I Hunt With Mink!

[Mr Wilkes 2,914]

AWSOME

[Hot Meat 3,109]

 

Few points I'll clear up for you. Ferrets don't sleep in rabbit holes, if my ferrets went for a snooze while ferreting they would be deemed as useless an dealt with. Ferrets can be very highly strung, not all but a lot of ferrets are very excitable and very unpredictable. Ferreting ain't as easy as dropping a ferret in a hole an catching the bunny, granted most ferrets will flush the odd bunny, but good ferrets will not leave a bunny in there, hence the need to dig them out. I fully agree that training your mink is more demanding. But an untrained unhandled ferret is as much a nuisance as a dog that is nit trained. Most rats are dealt with with ease by a half decent ferret. It's the mummy rats with a nest of young or an adult buck rat that's trapped that will give the odd wound, however like I said most are dealt with, with no great difficulty.

 

 

Keep the posts and vids comin pal, well done

 

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.

 

Yeah mate it's more for the retrieval of the bunny that have refused or were unable to bolt, and to keep tabs on the ferret

[skycat 6,172]

Thinking about trying to get a ferret to drag a rabbit out to a crate or cage: that could work with one, but rabbits live in numbers, not just one in a warren. If you're ferreting, you want a ferret that keeps on hunting until it has emptied the warren: this is a different attitude to a wild mustelid which only hunts until it has caught its dinner. Many ferrets will kill below ground then leave that kill and move quickly on to the next: hence the need for a locator collar and a spade. I very much doubt if you could get a ferret to keep dragging dead rabbits up to the surface, over and over again.

[just jack 997]

good vids as your minks are more obedient than my dogs

i shall dye my head ginger and try that joking apart is a weird one

[Minkenry 1,044]

 

...... Another thing, how many of you who consider your ferrets to be completely manageable in your hands would put the same ferret on your shoulder in close proximity to your ears or nose etc. ?

I take my hat of to this man.

 

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, now Cade is using no gloves, and the mink is running free and returning when called!

 

Edited September 3, 2013 by Minkenry

[Tiercel 6,986]

I have'nt read the whole thread but from what I can see you are applying the principles that you use for manning hawks to the mink? Do the mink have a fat weight and a hunting weight? Do they have a going up and coming down weight? Is it a minks natural instinct to hide whatever they kill? What happens if they make a kill and you cannot get to them? Is that the reason for the den training and do you carry the den with you when hunting them? Apologies for all the questions.

 

TC

Edited September 3, 2013 by tiercel

[skycat 6,172]

That last video is a brilliant teaching video. As in training the handler to handle the mink.

[torchey 1,202]

That lad can,t be all the ticket going bare hands it looks f***ing baltic their,you need a nice pair of thermals..

[charlie caller 3,654]

Hi mate, I take my hat off to you, that looks like fantastic sport,and some real dedication and hard work on your part,I must admit to thinking oh here we go another idiot, when I first read the thread, I could not have been more wrong, (happily) I am looking forward to learning more about your fantastic sport mate, I once had a hob ferret that would regularly drag rabbits out to the surface, and when you had despatched them he would go back down, but I never trained him to do it in any way,what you do with the mink is fantastic mate.

[lapin2008 1,587]

Hats off to you mate, you must have endless patience.

It would be interesting to see how a ferret would respond to similar training and upbringing.

[dayle 7]

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 I live mink are native, so please refrain from giving me lectures on why all mink should die. I get enough of that from Brits who post on my Youtube videos. If you want to hate mink and blame them for every problem that exists in your country, then please go off on someone else, because I don't want to hear it.

 

I was interested in joining this forum because I would like to learn more about ferreting, and see what things I can add to my sport of minkenry. I also love sharing what I'm doing, so it's fun to find people who want to talk about my sport as well.

 

In case you are curious, here's a little about how my interest in mink began here's the story behind it. I became interested in mink when I moved near several mink farms in Lehi Utah, during my last year of high school. This was the first time I was introduced to mink. When I moved to Lehi I knew nothing about mink, and I was told by everyone around town that mink were wild, vicious, and impossible to tame. Having had plenty of experience taming and training wild hawks and falcons as a falconer (with a late season passage cooper's hawks being one of them), and wild horses as a horse trainer, I decided to try to do the "impossible" and tame a mink.

