Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Shredder lunges in to put bunnies in a spin
A pile of 500 old washing machines, an angry ferret, 18 rabbits and a fox... Soldier Palmer relives one of his most bizarre days in the field
The collapse of rabbit numbers in this part of the world has been a disaster for my sporting existence. When I was a teenager, it was possible to shoot a dozen rabbits in half an hour on the fields around the farm buildings.
Rabbit meat was easy to come by and if you had said that rabbits would ever vanish, I might have laughed in your face. But for whatever strange reason, the bunnies have gone and many of their old holes have crumbled down and fallen to pieces. I used to keep several ferrets, but they went into retirement and the decline of the rabbits meant that none were replaced.
Now that I have a small son, it seems obvious that I should return to the old pursuit. Ferrets make excellent pets for energetic children, but a shortage of real work would reduce them to little more than novelty toys. That seems rather unfair, particularly since anybody who has seen ferrets working hard will confirm that they love it with a passion. Like gundogs diving in to a retrieve, a well-versed ferret takes a delicious pleasure in his work and anything less than a full working life feels rather tame by comparison.
Walking near a neighbour’s farm the other day, I remembered a particularly excellent morning’s ferreting more than 15 years ago.
I had bought my first two ferrets, excellent silver hobs with black eyes and beautiful grey bandit masks. One of these ferrets went on to secure third prize in the Scottish National Ferret Show at the Game Fair, which has long been held as one of the proudest and most bizarre achievements of my life.
The ferret in question bit the judge and attempted to escape from the enclosure so often that the rosette was awarded largely so that the outsized safety pin could be used to reinforce the latch on the carry-box.
This ferret was a particular friend of mine and he acquired the nickname Shredder. We travelled the countryside together for many seasons and I was always on the lookout for more rabbits to chase in new and interesting venues.
We raided the hill ground and took rabbits from the margins, we hunted through the oak woods and once bolted a red squirrel into a purse-net.
I’ve never quite worked out what the squirrel was doing down a rabbit hole, but the little beast was outraged and fought like a pike to escape. I was nearly bitten several times, despite the fact that I was only trying to help it wriggle free.
After covering a great deal of ground within walking distance of my home, I felt like I was beginning to learn the ropes of ferreting. There is so much talk of rights and wrongs in this kind of work that it can feel intimidating. You don’t want to do a bad job, but at the same time, ferreting is meant to be fun.
There is plenty of room for trial and error and some of the best sessions I had with Shredder were conducted on the basis of suck it and see. This was never more apt than a morning spent working an unexpected warren that I found almost by accident.
Awash with rabbits
Checking all the usual hedgerow signs in the heart of rabbit country, I stumbled by chance into the back part of some old cattle sheds on a neighbouring farm. Piled up in a heap against the concrete wall were almost 500 washing machines in various stages of decay. I can think of no real explanation for how these machines had wound up behind a farm shed, but no doubt they had been used as some kind of bargaining chip in a deal that had gone against this particular farmer.
My sudden appearance on the scene roused a quiet scuttling sound from the grass in front of me and it became clear that the place was alive with rabbits. They ran in a single dash to the safety of the washing machines and vanished into a thousand nooks and crannies where the white goods were stacked and tumbled together. It was not the classic vision of a rabbit warren, but here was surely a great source of potential sport.
I nipped around to the house and asked the farmer if he would mind the ferrets having a run. He seemed to have completely forgotten about the washing machines and was delighted to think that they might come in handy for something. It was breakfast time and he vowed to join me on the hunt after he’d finished his coffee.
Of all the challenges I ever came across as a ferreter, those washing machines gave me the biggest headache. Perhaps all this sounds ridiculous, but it was an entertaining puzzle to try to second-guess what the bunnies would do under pressure.
Given the free-form nature of the machines, it was pointless to set
“The mass of metal seemed to come alive with activity”
purse-nets, the method I usually prefer. It made more sense to use a long-net and it was soon set up around the courtyard and back towards the cattle sheds. I did not have my entire long-net, so I left a space where it would be safe to shoot and loaded my trusty little .410 magnum.
The farmer arrived in time for Shredder’s entry. The little ferret shook himself noisily and made his way into battle. Deep cakes of rabbit droppings were mounded around the machines and the smell of this fresh spoor was actively invigorating. He lunged at once into the fray and the resulting explosion of activity still makes me laugh out loud to remember it.
The nature of the heap meant that rabbits could come and go as they pleased, but the gaps allowed them to look outside without leaving. So they could see the farmer and I as we stood nearby and they seemed to know that the net was hanging to catch them. One or two bolted and were shot, but the huge majority preferred to spring and scuttle their way between the rusty metal boxes, pursued by an ever more frustrated ferret.
They would pop up in unexpected places like trout, then vanish again with a rattle and a clatter of claws on glass. The whole mass of metal seemed to come alive with activity, with rabbits popping in and out all over the place. Shredder finally cornered one in the drum of a washing machine and a terrible squabble ensued.
Rallying its failing resources, the rabbit attempted one last lunge for freedom through the open door, but was caught and dragged back inside like the victim in some bloodthirsty horror movie. One by one, the rabbits were cornered and it became possible to move the machines to recover them. Shredder was exhausted and I swapped him for his gentler sibling to finish off the stragglers and pen them up in dead-ends.
It was only at the last moment, after an extended period of shouting and swearing as the farmer and I moved to shift a particularly tangled lump of equipment, that I looked up to find the long-net trailing out across the yard with the knots unstrung and the strings tight as wire.
Tangled up
For the entire time that we had been working and the rabbits had been running, a fox had been hiding in the heap of old machinery. Pressed hard by our movements, he finally decided to break cover and run.
The rabbits had been too cunning to risk the net, but the fox plunged straight into it and was held fast in an awful tangle. The .410 came to hand to finish the job, but it was only the second time I had ever seen a fox held in a longnet. We had reached the end of an extraordinary morning’s sport, with a bag of 18 rabbits and a fox.
Shredder was passed a handful of steaming liver and we walked back to the farmer’s house for a debrief and another cup of coffee. Many years have passed since that day, but I still look back with fondness at one of my most bizarre, exciting and productive days in the field. It may not have had the glamour of a driven grouse moor or the prestige of a famous salmon river, but there are often diamonds to be found in the rough.