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comanche

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Everything posted by comanche

  1. comanche
    Some people like to get their dogs after game and then do the steadying training. Others start with the steadying them move on to the real thing when they hope they have a bit of control . It depends on the dog's temperament ,the owner's outlook and the room for error. Round my way there's little room to manoeuvre and overly eager young dog can be in trouble if let off without the preliminaries. Two dogs together though will often egg each other on bit so be a bit headstrong . Good luck . Sounds like you should be set up if you decide to use your ferret after rabbits though.
  2. comanche
    Get yourself a couple of cheap ex laying hens and keep them as pets. Not pheasants I know but if you can get your dog steady to the point it ignores them as they scratch round the garden it will be a start. I always make sure to have a couple of hens about whenever I buy a pup. The result (famous last words) is that I end up with a dog that ignores feather- unless told otherwise;). Otherwise it back to square one basic obedience and stock training before you even think of letting it off the lead.
  3. comanche
    Cobbledicks and Veniards;those names bring back memories. The latter were paying 25p a squirrel tail in the late 80s and I recall making £125 one winter with the .22 and just a couple of Fenn traps . They were good payers and rarely rejected a tail. I didn't bother with the mole skins. They paid 30p a skin but they had to be pinned and dried into six inch squares and sent off in bundles of ten. By the end of the day enthusiasm for spending the evening at the kitchen table with a razor blade and pot of drawing pins had waned. A few of my moles still go to a fly-tying instructor who ski
  4. comanche
    Three mates walk past a brothel after a boy's night out and notice an unconventional price list that includes the words "Gentlemen are required to pay according to their endowment @£10 per inch". Bob goes in first and comes out after brief bout of Rogery and with a grin announces," Well that was 70 quid well spent". Not to be outdone Kirk takes his turn and breezes out boasting of his £85 bill. That just leaves Kev . He sneaks inside and about twenty minutes later joins his mates on the pavement with a very smug look on his face and presents a till receipt for a mere £40.25p. Pre
  5. comanche
    Pork has a reputation for going "off" quickly. Supermarket-bought pork might not be as fresh as one likes to think and having been trapped in a plastic wrapper full of dormant bacteria might be more liable to give a ferret a bad time than a bit of well refrigerated stuff straight from an abbatoir cold store. I've fed dead piglets and only last November my ferrets had a day feasting on a pig's head from one of my animals. Bits of liver,lights and odds and ends in small amounts have never had an ill-effect on my ferrets but I don't risk allowing them to store pork products in the nest for as lon
  6. comanche
    Oh Lord . The mind boggles at the potential for embarrassment. Imagine shuffling into A&E with an unnaturally placed steel probe and a dangling Talpex and trying to explain that you really did slip on a cowpat. .....
  7. comanche
    I would explain that a cricket box was a health and safety requirement in case a mole shot out of the ground at close range . Especially if the weather was cold! That's what I would tell the customer. You might be "luckier":)
  8. comanche
    Cheers Comanche, thanks for some sound advice. I am a travel light type of guy when I go foraging, so your advice fits me well. Just been looking at locator and collar prices and though I would love to get this kit straight away it's simply out of my price range without saving. What would be a fair price for a second hand locator and collar out of interest? Also What books would you recommend to get me started? Robbie The grey box Deben ferret Finder was the first really good locator and fortunately they last a long time so there are quite a few offered second hand. Unfortunately becaus
  9. comanche
    The answers you get will vary in detail because everyone has their own ideas about how things should be done but the basics of ferreting are simple . You keep your ferret clean and well fed. You make it tame . You find some rabbit holes ,put nets over them and pop your little pal into the holes to chase the bunnies into the nets . Not rocket surgery or brain science . Luckily there are clever blokes and blokessess who have worked this simple theme into a money-making career in book writing. Read as many as you can. A single ferret kept as it is a pet with lots of cuddles and familia
  10. comanche
    Well that was short and sweet. TC I've no idea why though. Were they a trade item for dogs or something?. Sort of "I'll give you a handful of these magic birds for that rather handsome deerhound you were going to take to market". I've seen budgies play with a ball mind you
  11. comanche
    Bit of a guess from the Latin name for dogs . Canary?
  12. comanche
    I'm not convinced that moles become necessarily suspicious of traps even if they've had a bad experience in the form of a near-miss. I suspect that if they become aware of the trap it will be treated as any foreign object in their path and they either try to by-pass it or shuffle it out of the way. Naturalists studying moles repeatedly catch the same animal for monitoring purposes using live-traps. Being confined in the trap alive and subsequently measured, weighed and sometimes man-handled to the point of having a radio-tracker fitted seems to my semi- human logic more traumatic.
