comanche
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Everything posted by comanche
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Bobafet .Hi mate .I'm a miserable old git . Did'nt mean to put a downer on your fun .I wish you all the best ! And Yorksit I'm sure I have a picture of the Phantoms (pheasant /bantam crosses) but it might take a bit of finding as it was 20 years ago . Basicly they looked like long-legged speckly ,ginger things with obvious features of both parents .I doubt they would've been fertile and I don't recall any noticable sex differences. All I did was pop a couple of ginger bantams into a 10x6 breeding pen along with a cock pheasant and his pheasant wives . With Spring in the air he obvious
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Here's a couple of my old Hancock bitch from 25 or so years ago . The ones today seem a bit flashier.
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Chickens loose on a pheasant shoot will act like a magnet for foxes . If you must do it get some lightweight bantams (preferably mongrel ,ie cheap ones )as these will roost properly and have a better survival rate . We had a few old bantam cocks appear in a pen once -dumped by some cheeky local we suspect .A coulpe actually were shot over the guns but the others simply "went". The pheasant /bantam crosses I bred as an experiment however lasted several years and went truly wild . Beware of two issues though . It is illegal to abandon a
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Can be worth hanging the maize ,nuts or seed bait in a little plasic bag just behind and above the plate if you are using a cage -trap. This tends to slow down theft by mice overnight and does'nt attract birds into the cage. A chunk of Snickers or similar rammed onto the plate edge is good. If using a Magnum tunnel impale a chunk of snickers between the trigger wires. Beware hedgehogs when using baited traps at ground level .There's nothing they won't eat . If in doubt put the traps off the ground on a pile of logs etc. Sometimes worth putting a brick or similar against the rear of a cage
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Had an invite to a friend's Keepers,Beaters and friends day today. Jolly good fun had by all .Because a few of the Beaters were relatively inexperienced at standing on a peg the "no Ground Game ,not even foxes " rule was strictly enforced which saw my mate the Keeper ,several invited Keepers and a few ex-Keepers gritting their teeth when a pair of foxes ran along the front of the Gun-line ,stick two fingers up and hop a stock-fence to safety. I managed to loose nearly a box-full of Eleys finest for a cartidges to kill ratio of ,"atishoo,cough ,cough". I promised to do better on th
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thanks . These two are a bit "warmer" .The Sun had started to come over the Downs by then .
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Far as I'm aware a sub-species is a branch of a species that has developed in a separate environment , under different conditions and has therefore developed very noticable adaptations in order to aid survival in those different conditions. At the same time it remains obviously of the same species as the parent species . Obvious example would be the jungle loving Bengal tiger and the bigger ,hairier Siberian tiger that has developed to survive in the snowy wastes . Other races or sub-species of smaller tigers became adapted to life on the off-shore Indian islands . The black
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A couple o pics fromthe recent frosty spell. Old Norman hunting lodge & one that looks a bit weird because I'm slowly working outhow to use the "edit" bits on the computer.
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Oh it's in the papers ..must be true! Just black Eastern Grey squirrels ,not possessed by demons or another alien super -species. Not a sub-species just a colour variation that makes it stand out and in it's natural habitat would mean the kiss of death from alert predators.In cities ,in this country with no enemies like hawks and martens to pick it off it survives to pass its genes on . Despite what it may say in The Sun you don't need to get your tin of Ely Wasps blessed with holy-water or specially cast in silver .
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They are just melanistic Grey squirrels so tis fine to shoot em. People seem to think they may be a bit more dominent and aggressive than normal coloured greys but this is probably because being a different colour they tend to stand out more or it could be that only the toughest survive because the colour makes em more noticable to predators . Some Us and Canadian cities have had black squill populations for years
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The old tail off and release scam .That might explain why they had to offer a bonus to get the job done properly . Mate ,you've made my day! That little grey van(Escort ,Marina,Ital?) is something that has stuck in my head for near 30 years . Cute.... Yes .They had a stuffed one in Bramber museum but it had been made to look like a ravening monster with bared ,snarling ,yellow teeth.Did'nt ring true at all. After-all they are really just big aquatic guinea-pigs.
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No prob getting poultry in Sussex . Back-yarders & proffessional breeders aplenty and small-holders shows are held several times a year which have sales of surplus stock . The free advert papers usually have a poultry section and a few times a year end of first lay birds can be saved from the pie factory for as little as 50p or a £1. Uz Zuzzex Folk's generally friendly types but sadly our foxes can be buggerz!
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No expert but ,maybe some sort of Booby ?
