New Year's Day ferreting

A great day's ferreting, with myself and daughter Emma shooting; we were joined by her friend Lui, my wife Sara and Emma's Australian cousin Jacob.

We decided not to bother with nets, just moving swiftly from one burrow to the next and shooting at any rabbits that bolted.

Total for the day was 14, including three that one of the ferrets had chased into a dead-end - it made all the digging seem worthwhile!


Plus on the way back I managed to collect a couple of squirrels that had evaded us the other day.

The only cloud on an otherwise perfect day was that one of the ferrets sadly fell victim to what the military call 'friendly fire'. Going to pick up one of the shot rabbits, we discovered the ferret lying dead a couple of yards away - she must have emerged from the hole at just the wrong moment, and collected a stray pellet from the edge of the pattern. Sad but unavoidable - considering the way ferrets are constantly popping up in the field of fire, the only surprise is it doesn't happen more often.