Cold wet day on the dales

[john hubery 9]

Today was a day we have dreamed about for a while now, good hard frost on the ground a good early morning winter sun, what better day could you ask for to go ferreting. Myself and young John set off to meet Andrew at Warrens place, as usual we where an hour late, the nice frosty morning meant all the taps were frozen at my spot we keep the poultry so we had to ferry back and forth with water containers the water we needed for the 250 birds we have believe me that’s a fair bit of water, that done we arrived to see little Lou there one of warrens neighbours, and keen young lad with his own ferrets, lurcher and terrier, we loaded up the van and away we went up into the Durham dales for three or four hours ferreting, because of the hard frost we had to leave the lurchers at home and brought one of warrens boarder pups Brock along, once we parked up in the keepers yard we made our way to some buries we have not done for a while a place that holds a good number of rabbits, a bit of a bad place, the first set being a bit of a rocky spot and the next a n old stone wall that as been replaced with a fence and the old wall covered with soil. A spot loved by the rabbit, easy to dig into and live among the stones and rocks , but a bugger to dig for us, the ground was so hard it was hard to find places to put net pegs firm enough to hold the fleeing rabbits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once netted up, this set took about 60 nets, Andrew and myself set away at the shallow end of the set with a couple of big hobs that kill in a crack and are than dug to and let move onto the next rabbit, I know some of you will say this is a bad idea, but in these spots the digging is easy and no more than a foot deep, by doing this in less then 10 minuets I had 4 rabbits, the lads and Warren went to the rocky end of the set and put in a couple of little jills, that would hopefully bolt the bunnies. The rabbits soon started to hit the nets fast and furious, and before we moved on we had 18 big fat healthy rabbits.

 

 

Next we moved on to the fallen wall set, this place is made up of smaller set close to each other, being mainly 15 and 20 holers, we split up Andrew and young John with myself and Warren and Lou moving to the next set along. 5 bunnies soon hit the nets and in the bag, then out of the corner of my eye, I could see a bunny looking at me from a hole that had not been netted, it looked like the ferret must have had it by the back end because it was not making its escape, so I crept around be hind it to grab hold from above, just as I made my strike it blotted followed close by the ferret only to run to the set Warren was at, and back netted its self, once we thought we had cleared the rabbits from here we left Andrew to dig to his ferret while we leapfrogged Warren and Lou on to the next bury. By now the nets were starting to freeze to the grass as the temperature as began to drop, and the cold was starting to get to young Lou, so we called it a day, to be honest my fingers were getting numb too, we ended the day with 41 rabbits, and while Warren made his way back down to the van with Lou we lifted the nets and hung the rabbits on the new game carrier sent to me by Strong Stuff the guy that makes the heavy duty collars, I cant praise these carries enough, an excellent bit of kit, he says they take 20 rabbits so we had to get all 41 on, which we did but there was no way any on would have been able to carry them off the dale, so we split them 20 and 21, and made our way back down, on the way we spotted next weeks fun, lower down in the easy sets some fifty plus rabbit dropped in, so are looking at a early start and a big bag, well that’s the plan we will see next week how it goes

[The one 8,595]

Cracking picts and read mate

[john hubery 9]

This is an old post that has been reposted by mistake my computer skills are pretty shite, will get the new post up soon

[dytkos 18,003]

Good post John, remember those Northern ferretting trips. Don't get many mornings like that weather down here. Cheers, D.