A change of scenery

 Todays job was on an equestrian farm, lots of rabbits were creating areas of instability.
The horses were in danger of leg breaks through falling into rabbit holes

 Large amounts of long nets had to be used due to the huge warrens

 Lee dispatching one of the rabbits

Not a huge amount from each burrow, what we found here was the ammount of rabbits seen entering the burrows was much more than what could be taken out in the small time available. These burrows were very deep, sometimes going off the 16foot scale of the Deben Ferret Finder.

here we have a fenceline warren, it only had 3 holes on Lee's side, but as can be seen on the long netted side, its a whole different story!!
Not a huge warren but a large ammount of holes in a small area.

 Lee's nets are not easily lost!! I think possibly alongside the great wall of China, these are possibly the only other man made item that can be seen from the moon!!

One end of the warren purse netted with a large amount of vibrant coloured nets, apologies to half of Yorkshire who lost there television signal due to  the reflection from these nets!!

Now this is a long warren, the red coloured net is 100 yards long, and it stretches the whole way down, with a few 10 & 25 yard nets criss-crossed in between to act as breakers.
If we'd have had a full team today*, we could have easily used up to 400 yards of long net and aroung 150 purse nets, that is the extent of this warren.

*see end of this post for 1 missing rabbiter!

 The bushes are great cover, and the amount of holes between each one is unbelievable!

After missing a rabbit through a hole we had missed, Lee lays another purse net

This is the far end of the warren, a large area of undergrowth made for a hectic hour with the ferrets, due to the short period of light at the moment, we gave ourselves about 2 hours to each warren, this included laying nets, another hour was taken gutting and burrying at the end.

 2 quickly caught and dispatched rabbits, note how my longnet has a very baggy bottom (ahem!!) this is so that we get a good cover over varying land lie.

A nasty bramble bush gave me a few scratches during the day!

The nettles still havent died back yet, in the midst of winter we will revisit this patch and hopefully with a full team take a few more rabbits out. Of course this was where the majority of the rabbits could be found, getting at them was a different story, I maybe need a scythe next time!

End of day shot, 21 rabbits, a nice result and a very pleased owner, rabbit pies promised to him as a thankyou for the job, these are very fat, healthy rabbits with a large fat deposit inside, we may be in for a bad winter.......again!!!

 And just a few final shots to prove that I dont just stand behind a camera!

The soil was lovely to dig here, just sandy soil for around 3 feet........

.........with a rabbit at the bottom!

Same here too, a fantastic day out, with great weather for the time of year. a good catch of rabbits with only one lost, a great result for a short day.








And as a final note, i'd just like to congratulate one of our rabbiters, David, or Bountyhunter as he is known, is the proud Father to his second boy Tommy Lucas who was born on the 14th November at 9.30pm, he weighed in at a grand 9lb 10oz. It was strange not having you there yesterday Dave, but I know from experience, you never get these times back, enjoy some baby time........and i'll let you know when the next outing is booked!!

Thanks also to Lee for allowing me to help him on some cracking land, lets hope theres a next time.

Happy Hunting.