Live to run another day!

I took the dog pup out with me last Thursday night for a few runs, just locally & just to let him let off a bit of steam. These pups are noticeably different than to the older generation from which they have stemmed from.  That dash of Irish terrier breeding has certainly added some fuel to the fire. As we walked I spotted a rabbit as we walked up a small incline and not wanting to loose it out of the beam I knocked the light off again until I reached the top and hopefully he would still be there. He was, squatting tight I had to walk the young dog right up onto him and off the pair went, it was exciting to watch, twisting turning, jinking and then the rabbit shot to the left and headed into a fallen tree laying on the field, it was thick and very wirey & something many dogs would simply pull up at, including some of my oldies! Some people see this as a fault, and others as a preservation tactic. I owned a small blue whippet cross bitch for some years that bounced off wire, hit walls and tore through hedges all after rabbits and it was great to see such drive, but rather disappointing to tally up what I had spent at the vets over the winter. Thankfully though I have a pretty sensible vet here and she is never over the top with anything, and one terrible slashing the whippet took while chasing a pheasant over a fence ended in 20 something stitches and cost £70, while a friend who lives in the posh end of the country paid £250 for a lot less stitches a week or two later.

Where were we? Oh yes, the rabbit headed for the tree and as young Reggie hadn’t yet met such an obstacle I waited with baited breath to see what the outcome would be, He ran sort of up inside the tree rattling and crashing all the way and came out the top, the rabbit in front of him and as it turned he scooped it up nicely. Now I would wait and see what he done with it. Up until now he had been retrieving the two or three rabbits he gets to run at the start or end on a Friday night when I lamp with the old bitch as he is only young yet. Up until last week when  he decided to play silly buggers. We had been “Road siding” of sorts and my old bitch is very handy for this carry on as we can pull up, shine the light pretty much over any hedge or fence and she will skip over, do the job and come right back. I tried the same thing with Reggie on a big stubble field and he jumped over, went down the beam, caught the rabbit and took off round the field heedless to my calls. He did this another two times the same night so I gave him no more and decided I would work on him on a week night. Much to my dismay he did the same bloody thing, took off round the field with the still live rabbit in his jaws. I let him go, I didn’t shout, speak or do anything but knocked the light out and sat down. I turned it back on a minute or so later and he too had sat down, the rabbit laying beside him. I walked over & took it from him, necked it and put it in the bag. The next two or were the same, I ignored him and walked away each time until he followed on and then made a fuss and thankfully by four and five he was running back in and on our last he brought it right back. Hopefully it was a teenage related behaviour and hopefully I have dealt with it correctly. We had only been out for an hour so it was good to get a few runs and end on a high note for the evening.

Friday night arrived and with it came a friend of mine who likes to get out with the lurchers. We usually lamp his neck of the woods on a Friday night but he travelled down my way tonight and it was a pleasure only being a few minutes from home    and not having the 1.5 hour drive at 4 in the morning after lamping, that was his pleasure tonight! We left it until things quietened down around 10.30 or so until we went out, I was lamping on permission and nobody would have bothered us anyway but I like things to settle down a bit. We took the old bitch and took the short drive up the road and parked up for the first leg of the journey. Unfortunately, the rabbit population has dropped a little in my area and I just hope it doesn’t go any further. It is quite unusual as for the last two seasons I haven’t lamped locally more than a handful of nights in a season, preferring and getting the opportunity to travel a little further of a weekend I suspected the numbers would at least maintain but it appears they haven’t. There are still plenty on the ground but definitely not in the numbers they were. I hoped to get some good runs for my friend tonight as he had travelled a bit and he enjoys the dogs. He is very keen and when we lamp together it is always “One more” until we end up lamping until its almost daylight! Many Saturday mornings over the winter I pulled in along the road at 5 or 6 in the morning for a quick 15 minutes to keep me topped up until I got home, I find the older I get the more sleep I seem to need, that’s supposed to be the other way round I thought! But as most of you will know there is nothing as nice as sliding into bed early in the morning after having a given the dog a good nights lamping.

The first few fields on the low ground weren’t up to much, we had a slip here and there and although it was nothing exciting it was still good to be out. My lamping route here climbs uphill, across a sort of ridge of fields and back down again. It isn’t a massive area but it has given me plenty of sport over the years I have lived here. We reached the top and had 4 or so rabbits and made our way across the ridge where it seemed all the rabbits where tonight. One, two, three and then into another field, another two and then three before we got back to the top of the hill, that made a good twelve and then we were in for the run of the night. As we faced downhill we had a fence to cross, the field is very big and has very tight grass. Sitting right out in the middle was a rabbit. The old bitch jumped over, went down the light and the rabbit headed left, almost further than I could see. As I looked on it cut back and started coming towards us until it was right at the fence and ditch we were standing at. Up and down it went, back out into the field and then straight towards the fence when it realised it was about to hit it, and it jumped straight into the air at our feet and the old bitch jumped and snapped it right up! “That’s a girl” I said, it was a great catch and not one I see too often that really made the night for my friend. We made our way back down and had no more exciting runs but she lifted a few more making our bag 16 for the night. It had been enjoyable, and although I was a bit disheartened to see the numbers down there is simply nothing we can do about it. If I had hunted the ground hard over the last two seasons then perhaps I could take blame myself, but I haven’t and perhaps that is just the way things are in the countryside now. Farming practices and ever expanding towns and cities are encroaching at a fast rate and we don’t know the knock effect things like this have even on more remote areas, who knows.

