To all these posts above; about 45 years ago, a mate's old man used two welsh springers for all his rabbiting and ferreting. Both superbly trained, not in the conventional gundog sense, he was just a rabbiter, but would do EXACTLY what he wanted. Both caught hundreds of rabbits each season, and caught plenty of other game as well.
I remember him telling me when I was a youngster starting out, 'you're using the wrong dogs for this area'. And when I used to think about it, after the roughly 40 or 50 rabbits I caught 'in a whole season', I thought he made a good point lol