Rat-catching and rabbit-catching are two distinct professions, but the
greater part of the stock-in-trade that serves for one will answer for
the other, and it is as well for the professional to be master of what I
think I may call both branches of his business. A rat-catcher who did
nothing but kill rats and refused a day's work with the rabbits would be
like a medical man who would cut off limbs but would not give a pill, or
a captain of a sailing-vessel who would not go to sea in a steamer;
besides in these days it is the fashion to jumble up half a dozen
businesses under one head and name. Just look at what the engineer does.
Why, he is nowhere if he is not (besides being ready, as the engineer
of the old school, to make railways, etc.) a chemist, an electrician, a
diplomat, a lawyer, a financier and a contractor, and even sometimes an
honest man. If you are not in the fashion you are left behind as
an old fogey, and so in this chapter we will discuss the art of
rabbit-catching; and I trust all schoolmasters will furnish you, their
students, with the opportunity of putting in practice in the field what
you learn from this book at your desks.
Well, now for the requirements. We have got the dogs, we have got the
ferrets, spade, bag, etc.; but for rabbiting we must have a much more
costly stock-in-trade if we are to do a big business. We shall require
an ordinary gardener's spade for digging in soft sandy ground, where the
rabbit burrows sometimes go in for yards, and as much as ten feet deep
down; also another spade, longer in the blade than our ratting one, the
sides more turned in, and with a handle ten feet long, with a steel hook
at the end instead of a spike. With this spade we can sink down many
feet after the hole is too deep for the ordinary spade, and the turned
in sides will hold the soft earth and allow you to bring it to the
surface. If you dig down on the top of a rabbit--as you will do when you
know your work--the hook at the end will enable you to draw first it and
then the ferret up by the string. We must have a piece of strong light
supple cord, marked by a piece of red cloth drawn through the strands at
every yard, so that one can tell exactly how far in the ferret is; and
it is as well to have a second shorter cord for work in stiff heavy
ground, where the holes are never deep. Next, we must have two or three
dozen purse-nets, which are circular, about two feet in diameter, with a
string rove round the outside mesh fastened to a peg. These are for
covering over bolt holes to bag a rabbit when driven out by the ferrets.
The nets should be made of the very best string, so as to be as light
and fine as possible. The mesh should be just large enough to allow a
rabbit's head to pass through.
Like the postscript to a lady's letter, the chief item I have saved till
the last, and I fear it will be some time before the ordinary
rabbit-catcher will be able to afford it. I refer to long nets, which
are used for running round or across a piece of covert to catch the
rabbits as they are bustled about by the dogs. A rabbit-catcher in full
swing should have from eight hundred to a thousand yards of this, for
with a good long net he will often kill as many rabbits in a few hours
as he could do with the ferrets in a week.
I myself keep no special dog for rabbit-catching, chiefly because I have
a neighbour who will always let me have a cunning old lurcher that he
keeps, which is as good as gold, and as clever as a lawyer, and
desperately fond of a day with me and my dogs.
I have three male ferrets, real monsters, strong enough to trot down a
burrow and drag five or six yards of line after them with ease.
