Shooting – and – fishing dot com

When I was in my early teens I was fearless catching animals; from rabbits, bats, rats, snakes I would try to catch whatever I saw. My first ferret was an escapee I found in the road at the end of our street.

Not knowing much about ferrets, it survived for a while on bread and milk before moving to a better home with someone who was more experienced with keeping the critters.

When we moved to Scotland we left behind our hens and bantams, bringing just our Abbysinian cat. Nick, my son, was desperate to have a pet; so was Phillipa for that matter; we palmed her off with two locusts but Nick was older and less gullible; he wanted ferrets.

Checking out the local newsagents in West Linton soon revealed that there was a litter of ferrets a couple of miles out of the village. Scrounging pallets and plywood out of a skip gave us the raw materials for a hutch. Three days and five pounds later we had two ferret kittens. One was an albino, the other was a polecat.

As they grew up the ferrets were a delight; they would lick food from your hand without biting; they would come when called; they would play bite with the gentlest of grips; they would chase the cat.

Then came the great day; taking the ferrets down the Dean to catch rabbits. Nick couldn’t come, so it was me and Pips. Now the problem with taking a four year old ferreting is you have to keep a close eye on her. The Dean was full of cattle when we arrived, but they were fairly quiet. I put some nets down, let the ferrets down the hole and stood back amongst the circle of curious cattle with Pips; dummy firmly clenched between her teeth.

One of the heifers stood on the edge of one of the holes. As it crumbled I noticed a few insects which quickly turned into a swarm of peeved wasps. At that moment a baby rabbit came belting out and got caught in one of the nets.

Now there is something you ought to know about my daughter; we took her fishing when we were on holiday and the kids were much younger, at one of the trout stew ponds somewhere between Cornwall and Bristol. Every fish you catch you have to kill and keep. I caught the first one, tapped it on the head with the priest and put it in the bucket. The hook was rebaited, and cast for Nick to catch a fish. Within minutes he had a fish on and eighteen month old Pips had the priest out of the bucket and was tapping it experimentally against her hand; funnily enough she had her dummy clenched between her teeth then as well.

Dodging the worst of the wasps, I caught up the rabbit just before Polly appeared at the hole, took one look at the cows and turned back down. I showed Pips the rabbit saying something soothing like “aahh – look at the baby rabbit” and making the mistake “shall we let it go?” which was not popular. After a hurried debate over whether she would really eat the rabbit or not I pretended to drop it and it shot off. So did Phillipa, in a strop, between the cattle in the direction of home 400 yards away.

Now I know she would have been safe negotiating her way home, but the difficulty would come when she arrived home without me. Not for her, but for me when I tried explaining to Terry. Trying to rush the ferrets out of the hole, whilst still avoiding the disturbed wasp nest, and keep the cattle out of sight of the ferrets whilst not losing sight of the daughter was one of the more complex problems I have had to juggle with.

Over the next few years though it got much simpler. I am going to see if I can find some of the ferreting videos we took; keep an eye on the site to spot it if you are interested.

There are two approaches to gundog training with rabbits; it used to be common practice to teach dogs to ignore rabbits and other ground game completely, and I suspect some still take that approach. This gave rise to the use of the rabbit pen as a means of teaching dogs to ignore rabbits. It is still used to teach the dogs control in the presence of rabbits, primarily for those people who do not train dogs over ground with a lot of rabbits.

There is something about ground game that can drive some dogs to totally ignore commands. If you are entering dogs into competitions then they must be able to ignore rabbits if necessary. Since I rarely shoot pheasant, I am more than happy to train my dogs to point any game, and since rabbits are dead common up here in Scotland, I have dogs that are trained to point them. As it happens this is one of the best ways of hunting rabbits with an air rifle. 

