A day out with the ferrets part 2

Well after the first part of this session, mostly centering around walling for rabbits, we decided to pop over to the large open warren we had ferreted earlier on this year, the problem back then was that the area was quite badly flooded, and even though the warrens were partly under water, they were still being used by a small population of diehards!!

The size of this warren is hard to convey, its bloody huge doesn't really get it across!!

on this side of the warren there are lots of open holes which stretch back in some places a good 10 feet, and down nearly as deep!!










The hollow in the centre is where the field floods, the warren surrounds this on all sides

As can be seen here this is the largest of the warrens here, we are surrounding it with longnets and then dividing it off with stop nets, the odd purse net will be used to stop hole jumping

These next 2 photo's show the expanse of this collection of warrens, this whole area has to be netted at the same time, so as rabbits don't hop from warren to warren

It takes around 60-70 pursenets and 250 yards of longnet to complete the job, and after all that, the tally of rabbits from this one set of warrens was.........2, not the best rabbit to man hour percentage, but hey it was fun setting it all up!!





After this massive bag was added to the total (LOL) we moved on to another wall job, again in the same field as this warren, but nearer to one of the becks

These holes on the river bank are where we enter the ferrets, they lead up and under the wall, longnets are set either side with a stop net set just at the wall end.
This wall has produced a few bunnies for us in the past, and it didn't fail this time either!

As we set up the nets on the wall we spotted 2-3 rabbits watching us from this area where the farmer has dumped parts of a building that fell down.
We would love to ferret this area, but if it came to digging for a ferret we would be buggered!! it is 8 feet tall and pure rubble and steel columns, JCB required!!

The wall is around 50 yards and is a mish mash of holes, passages and run throughs. When the ferrets run along here you can here there chattering, a noise they make when they are excited or just having fun.

This is the area that the rabbit came from, the grass here showed plenty of movement, so we expected more than 1, but the rain has started and I think the rabbits vacate this very mushy field and move higher up the hill. We shall see next week as the hill is the next place we plan to ferret.

The local cow population had turned up and as soon as we turned our backs they were trying to eat the longnets!!
Not what we wanted to catch in the nets, but I suppose it would feed us for a while!!

Under this tree resides a small population of rabbits, the only problem is they tend to stay under the tree, and digging under tree's is hard unless you have a pet beaver!! Thankfully today the ferrets were hiding in the walls, and after moving a few stones we found the cornered conies!!





Well at the end of the day we caught 12 rabbits from here, not a lot, but obviously we had got here too late, the waters were rising and the rabbit population was moving on, we made a mental note to try again next year around June-July, when we checked our watches it was only 1 o'clock so we planned to stop off at another farm on the way home, well it was still dry and early so why not.

This farm runs downhill all the way down to a steep drop down to the river, we set longnets along the top and bottom of this drop then closed it off with longnets at the sides and inbetween to sectionalise the overall warren.

The leaf litter and twigs didn't make the using of long nets easy, but we stuck at it as the rain had now started and was becoming more and more persistant....and to be honest I didn't want to be rolling round in the mud under brambles and holly bushes to set purse nets!!

You can see by the angle of the hazel pole that the hill is fairly steep, and was now becoming very slipy due to the rain






We only managed to catch one before I fell arse over t*t over one of the longnets whilst retrieving a ferret that had escaped without being seen, I was covered in mud from head to toe, hopefully it would make me look younger when I washed it off, soon after this one of the ferrets came from under the confines of a tree collarless, when we checked to see where it was it registered at about 7 feet below a tree root system, I tried to dig from the side and in, but after about 4 foot I hit a solid layer of stone, I couldn't get round, under or past it, so David chalked it up as a loss. It was now persisting it down with rain, so we gave up, packed up and beggered off.

Total catch for the day was a very unlucky 13, I bloody hate that number as i'm very superstitious about things like that, but now I hate it for other reasons....like £60 worth of lost collar GGGGGRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

This is the picturesque view at the bottom of the hill, where the two rivers meet there is a lovely a still patch that is calling out to be fished......maybe one day!!






Happy Hunting.