Having described all the tools, etc., necessary for work, I will now jot
down, as an exercise for you students, a nice easy day's rabbiting that
actually took place a few weeks ago--a sort of day that quite a young
beginner might work with success. There had been a sharp rime frost in
the night, which still hung about in shady spots at eight o'clock in the
morning, as Jack and I marched off with my dogs and ferrets, accompanied
by old Fly, the lurcher. By nine a.m. we began working field hedge-rows
and banks, where rabbits were pretty plentiful and had been established
for years in every description of burrow. There had been a lot of
partridge and other shooting going on over this farm for the last month,
and most of the rabbits had got a dislike to sitting out in the open,
and were under ground, so we began at the burrows at once, the dogs
driving every rabbit that was sitting out in the hedge back to their
burrows as we walked along. We began work in a stiff clay bank far too
hard for the rabbits to make deep holes in, and here we got on fast. I
took the ditch side--in fact, I took the ditch itself--with a big ferret
with a short line on, and I ran it into each hole I came to. Jack on the
other side looked out for the bolt holes, and always laid down a little
to one side, as much as possible out of sight, but with a hand just on
the bank over the hole ready to catch a bolting rabbit. Fly and the
other dogs took charge of the other holes, and all kept as quiet as
possible. In went the ferret, slowly dragging the line after him till I
count two yards gone by the red marks on the line; then there is a halt
for half a minute, then a loud rumbling and the line is pulled fast
through my fingers. Jack moves quickly, and the next instant a rabbit is
thrown a little way out into the field with its neck broken. Jack says,
"Ferret out," then picks it up, draws the line through the hole, passes
the ferret over to me, and we go on to the next, having filled up the
entrance of the hole we have just worked. Hole after hole was ferreted
much in the same way. Sometimes Jack bagged the bolting rabbit,
sometimes the dogs, and now and then one bolted and got into the hedge
before it could be caught and went back, but it was little use, for the
dogs with Fly at their head were soon after it, and in a few minutes Fly
was sure to have it, and would retrieve it back to Jack.
As we worked round a big field, we got into softer ground, a red sand
and soil mixed; and here the holes were much deeper and often ran
through the bank and out for yards under ground into the next field.
Here Jack and I changed places, Jack doing the ferreting, and I going to
his side with the garden spade. One, two, three, four, five yards the
ferret went and stopped, and all was quiet. I listen, but not a sound.
Jack pulls gently on the line and finds it tight, and for a minute we
wait, hoping a rabbit may bolt from the hole the ferret went in at. But
no such luck. I take the small ratting-spade, and with the spike end
feel into the ground at the foot of the bank, and at once come upon the
hole; this I open out and clear of earth, and Jack, who has crept
through the hedge, kneels down and finds the line passing this hole in
the direction of the field and going downwards. At that moment there is
a sound like very distant thunder, and the line is pulled quickly four
yards further into the hole, and the marks show six yards are in. I go
about this distance out into the field, lie down and place my ear close
to the ground. I shift about in all directions listening intently, and
at last hear a faint thudding sound. I shift again a few inches in this
direction, and lose it; in that, and recover it; again a few inches, and
the sound is directly under my head, but pretty deep down. I take the
big spade and open out a hole a yard square, and dig down as far as I
can reach. I get into the hole and sink deeper. I have to enlarge it a
foot all round to get room, and then I dig down again till only my head
appears above ground when I stand up. Then I take the long spade, and
with that sink two more feet, and plump I come on the top of the hole,
and the ferret shoves a sand-covered head up and looks at me. I reverse
the long spade and catch the line with the hook and pull the ferret up,
and then calling Jack, I send him head first into the well-like pit,
holding on to one of his feet myself as I lie flat on the ground to
allow him to go deep enough. In a minute a dead rabbit is taken out and
two live ones, whose necks Jack breaks as he hangs suspended, and then I
pull him up with his plunder, and he rights himself on the surface, very
red in the face, very sandy, spluttering and rubbing his eyes. Then the
ferret is swung down again by the line, it goes a little way into the
hole and returns, and so we know we have made a clean sweep. The big
hole is filled up and stamped down, and after filling a pipe and resting
a few minutes, on we go with our work.
On the high sandy part of the field we have several deep digs like the
above, with varying success, and we rejoice when we reach the last side
of the field and get into clay again, where holes are short and most of
the rabbits bolt at once. During all the day we only stopped once for
half-an-hour to get a snack of bread and cheese, and by the time the
cock partridges began to call their families together for roost, and the
teams in the next field to knock off ploughing, we are all, man, boy,
dogs and ferrets, fairly tired, and are glad to tumble seventeen couple
of rabbits into the keeper's cart that has been sent out for them, and
trudge off home ourselves.
Now for another day's sport that was quite different. No dogs with us,
only a bag of ready-muzzled ferrets, a bundle of purse nets and a spade.