GSP pointing a rabbit

 To show you what I mean, here are a few photos. The first photo is of my old pointer with a rabbit at the edge of woodland. The rabbit pays him so much attention, but feels fairly safe next to heavy cover…

Rabbit concentrating on GSP allowing me to stalk closer

…allowing me to get close enough to take this second photo. If you blow the second photo up you can see reflections in his eye.

Spot the rabbit in the bottom left corner of this photo of German Shorthaired Pointers

The third picture is of the old dog on point and the younger bitch backing him. If you study the photo closely, you may be able to see the rabbits eye in the bottom left of the photo.

Rabbits in a garden can be a minor catastrophe. I don’t mind a little bit of veg disappearing, and my wife can spare some of her flowers; the lawn they are welcome to keep short; but it doesn’t work like this! 

Bunnies have a habit of breeding - the smaller they are, the easier to control!

Young rabbits are much less cautious than their parents. This is nature’s way of feeding predators; breed lots, breed idiots and breed more! 

 

I love having rabbits in the garden, it gives my pointers something to practice on right outside the back door. The problem is, if you don’t have a cat or a whippet, or regular fox visitors then the occasional visitor can all too quickly become a plague.

 

If absolute control of the population is your aim, then midwinter is the time to kill rabbits; the number of litters below ground will be at a minimum and they can be ferreted and shot; the less alert and the plain unlucky rabbits will have been taken by foxes, badgers, buzzards and stoats and weasels. With the numbers at a natural low, your attempts will be much more effective.

 

If, like me, you consider the rabbit is good eating and don’t mind swapping a bit of veg in return for a few young rabbits, then late Summer and Autumn are good times. You can select the three quarters grown ones for eating, knowing that they will not have litters to leave underground to die.

 

If you find you have two or three does breeding close to your garden it becomes a more challenging situation; I find it quite difficult to shoot very young rabbits, but it is fairer on the rabbits than being orphaned at a very young age. In this case, I generally aim to identify the doe when she has young rabbits outside and eating, and then cull her.

Baby rabbits are just to cute to shoot; but the rabbit holes on these slopes create a hazard when the cattle run

 

Baby rabbits are just to cute to shoot; but the rabbit holes on these slopes create a hazard when the cattle run. 

 

The air rifle in each case must be accurate at the range you are using it. If you imagine the rabbit above with a one pence coin between his eye and the base of his ear; and a two pence coin just below the line of the top leg, and about a third of the way up the body, then you have the killing points to aim for. Don’t take the shot unless you can hit within these areas. A full power (12 ft Ibs) air rifle with a decent telescopic sight will be sufficient at this range, whatever that may be.

If you can sit patiently towards dusk, rabbits will often present an opportunity for an air rifleman

 

The head shot will be instant, dropping the rabbit on the spot, often without a twitch. The heart and lung shot can take 10 seconds before the rabbit stops; but it is a larger target. I have had rabbits run thirty or forty yards before dropping stone dead from a lung shot, completely bled out. This is obviously a consideration if you have close neighbours; I well remember shooting pigeons on the allotment at the back of my Dad’s house and having to ask the neighbour if I could have my pigeon back! In these more politically correct day and age, you will not be popular (unless they don’t like rabbits either; or they like eating them!). 

Crows are not the easiest of birds to shoot with an air-rifle; in fact I would argue that they are the most challenging of quarries and should only be attempted with a full-power air rifle where the range is sufficiently short that you are confident of hitting a one pence coin. The truth is that the range a shot is taken is not determined by the power of an air rifle, it is determined by how good a shot you are.

Crows can be brought within range by the use of suitable bait.

Why would someone want to shoot crows? There are two main problems that crows can cause that I am aware of; the first is that they take eggs; gamebird eggs and songbird eggs. The gamekeeper will not be happy with the loss of gamebird eggs and the implied bird losses for the following shooting season. I think everyone should be concerned with the loss of songbirds. Given the loss of habitat and environments that are needed to support songbirds, the reduced population is much more susceptable to losses of eggs.

That said I still think they deserve to be treated with respect and not fired at when they are beyond your abilities!

