Sundays session with the dogs, ferrets and nets

[Sirius 1,358]

A nice early start for Sunday morning’s session saw us on the hills for 7.15 for a mornings sport. We had no real plans of what warrens work but settled on one I had noted a few months back which looked pretty lively but fed into a thick gorse cover. The dogs were running free and gave very positive marks in several places, but you could tell it was holding by the rabbits milling about on top..lol So it was a matter of driving the truck as close as possible then getting the gear up there, which was a fair effort in itself. Luckily I had thrown a few extra traditional longnets in when I loaded up so we had more than enough netting. We laid best part of 200 yards of netting and a good splattering of pursenets and as we were doing so a rabbit just decided to bolt into a longnet, it obviously knew it was going be in trouble later lol We decided to divide the warren up into two sections and to try and stop the ferrets before they carried on into the gorse bank (we knew that one or two would but you got to have a plan) as there was little point trying to do the gorse at the moment as part of it is a separate warren and can wait a while.

 

We emptied 6 ferrets in at the far right hand side with the hope they would work from right to left across the steep old warren. It took a few minutes before we started to get bolts, but once they started they just kept coming, mainly into the longnets with the dogs accounting for their share and to be honest I gave up trying to take pictures as I had to sort rabbits out. Both dogs worked well and were pretty invaluable for covering and holding rabbits in the nets. With the steep incline it can take you a while to get to a rabbit in a net at the top of a warren, so without a brace of switched on dogs you sure to end up with a few gnawed nets and escapees. The action was pretty fast once the ferrets went deep enough to really get the conies rattling through the tubes. The ferrets were lifted once they started surfacing near to the gorse apart from a jill that didn’t follow the drill and carried on regardless bolting conies for another 20 minutes until we caught up with her. So by 10.30 we had around 25 rabbits. We proceeded on to a few smaller warrens after lifting the nets and had another 6 all from warrens marked by the dogs and finished for midday with a very respectable 31.

 

Good hunting Sirius

 

A few snaps of the day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2012 by Sirius

[jonah. 775]

nice write up that, cheers.

love the photo of the merle just out the blocks

[NEWKID 26,336]

Top write up and pics mate,

[BEARINATOR 2,829]

Good write up and pics mate

[ferret-boy 44]

Top, well done pal

[The one 8,399]

Nice read pics and numbers mate

[oyama 27]

Great stuff,can't wait to get started. Trouble is the buries can't be seen yet in our part of the world.

[dytkos 17,537]

Great write up and pics!

 

Cheers, D.

[nighteyes 275]

nice pics and write up good stuff

[paulf 820]

nice bit of sport there mate and some cracking pics. :thumbs:

[tom22 514]

nice pics nice dogs

[keeganrees 196]

good bit off sport there ... merl looks a nice dog

[darbo 4,774]

cracking write up and pics. nice collie cross and beddy/whippet you have.

[tilfertilfer 706]

good read ,great pics ,and a good tally at the end ov it well done

[richie198 28]

great read mate id love a day out like that