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Minkenry

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Everything posted by Minkenry

  1. Minkenry
    You would be prosecuted in this country for that demonstration. You would not be able to train a mink in the same way over here, as it would be classed as what is called a baggy. Where you release a trapped animal to hunt it. TC I know! I am so incredibly grateful that I don't live in your country! Ours is bad enough with all the antis trying to make everything illegal. So far we still have some freedom, but I fear that we will one day be slaves to our country as you are yours.
  2. Minkenry
    I'm writing a book on Mink and need help coming up with a good name for the book. The book is going to be both a how to, and a story book. It will start out with the story of minkenry and how I've gotten to where I am with the sport. Then it will break into the how to chapters of the sport. Here are the ideas I have come up with so far. Please let me know what you like, don't like, and any unique ideas you can come up with yourselves. Here's what I've got.... Bloody fingers: How to tame, train, and hunt with one of natures most intense predators. Minkenry: The new found art of hunting with
  3. Minkenry
    I have a question I've been wondering about for some time. I'm from America, so the only contact with European rabbits I've ever had are the domestic ones. Here in America our wild rabbits have extremely thin pelts and very fragile bodies. If I kill one of our native wild rabbits, like say a cottontail, I don't even need a knife to prepare it for eating. I can take my fingers and easily tear a hole in their hid without using an knife or any sharp object. I can also separate the joints easy enough with a quick twist and a pull. Dispatching one of our rabbits is as simple as grabbing the rabbit
  4. Minkenry
    Here's a really quick little video of my newly trained 18 week old mink caching a rat in front of a big crowd at the annual Utah Trappers Association convention. I brought a freshly trapped rat, and released it in the tunnel that runs under the road, so everyone could see how my mink retrieves rats. I was a little worried she might not do it with so many people around, but she pleasantly surprised me by working like a charm.
  5. Minkenry
    Thanks!
  6. Minkenry
    Freaking animal shelters are retarded. If you want to put the animal to good use and let the animal do what it was born to do, they don't want you to have it. If you are going to just take it home and lock it in a cage so it can spend the rest of it's life bored out of its mind, they'll happily give it to you. Explain to me why a loving home involves locking the animal in a prison for its entire life, and denying the animal the ability to do what it was born to do! SO STUPID!!! I'd like to just drop people like that off in the middle of the jungle and let them ether learn to survive or die try
  7. Minkenry
    I'd sure like to to try it one day! Not to burst your bubble or anything, but the truth of the matter is, it would probably take twice as much work to catch a fish with an otter than it would with a pole. Not only that, but you'd probably be pretty lucky to have them catch a trout. Not that an otter couldn't catch a trout, it's just that trout are very fast fish, and the otter is going to go after whatever is easiest to catch, and most available. So chances are you'd end up with a carp or some other slower fish. I still agree that it would be a blast, and sure hope I get to try it some day! :-
  8. Minkenry
    I can see you have harnesed the natural instincts of the mink by using familiarity and weight control to hunt them. You stated it is an ongoing proccess, where if you do not keep up with the training, they would regress to their wild state? So I take it that you do not let them have time off as you would with a bird in moult? It does leave me wondering how many other animals could be used, by the same "training" methods as for hawks and falcons, where the animal is "trained" but never looses it's wild edge. Makes me think of John Gaunt the rat catcher who used foxes to control rats on
  9. Minkenry
    To be honest I can't really say. Every ferret I've personally handled was born tame and I didn't really have to do anything to "tame" the ferret. I do, however have several different ferret loving friends who have ferret rescues, but have also kept pet mink. They get all the problem ferrets and the bad biters and such. One of the ladies even got a bunch of ferrets from off of a fur farm where the ferrets were never handled without gloves. From what these friends have told me, even the meanest ferret is nice compared to a mink. They say they are less predictable than mink, but much easier
  10. Minkenry
    I was a falconer before I had mink, so yes a lot of the training principles I use stem from falconry. I didn't use weight to begin with as mink aren't as lazy as hawks and will often work even when a little too fat. Then later I used weight loosely to get an idea of where the mink was at. Starting this summer I've started to weigh my mink religiously, and I find it gives me a lot more control and insight as to why the mink behaves as it did during a certain training. Part of the reason I didn't use weighing from the beginning was also the difficultly of getting an accurate weight on a mink. Mi
  11. Minkenry
    I saw a couple of you were impressed by my mink's tameness. I just thought you might enjoy these videos. Here's a wild mink that was captured a little more than a month before this video was made.... Here's another mink that was captured in an irrigation ditch by my apprentice Cade. He didn't want me to touch her, as he wanted to do all of the training himself. Here he is day two of training his new mink. It's kind of a long video, but watch how near the end of the video he takes the glove off and holds her bare handed.... and here's the same mink a few days later, no
  12. Minkenry
    Thanks for clearing that up. So, you use the ferret finder to get the rabbit the ferret has killed (or still killing) not to actually get the ferret back? Sorry, I have very limited experience with ferreting and basically have to go off of what I have read and been told by ferreters. I have had ferrets when I was a kid, but I didn't know what I was doing, and we don't have burrowing rabbits here in the U.S. so we can't do the same stuff you guys do with your ferrets.