So the two best methods I know of taking crows. The first is to use bait to bring them within reach; I generally use a dead rabbit thrown out just before first light; any earlier and passing foxes or badgers will take them; later and you will be spotted. If you have plenty of natural cover and the patience to sit without moving for a couple of hours then you have a very good chance of bringing crows within fifteen yards or so. A very careful head shot can then be taken.

Crows can be shot with an air rifle as they come into roost.

Crows get up late and go to bed early; if you can find their roosting places then put yourself in place an hour before dark, you have the opportunity to shoot with a reasonable amount of light still available. My most successful time with crows and an air rifle was at Mr Richard’s grounds next to Waunsaeson where the crows roosted in woods where the trees were barely twenty five feet high and I was waiting as it got dark. Never had permission to be there, but there was an element of mutual dependence; we helped him with his harvest, so the one time he caught me he didn’t say much. Don’t think he liked it though.

The gun I used to use at that time was one of the original BSA Airsporters, a .22 with marksman pellets, which was one of the most impressive pieces of engineering I have ever encountered. My Dad could shoot the yellow top from the washing up liquid 9 times out of 10 off hand at thirty yards. I never got that good, but close enough.

I was born in Knowle West, Bristol in September 1956; my Dad was in Egypt thanks to the Suez Crisis; Mum was staying with her parents.

My earliest memories were of the flat in Bellamy Avenue that I lived in for nearly ten years from the age of eighteen months; the gardens were full of cabbages, potatoes and onions; my Dad’s parents lived in the second block down. My love of gardening started there, growing crocuses in the wooden boxes beer bottles came in; my love of shooting as well; lining up green caterpillars on the post and rail fence for my Dad to shoot off with the air rifle. It was an incredibly effective way of getting kids to keep pests down.

An incredibly old man in the middle flats kept flowers. The first time a bee stung me was when I caught it on one of his sedum; should have stuck to butterflies. Most others grew veg.

My Grandad’s garden was split between veg and a row of wire crosses where the unlucky tortoises my uncles Jack and Albert stole for me from Pet’s Paradise were eventually buried. A third uncle Colin kept pigeons in one of the sheds. He would have me clean the pigeons out in return for ownership of one of the pigeons. Then he would add conditions; ‘clean my feet’ being the worst. The bugger is coming to visit this June.

I remember seeing two men walk openly along the street with an uncovered shotgun and two rabbits. My first hunting experiences were in the flats at Bellamy Avenue. The bins were stood in the porch, and if the lids were left off sparrows and starlings would sooner or later fly in. Then we could stalk along the front of the flat, jump in front of the porch and they would fly into the window where you had a sporting chance of catching one.

Day old baby sparrows and starlings would appear every year and be eagerly sought and kept in boxes with straw and fed bread. They were doomed when they fell from the nest, but the love of all things natural was born during this period of trying to save their lives.

Jack took me river fishing at Pensford; I think this was before the bridge was washed away in floods. The fish ended up in the bath at home.

Dad used to shoot the air rifle along the corridor of the house. The gun was top of the range at the time; a .22 BSA Airsporter. The quality of the workmanship was phenomenal, and it was the rifle I learned to shoot with, but not until we moved to Bourchier Gardens.

My Mum’s Mum died before I was old enough to remember her. Her Dad I do remember; he kept chickens in the back yard with rabbits in hutches; he had an aviary that he populated with finches; he had traps that caught birds; and he kept pigeons that he caught during his job as a pigeon catcher for Bristol City Council. The rest of the garden was like a scrap yard. I would cycle over on a weekend and he would kill a couple of pigeons for me; I would take them home, cut out the breasts and fry them. Never really gave a thought to what I was eating.

He had two dogs that I remember; Prince and another one that ran across the road and got safely to the other side; there was a lot of shouting at him because he’d nearly got run over; he did when he ran back to see what the fuss was about.