get there on time at 9am as instructed to find that FB had texted (Phone in boot of car from night before's lamping) to say he was running late as he had to go into town to buy another battery for the Ferret finder. Eventually he turned up and FG.22 arrived and we got under way, back to the vast warren that we had managed to scare the 50-60 rabbits from the night's before lamping.

 

Started off badly, getting into the ditch and netting the holes was the easy bit, put ferret in and spent the next half hour waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Eventually thinking the ferret had got one in a stopend, FB used the ferret finder to locate and we started to dig down approx 3 foot, trouble was it wasn't easy soil, far from it with the ground being rock hard and filled with roots of all shapes and sizes. To make matters worse, whilst digging, the ferret decided to come out on its own. 1-0 to the rabbits.

 

Moved a bit further a long and whilst FB netted up me and FG.22 stood up top with the guns waiting for any bolters. I decided to try for onbe of the pigeons flying about and was amazed when one come almost straight towards us not veering off like the others, so raised gun, swung and dropped it first barrel to retrieve once we'd finished this particular set of holes.

 

Shot the worlds smallest bolting rabbit (ok, ok only just FB, FG), and had a rat from the next set of holes. Trouble was that the holes were all on a steep sided ditch and seemed to just run from one lot to the next so we spent a lot of time tracking/locating the ferrets as they worked. Both FB and FG had shots and both had at least one.

 

Ended the day taking my daughter round to show her FB111's Larsen traps and in the process FB shot another two rats near his feeders and we got to see a Roe doe, rise out of the long grass about ten foot away, stare at as and then trot away indignently as we disturbed her. My daughter really enjoyed herself, picking up the rabbits we killed and christening my new game bag that she proudly carried all day.

 

Cheers LAds, heres to the next trip (Gotta be for the foxe's me thinks.)

 

SS

[MC]

So after reading all that,

 

How many rabbits did you get?

[Suffolk shooter]

We had four I think, one rat and one pigeon. We know one of the ferrets took to killing and moving on though as it kept coming back with blood on its snout and fur round its claws.

 

SS