Saturday morning and my eyes stung as my phone rang. It was my friend again. It seemed he was hardly away and he was back on the phone. We had agreed the night before to do a few spots on Saturday and when he left at 4,30 I didn’t actually think he would ring me again but he did. I got some breakfast and loaded the Lurchers and Teckels and we met him at the old factory for a rake about in the cover. It’s a great old spot for rabbits and I really enjoy letting the Teckels hunt through it. We had no catches but some great runs and the young Teckel enjoyed himself as he followed the others for a rake about in the cover. I really enjoy having dogs hunt the cover even if only for rabbits, there is something quite special about it, the bushing dogs open up, the Lurchers switch on, cock their ears and if and when the rabbits make a dash for it everyone crashes and smashes their way through the place after it! One from the bush is definitely worth two on the lamp!

After two hours or so we had done all we could and re-loaded and moved on somewhere else. As we had a quick bite in the van, my friends phone rung and it was a farmer who owns some land we lamp on to ask if he any dogs good at rats as he had found a mound of soil in the yard that was well dug. Within 15 minutes we screeched up the yard and grabbed a couple of tools from the back and got the Teckels unloaded for an opener at the rats. The oldest one has killed a rat or two before but would not by any means be a ratter and the pup hadn’t a clue. I had to keep them close as we dug as they were more interested in a scent going along the fence below, it must have been quite strong as Archie barked on it up and down the fence for a few minutes and missed a rat in the process while the pup was on the wrong side. In the end, I had to actually hold the pair where the digging was going on and somehow after some digging, keeping the dogs close and pure luck we managed a big old scabby grey rat for the oldest dog and that was to be our bag. Ratting is never something I have done much of, mainly because I had not much interest in it and secondly good spots at least round here are hard come by. There appears to be plenty on this farm though so no excuse now over the summer to sharpen the sausage dogs up a bit!

As we loaded the dogs into the van for the third time I gave my hands a good scrubbing under the yard tap for fear of catching something that might see me off from the rats and handling the bricks and rubbish that was in the pile. Leptospirosis or what they used to call “Rat catchers yellows” is no joke and has terrified me since a neighbour of ours caught it years ago and had to have a blood transfusion and was close to death at one stage.

Time for a bit of proper hunting again and we headed for a place we had hunted through the week before but had got tangled up with a pair of horses belonging to the landowner but he had informed us they would be off the ground this week so we thought we would give it a try while the light lasted. It is a nice place on the side of a hill and off the beaten track. My friend had known about it for a long time but never thought to tell me he said! I loosed the Teckels and my eldest bitch and within a few hundred yards of the entrance I though something was on. My Lurcher is very readable when there is a bit of scent and if she is keen she will usually get her nose down, tail up and run ahead almost waiting for something to break. The Teckels too were keen and for the first time young Oscar actually left my feet and was “Hoovering” to the left all on his own. The Lurcher by now was running uphill when the oldest Teckel opened up and I knew we were definitely on. The Lurcher crossed a ride in the young trees at full speed and the Teckel was baying further up the hill, he sounded anxious but not anxious enough for a fox, so I assumed it was a Hare running in front of him. We walked behind, following the sound and trying to catch up. The it went quiet, for a good ten minutes and the Lurcher appeared carrying her back leg, “Not another injury” I thought, but after I gave it a squeeze over and felt nothing untoward and she didn’t yelp I wasn’t too concerned and she appeared to walk it off as we continued up the hill and she again took off ahead of us. We stood in the near darkness, no idea where the Teckels or Lurcher was and they were making no sound. I was in no rush and I knew they wouldn’t be that far as there was a high rabbit type fence on the left and a river to the right so they were somewhere between. We gave it ten minutes or so and to cut right through the plantation and onto the open side when we first spotted the young dog and then the older one behind a dip and lastly the Lurcher with her head out of sight. I knew straight away what was going on. The last day we raked through the plantation we found a very small rabbit looking burrow that smelt very faintly of fox and as we came over the dip she was scraping and biting at the sides. The Teckel was dipping his head in and out as well but he has no interest in going to ground so that’s as far as it was going, it is disappointing he doesn’t but he is a great finder on top and has put up things when others missed them. The young Teckel was just looking like he did not know what was going on and who could blame him! The stink of fox was unreal and increased tenfold when I stuck my head in the mouth of the hole for a sniff! As I was coming out my friend knocked the torch on and we could see steam coming out of the hole, he or she was in there and not very far either, but with a Teckel that doesn’t go to ground and another that is only a nipper and a big old Lurcher there wasn’t a lot we could do, we decided that we had no choice but to give the fox best this time, he would live to run another day!