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There were a few killed in Sussex many yeaers ago but the hold- out area was East Anglia .Basicly they were introduced to fur farms (Nutria is the commercial name of the fur) ,I think about the late 1920's. Some escaped but others were simply let loose when the farms failed to make the expected profits if the stories are true. They undermined banks and destroyed the natural vegetation of the fens as well as damaging acres of root crops . As far as i remember there was a massive campaign in the 70's into the early 's to not just control them but to totaly exterminate them in this cou
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Bloomin Ell twas only 2 minutes ago I sent him an E mail and his name comes up on THL !!! Using the remote powers of the interweb and with the intermediate help of the sales staff at Killgerm he bade me deliver a trap and instruct the new owner on the safe use of it against the hordes of squills threatening to over-run her tiny cottage & devour her as she slept . This guy is a gent . I did'nt require or expect any sort of enumeration but the brand new Kania 2000 that arrived with my name on it was gratefully and graciously accepted !
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Ah Moley . You might 've shed some light . Suppose Badgers and ferrets being related might explain a similar taste for moles . Just an idea Long unaccounted -for Roman coins popping out of the ground ! The police have been trying for years to put a team of moles into the underground money laundering trade
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Cats and foxes catch them and play with them without eating them sometimes - same goes for shrews. They must taste funny or something? OTC apparently they taste bitter so foxes etc dont eat them, i know my cat never did WELL LADS , I DONT KNOW ABOUT THE TASTE THEORY .................... AS I OFTEN FED MY FERRETS ON MOLES AND THEY READILY EAT THEM ALL THE BEST DUCKWING Yep .A friend feeds his freds skinned moles . Tis true though that water shrews have a toxic saliva and maybe other shrews give something nasty off if they have been grooming them
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Anything you try yourself has to obviously be safe (Don't mean to insult you by saying that .I've welded a few springs and made the missing bits for my old 410's folding mechanism so I know the temptations. ) . My first stop would actually be a gunshop ,especially one that takes repairs . They may well tell you that itwould be too costly to fabricate a new part but many gunshops have stocks of old or broken guns they keep for spares and may even be able to track a part for you via their contacts . Good luck
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Cats and foxes catch them and play with them without eating them sometimes - same goes for shrews. They must taste funny or something? OTC S'posed to be one of the foulest tasting animals going according to Victorian biologist /gourmets Francis Buckland and his dad . Owls eat em with relish though . Er when I say "with relish" I don't mean things like horseradish sauce.
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I was given one of these catch-alive tube traps by a customer who addmited that he'd forgotten about it and only found it by accident when he hit it with a fork . luckily it had'nt caught a mole . I sometimes show it to customers who have heard of such things and like the idea of a so called "humane " method of trapping. A few words about the starvation ,dehydration and stress caused to a highly- strung animals' nervous system are usually enough to put the customer off the idea . Add to this that unless these traps are set in really shallow runs they cannot be checked easily without being ex
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My old headkeeper used to say that if you found a dead mole on a footpath or woodland track it meant that a fox was about. Don't know if this was just to encourage us to spend more time on vermin control or if it has any biological truth.
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Sorry for delay Stig n Doddsey. No I did'nt go to Durrington High .Forest Boy's school,Horsham. Ha n' Stig , I've heard that its not advisable to ferret the "dips" on the ring as they are actually the entrances to 30 foot flint mines ! Is this true ? Was ferreting a bit further south today .What with all the frost twas a bit like killing rabbits in Narnia !
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The BBC wildlife on one team found that out when filming the programme on moles, dont know if you lot have seen it, but theres lots of footage of the moles travelling through their tunnels, they were all filmed in a large tank. They found out a few things when doing this filming apparently............. I read something from an old bit of mole research .Apparently the 4 hour shift pattern is pretty true but if a mole is prevented from finding enough food because of a shortage or some sort of disturbance it will go back to cover for a bit more sleep rather than waste energy or suffer s
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The Law on bodygrip placement
comanche replied to ianrob's topic in Snaring, Trapping & Pest Control
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we had 76 on saturday and i had 34 today of the fell edge, nothing showing any signs of being in young , theres fleck around the sets tho , so it won,t be long 45 years ago we used to ferret right through till April, we only stopped when we bolted young,back then rabbits were few and far between 4 was a good bag 8 was a red letter day, about 30 years ago we finished in March,back then bags of 50-100 were fairly common,[though the locater helped]nowdays it looks like ending in Febuary, but again the numbers of rabbits are up ,i see rabbits in fields where there were none when i was a kid.Wha