Mud, mice and cleaning mishaps
By James McKay.
NO-ONE can have failed to notice the huge amount of rain we’ve seen all over the country recently. Here in the Derbyshire Peak District, we recently endured days of torrential rain which, while bringing its own complications and difficulties, caused a huge problem – mud! No-one can afford to let ‘a bit of weather’ disrupt our sport or business and so we have had to conduct many rabbiting operations knee deep in the dirty, oozy, slippery stuff.
The first problem was getting to the warrens. With the ground so muddy even our 4×4 couldn’t safely negotiate the terrain, we parked, loaded the equipment on our person, and walked about a mile to the big warren we had to work on.
The mud made walking treacherous and there were more than one or two slips when one or both of us did face plants. When we reached the area it was obvious there were plenty of bunnies around – coney footprints clearly visible in the copious mud is one of the few advantages of the mire.
As we set about netting the holes we were glad to be using hi-vis purse nets which, even in the mud, showed up clearly. Another advantage we found with the muddy conditions was when we got working on the inevitable digging the going was relatively easy.
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