  13. Minkenry
    Me too! And a martin, and a fisher, and a long tailed weasel, and a least weasel, LOL the list goes on! Once I feel like I've got mink down (I'm still getting the very basics down at this point!), I would like to try other mustelid species. But for now I'm going to stick with mink, and keep learning about them as there is still so much for me to learn!
  14. Minkenry
    Mink are more high strung than a ferret so they need more room to move around, plus they are semi aquatic so they appreciate a place to swim. Here's an example of my different setups.
  15. Minkenry
    Before I got into all the things a mink does better than a ferret, let me fist describe what a ferret does better than a mink. Ferrets have not only been bred for over 1,000 years to work with man, but they also descend from a wild ancestor that is much calmer and easier to handle than a wild mink. This makes ferrets much easier to handle and work with. Also, unlike mink who have a deadly aggression towards each other, ferrets, for the most part, can be kept together without issues. Because ferrets have been bred to work with man for so many years, they require little to no training before you
  16. Minkenry
    Ferrets love ratting mate...its just something that a lot of people dont do anymore.. I know my ferts love a rumble below ground with them. theres that many different shapes and sizes of ferrets over here in the uk with all the inter breeding with EU polecats and various other strains including the very small Micro types that have been line bred down for size..most of them would be useless at ratting. But theres still plenty of racey greyhoundy types of ferts (longer,thinner,leaner very athletic types)...they make great ratters.. we used to do lots of ratting many years ago and its tru
  17. Minkenry
    Interesting. So in your guy's opinions a ferret doesn't really grow up until it's around 8 months old? You say, "The opinions on when to start working them varies on this site." What is the approximate range of opinions as to how young a ferret should be started? Currently from the opinions expressed the youngest recommended age is 7 months, and the oldest is 1 year. Are there those who like to start them younger than 7 months, or others that you know of who start them even older than a year? What typically happens if you start a ferret too young? Do they just not hunt well so it's a
  18. Minkenry
    The mink catching the muskrats in the video I posted (minkenry at it's best) was a year and a half old the time the video was made. She turned two years old last May.
  19. Minkenry
    Hi, I'm new here. I don't actually have any ferrets. I've actually invented my own sport which I call Minkenry. I train mink to hunt, and since no one else does that I gather information from various sources like falconers and dog trainers and find ways to change their methods to fit what I do with mink. So basically I'd love to add the expertise of ferreters to my group of friends who help me figure out the best ways to do this little sport I've invented. So what I would like to know is what is the best age to start a ferret? When do you guys first start working them on rabbits? And if t
  20. Minkenry
    I accidentally clicked post before I was done answering everyone's questions. As far as how I go about taming and adult mink, follow the before mentioned link, click on the blue "About" under my profile picture, and then go to chapter 9 which goes over how I tame and train an adult mink (both a wild and a ranch mink). I'll post the link again for your convenience... https://www.(!64.56:886/pages/Minkenry/72678726611 Some one asked how old Missy was. She was over a year old when I got her, and now she's 2. I was asked about a ferret finder. I would like to look into that
  21. Minkenry
    Ok, I'll go through your questions here, and if I've missed one, please let me know as it wasn't intentional, I just have a pretty long list of questions . As far as the age I've started my mink, and the mink's background before I got it. I've trained both bottle raised babies (I have decided the best age for that is 32-34 days old), ranch raised adults, and wild caught adults. I have different training methods depending on the mink's age, and where it comes from. Adults must be tamed before they are trained, and a babies training is slow and gradual, progressing with them as they
  22. Minkenry
    Really? Can you find the link and send it to me? I have yet to meet someone who practices minkenry, so if there is someone else out there I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to see what they do and talk to them. So please please PLEASE send me the link if you can, or describe the video to me in more detail. Chances are it's just another one of my videos. I have A TON of minkenry videos out there!
  23. Minkenry
    Hello all! I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Joseph Carter and I am from the U.S. I have invented a sport I call Minkenry. It's kind of like ferreting, but with a mink! As far as I know I'm the first to do it, though I'm sure it's very possible that someone somewhere has tried this before, I have yet to find anyone who has (and believe me I have looked!) Ether way, I am working to improve my sport, and love to share it with others. I know most Europeans hate mink with a passion and blame everything on them from global warming to the reason their wife cheated on them. Here where
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