Success will depend on perfect quiet, and even the patter of the dogs'
feet would spoil our sport, so they are at home for once, and Jack and I
are alone. It is one of those soft mild dull days that now and then
appear in mid-winter, a sort of day to gladden the heart of foxhunters
and doctors, and to make wiseacres shake their heads and say "most
unseasonable." It is a good day for Jack and me, and we feel confident
as we steal into a plantation of tall spruce firs, placed so thick on
the ground that beneath them is perpetual twilight, and not a blade of
grass or bramble to hide the thick carpet of needle points. Softly we
creep forward to a lot of burrows we know of in the corner of the wood,
and then I go forward alone and spread a net loosely over every hole,
firmly pegging it down by the cord. This done I stand quietly down-wind
of the holes, and Jack comes and slips the six ferrets all into
different holes, and then crouches down on his knees. All is quiet; only
the whisperings of the tree-tops, the occasional chirp of a bird, or the
rustle of a mouse in the dead leaves. Five minutes pass, and then out
dashes a rabbit into a net, which draws up round it. Jack moves forward
on tip-toe, kills the rabbit and takes it out of the net, and covers the
hole again. While he is doing this, three more rabbits have bolted and
got netted, one has escaped, and a ferret has come out. The captured
ones are killed, the ferret sent into another hole, and for an hour this
work goes on, and during all the time neither of us have spoken, for we
know there is nothing that scares wild animals more than the human
voice, unless it is the jingle of metals, such as a bunch of keys
rattling. They dread the human voice because they have had too much
experience of it, and the rattle of metal because they have not had
experience enough of it, for it is a sound they have never heard, and
nothing like, in the quiet woods and fields. On the other hand, animals
pay but little attention to a whistle, for in one shape or another they
are constantly hearing it from their feathered companions.
But to go back to our netting. An hour over, we pick up the ferrets as
they come out and bag them, and then I go off to some fresh holes and
spread the nets again, and we repeat the same performance; and during
the day we kill, without any digging or hard work, about twenty-two
couple of rabbits. In the above account I have written of a day's sport
that took place in a fir plantation in a little village in Norfolk,
where it would have been madness to work the ferrets without muzzling
them, for they would have been sure to kill some rabbits in the holes
and then have laid up; but I should mention that I have killed many
rabbits in the same way on the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, and I
was much astonished when I first got there to find men who thoroughly
understood their business working their ferrets under nets without
muzzling them. I adopted the plan myself, and have rarely had a ferret
kill a rabbit underground. For some reason that I could never find out,
a Cotswold rabbit will always bolt from a hole with a ferret in if it
can. It is well known in Norfolk that if a rabbit is run into a hole by
dogs, you may ferret it if you like, but it will never bolt, and it must
be dug out. But in Gloucestershire I have seen the same rabbit bolt out
of a hole, get shot at, be run by dogs, go to ground, and again bolt at
once from a ferret. Few professionals ever use a line on a ferret on the
Cotswold, one reason being that the burrows are nearly all in rocky
ground, and there would be danger of the line being caught in the
numerous cracks; besides it is not required, for a rabbit there is sure
to bolt, and for this reason it is twice as easy to kill rabbits in
Gloucestershire as it is in Norfolk, especially in the sandy or soft
soil of the latter county.
Let me here beg of all my readers, especially students, never to keep a
poor rabbit alive in their hands a second. I don't suppose any who read
this book could be so unsportsmanlike and brutal as to keep a rabbit
alive to course and torture over again with dogs, or for the fun of
shooting at the poor little beast. Such ruffians should never be allowed
a day's sport on a _gentleman's_ property. They are only fit to go out
mole-catching. No, directly you have a live rabbit in your hand, take it
by its hind legs with your right hand, and the head with your left, with
two fingers under its face; with these fingers turn the head back, and
give the rabbit a smart quick stretch, and in an instant all its
sufferings are over. Never hit it with your hand or a stick behind the
ears: first, because you are not quite sure to kill it with the first
blow; and secondly, if you do, half the blood in the rabbit will settle
in a great bruise at the spot where it was struck, and make that portion
unfit for table.
That is sufficient for this morning, and you may now turn to a little
lighter work with some algebra.