Awfull morning ferreting-the kids loved it!

[comanche 3,345]

Thanks to one of my regular mole-job clients having "a word" with her neighbour I was lucky enough to be given rabbiting permission on a new patch last week.Went on it first time with the ferrets yesterday and took 27 rabbits by lunch-time.Owner impressed..."Could I take out her children(boy+girl about 8,10) for an hour or two?",she asked...Took em out this morning on a sloping field next to their garden .With lovely warm woods(ripe for when the pheasant Season is over) nearby these burrows out in the bitter wind were never going to hold much but being only small looked ok for some quick action...Yeh right! Dog passed -over so many buries I began to doubt her marking ,especially as she's only young.Eventually she found holes that satisfied her.To cut the story ,of what seemed a very long morning's ferreting short, I'll forgo details.Suffice to say that after four hours I'd discovered that these little 10 hole buries went down out of locator range,the rabbits did not want to bolt and that I'm surprisingly good at moderating my language in front of youngsters!...End result;4 proper rabbits and a scuttler,some blue children and my hopes of impressing the landowner with my rabbiting skills two days running totally dashed. The children LOVED IT though! All they wanted to talk about to their mum was the dog,the ferrets, digging ,setting nets,rabbits,and more rabbits ,even the finer points of paunching and rabbit anatomy....not forgetting the inevitable requests for some sort of stew incorporating the morning's catch. I reckon big hauls,cynicism and too many years might've dulled my appreciation of the game .I think back to the days when I owned 6 cheap nets(financed by skipping school dinners)and a huge pet hob.Though I bolted a few it took weeks before I actually caught a rabbit .Those children have reminded me that ferreting is'nt always about material success.It's about "Being there"!.