First Day Out

[bhawk 64]

Well that time of year has come again, knowing today is the first day of this season for me, i have woke up at 3am in excitement.....just cant sleep.
Today we will be taking out my pup who has come a long way since i got him, my mate will bring his dog and i think we might be taking one of the hawks with us too, and the ferrets of course. Should be a good day, cant wait.

So I'll try take some pictures today then post them up later on, even the ferrets are excited, they saw me getting the gear ready.
Bring on the bunny bashing!!!!

[jeemes 3,491]

good luck mate.covers still a bit thick though.

[Sirblessed 2,511]

Season shmeezon all year round here. good luck A.T.B Enjoy!

[HedgeCrawler 224]

Good luck,hoping to get out myself in the next few days.

[HedgeCrawler 224]

Double post.

Edited September 4, 2016 by HedgeCrawler

[bhawk 64]

Well i finally got round to doing this. Turns out the first days hunting was interesting to say the least.

 

We started late, didnt get to the land til gone 9, we took another lad out with us too. We started out on the first warren, which was under a big ol' hollowed out dead tree.

So a few bunnies had hit the nets, but we could smell smoke. We presumed it was just from a nearby farm or something and carried on. It was only five minutes later my hunting partner screamed "shit" that i turned around to see what had happened.
The lad we had took with us decided to chuck his fag butt into the old dried out tree....the tree was what we could smell...he had set the tree on fire!
So i bolted to look for something to carry water in, found and old flask by a nearby wall and proceeded to get water, which was 200yards away. After running i gave the lad the flask and told him the waters in "that direction" while me and my mate tried to shovel out the embers from inside the tree. After ten minutes i couldnt figure out where the lad had got to. So i went looking, i found him 2 fields over, he said he had walked ages to find a small stream....walking over the stream i got water from in the process!
So with the water and my bladder, we managed to put the fire out.

On we trotted and the day seemed fine after that. My pup is coming along grand and is getting so much better on the warrens, hes happy to stand and watch and with my mates dog he is starting to pick up tricks from her.
He is already a fast dog, but on one of the final runs of the day he saw the bunny approaching a warren and seemed to go up 5 gears and was like a bolt of lightening, me and my mate just looked at each other in disbelief, i dont think ive ever seen a dog go that fast.....and to think i came close to giving up on this dog several times.

On the last run of the day we let him have the slip on a rabbit on his own (he normally runs alongside my mates dog) and he easily caught up with the rabbit, hes also turning the rabbit away from the fence towards the open field, but once he caught it, he just held it to the ground in his mouth, he didnt kill or carry it, but simply held it in place without doing much damage.
Now i personally dont mind a dog that kills, at home he retrieves a dummy rabbit too, but out in field i want him to do one or the other, not simply hold it down, any ideas on how to change this?
So at end of the day, we only came home with 20 odd rabbits, a couple of young ones but it was definitely an interesting start to the season