Soon after taming a couple different mink, I became intrigued with the idea of hunting and fishing with a trained mink. I have since hunted and fished with several different mink that I have trained. I have found Minkenry to be just as addictive as falconry, with the added satisfaction of knowing I'm the first to do the sport. I'm sure it's possible SOMEONE SOMEWHERE has tried hunting with a mink, but I have a hard enough time finding people who can even handle them with out gloves, let alone train them to hunt. Here's a little video I put together showing some of my mink in action......

 

 

http://youtu.be/smpsEQaCbBU

 

 

And here are a few pics of my mink.....

 

Here's one of my female mink Missy about to catch a muskrat

 

 

Here's one of Missy and I with a brown rat she caught

 

 

Here's Missy killing a muskrat

 

 

Here we are with yet another brown rat

 

 

Here's my female mink Thioⁿbasabe' (that means "black lightening in the Omaha Native American Language) sleeping in the pocket of my Minkenry vest on the way home.

 

 

Here's my mink Missy with her first rock squirrel

 

 

and here we are with a muskrat she caught and killed

 

 

got to say thats evry thing a love in one mink a love fishing and ferreting about so a would love somthing that duss both fair play to you like

[Minkenry 1,044]

I have'nt read the whole thread but from what I can see you are applying the principles that you use for manning hawks to the mink? Do the mink have a fat weight and a hunting weight? Do they have a going up and coming down weight? Is it a minks natural instinct to hide whatever they kill? What happens if they make a kill and you cannot get to them? Is that the reason for the den training and do you carry the den with you when hunting them? Apologies for all the questions.

 

TC

 

 

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. Mink almost never stop moving, so you can't use anything but a digital scale, and you use the zero button to figure out their weight.

 

Yes it is a mink's natural instinct to cache (hide what they kill) in their den. Like you guessed, I train my mink to cache in their carry box so that when they kill something down in a hole we don't have to just leave it there, or spend time digging it out. I put the mink's carry box in a back pack and carry it on my back when we go hunting. When the mink is down a hole, I put the carry box at the entrance of the hole, so the mink can cache in it if she catches something.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Minkenry

[dayle 7]

 

I have'nt read the whole thread but from what I can see you are applying the principles that you use for manning hawks to the mink? Do the mink have a fat weight and a hunting weight? Do they have a going up and coming down weight? Is it a minks natural instinct to hide whatever they kill? What happens if they make a kill and you cannot get to them? Is that the reason for the den training and do you carry the den with you when hunting them? Apologies for all the questions.

 

TC

 

 

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. Mink almost never stop moving, so you can't use anything but a digital scale, and you use the zero button to figure out their weight.

 

Yes it is a mink's natural instinct to cache (hide what they kill) in their den. Like you guessed, I train my mink to cache in their carry box so that when they kill something down in a hole we don't have to just leave it there, or spend time digging it out. I put the mink's carry box in a back pack and carry it on my back when we go hunting. When the mink is down a hole, I put the carry box at the entrance of the hole, so the mink can cache in it if she catches something.

 

so how hard is it to tame a mink com. to a ferret in your views

[Wxm 1,638]

 

that vid with the lab is a bad 1, get me 1 of them rats and id put in a dog 1/3 or even 1/4 the size of that pot licken lab and it would muller that rat in seconds :yes:

[Minkenry 1,044]

so how hard is it to tame a mink com. to a ferret in your views

 

 

 

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 to tame down and handle.

 

I also have friends from Europe who have had both mink and Polecats, and they say the same is true about mink compared to polecats. The mink are more predictable, but much harder to tame, and they bite much harder too. I was interested at seeing what a wild polecat was like, and she said that if I'm used to the challenge of training and handling mink, a polecat would bore me.

 

But like I said, that's all hear say. I have only ever handled tame ferrets. I think with any animal it all comes down to how you handle them, and what your taming and training methods are.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Minkenry