  13. comanche
    You are probably right . It may not catch -on though. After-all who remembers the unfounded fears relating to the overuse of cake-waste for attracting rats. Let alone the Campaign for Responsible Use of Muffins as Bait(CRUMB) that followed. I'm more concerned with secondary take-up of marshmallow by scavenging birds picking-up carcases. Suppose they developed a sweet tooth (beak?);it would be like a scene from a Hitchcock film outside every corner-shop as the avian addicts waited to descend on unsuspecting school-children or dive-bombed toddlers for their lollies. I'm sticking with the Pluto
  14. comanche
    I think someone has come across some research by Dr Lanzador De Meadas from the early 60s. Most of his work was conducted in Ireland and was thus inconclusive despite field sketches such as this that he claims prove the efficiency of what he termed his "Walnut Whip Cone Traps". Apparently the walnut was added after a local persuaded De Meadas that moles all suffered genetic nut-allergy. Some of his other work involved the Italian fishing industry. By treating live eels with Viagra he suggested they could be more economically transported to distant markets neatly stacked in boxes of
  15. comanche
    We found a load of paper cased ones under the seat of a Land Rover that had been bought by the boss when I was a Keeper. One lad took the lot and went roost shooting with them . He must have been in a hot-spot because he had far more shots than me. Most of the cartridges worked but a few needed turning in the breech and even worse every once in a while there would be a dull fart . The lad admitted in he didn't think to check his barrels after the half-fires !.
  16. comanche
    Is it really worth the risk? Plastic cases have been around for fifty years . Fair enough to satisfy your curiosity by popping them off at a target and ,as said, check your barrels before loading the next cartridge. As far as using them in anger -don't. In the heat of a flurry of pigeons or clays you might not be so conscientious. It only takes one half burnt charge of damp powder to leave a wad in the barrel and that free cartridge could be your last.
  17. comanche
    Don't know about the rest of the country but round here two or three unusually bad winters knocked them right back and the last few years have seen cold,damp springs that knock off the early litters or cause the does to reabsorb. Its my theory that its the survival of the early litters that holds the key to high numbers as the early-born young mature soon enough to be able to add to the breeding population alongside their parents in their first year. Myxi and VHD get blamed a lot but unseen diseases like coccidiosis and enteritis are probably at least as much to blame especial
  18. comanche
    Reminiscent of my superb shot of water vole. I promise it is there.
  19. comanche
    There are professionals who use dogs to help them make their living but. Even the top echelon of Field Trial gundog types who are out picking up most days in the Season probably make more from selling pups,training other folks dogs,writing books and articles and even making DVDs than they do from working their animals. Realistically I would think the same applies to many who claim to "Live off their lurchers". I count myself lucky if my dogs and ferrets pay for the Christmas presents!
  20. comanche
    I hope so. It look to have been kept in order and somehow has escaped wood-worm.
  21. comanche
    I thought that at first but the bottom is a little loose. Bit like mine when I noticed the pink staining around the lid of the Drat bottle:)
  22. comanche
    Its in a box within a box within the site chemical box now. I think the the chap was on the verge of asking me if it was any good to me but I had my rare "serious" face on when I told him about it.
  23. comanche
    I have an on-going job at the moment centred around a derelict barn that's awaiting demolition . When I mentioned to the guy in charge of the site that it was a treasure trove for an inveterate spuddler like me he gave me the sort of look one might reserve for someone who admitted to a shoe-sniffing fetish and walked off muttering . "Ave what ya like. Sa'll sh*.t" I'm glad he didn't insist that I take it all! Check out the unlabelled jar to the right of the picture with the white crystalline powder in it. I didn't!
  24. comanche
    Before he moved to a different part of the country one of my regular customers was a very well-known retired government figure. I'll not get political and mention names or parties but he was famous- or infamous- for his "what you see is what you get"attitude and straight-talking. I came to know him because his house was also plagued with mice on a regular basis but that's by the by. Though once ,indicating my tub of rodent bait he wryly commented,"We could do with some of that in Whitehall." He said that the joining the EU was a tremendous mistake that meant efficient government by any pol
  25. comanche
    Well, i used to wonder about this,...(for moles) ? Cause one of the old info/instruction leaflets, you used to get (for phostoxin), would tell you how to apply the stuff.It said, scrape away the soil in a mole hill, until the tunnel (pop hole ?) is exposed.Insert a tablet down it, & seal it off ?,....I thought this advice was poor,...& i certainly wasnt going to do it that way !,.....lol So, as you alluded to here, inserting a tablet down the 'vertical shaft' (which could easily be bunged, with soil) COULD result in the gas tablet, being pushed out, onto the surface ?,....when 'mol
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