AT last the boys could go ferreting and we were heading off to a farm close to my home for a day catching rabbits. I’d had a brief foray a few days before and had caught ten rabbits in three hours before I checked the next couple of warrens which looked well occupied. We should be in for a special day.

We headed from the Jeep all loaded with gear, Greg with cameras and lenses and Mark and me with ferrets and nets. As we started to net the first bury Milton arrived. I don’t know if he had arrived late to avoid carrying the gear or had miscalculated and arrived before the nets were set! Still, he was there and the gang was complete and we all got down to work.

This bury was the first of two along a steep hedgerow and took almost 70 nets. After a short rest we entered first one and then another of Mark’s young polecats.

We were working uphill, pushing the rabbits away from the other bury, or at least we would have been if they had settled to work. It was their first outing of the season and they had forgotten the lessons learned the previous season.

We eventually gave up on them and entered my old polecat, who we probably rely on too much. She pushed out three rabbits to add to the one which the young ferrets had found. Not many for so many nets!

While we had been working on the first bury we had counted five rabbits bolting from the bury below ours. Something was working underground and bolting the rabbits. Whether a polecat, a mink or a cat, we could not risk our ferrets on that bury as it would be putting them in danger. We therefore headed off to the next bury.

Of the next two buries, one was empty and the other produced only one rabbit, though at least Mark’s ferrets did the business and bolted it. The next bury only produced another two, both bolted by my tiny yearling jill after a long chase underground. She was doing well on her first outing of the season.

By now it was getting very warm, the dogs were panting and we were all finding it hard-going. We needed some sport to get us going again.

Approaching the next bury, the dog marked but as he did so we saw a lone rabbit pop into a small bury on the open hill above us. This was a job for the young ferrets, so while Mark went to bolt the rabbit I explored the nearest hedgerow. All four buries were dead and unoccupied.

I returned to see the rabbit from Mark’s bury bolted by his young ferret and decided to move on and ferret the only bury the dog had marked. This consisted of about eight holes below the fence. The holes above the fence appeared unoccupied and unused and as I had ferreted these the previous year I thought they were unconnected.

This was to be our last bury and Greg joked there would be seven rabbits in it. I thought one or two was more likely.

After netting up, I entered my young jill who quickly bolted three rabbits, one of which came out of an un-netted hole in some nettles, and that seemed to be it. There had been a lot of noise in the top end of the bury so after boxing the young ferret I entered the trusty old jill.

She had been down a while, which is usually a good sign, when Greg called over that he’d seen a rabbit pop out and back in above the fence. By the time a second rabbit bolted there I was over with the dogs and netting the holes as quick as I could.

Another three rabbits bolted, two out of un-netted holes and one which back-netted, making seven out of the bury, three of which we missed.

I don’t know how Greg knew there were that many rabbits underground but he would make a good team with my dog! One to show me where the rabbits are and one to tell me how many!

While we lifted the nets the dog marked two small buries nearby which we netted and ferreted in turn. Each produced a rabbit, one of which emerged in the next field and got away.

So that was it, or so we thought, and we headed back laden with a dozen rabbits. Then the dog marked another small bury and we made the mistake of going for the 13th.

Sure enough the ferret killed underground and we had to dig through the hard ground, the ferret dragging away her kill when the digging got near. After a lot of messing about we found the ferret and her kill and headed home for a well deserved Sunday lunch.

Not the day I’d been expecting but a good enough result!