To Hunt Or Not Too Hunt That Is The Question..

[iworkwhippets 12,818]

Started off at around 14 years of age with lurchers , whippets n terriers, still at it aged 67, love it

[Moll. 1,770]

  On 17/02/2012 at 22:25, Millet said:

  On 17/02/2012 at 22:17, Moll. said:

I wasn't allowed a dog as a kid. When i was really young our house backed onto the woods and river, spent all of my time playing there as a kid with my imaginary companions.....a greyhound and a badger

So perhaps your imaginary friends can also define the rest of your life

Can i be your imaginary friend.. :laugh:

 

If Ive told you once, Ive told you a thousand times, i'm not playing with you in the woods.....

 

 

 

Pervert

 

[paulus 26]

i think as a kid i tried keeping every animal/bird i could find in the countryside at some point or other, from rats to kestrels so my life was spent either looking for or catching food for animals. i started with a russel dog. timmy, who lost a back leg to an intercity train as the tracks were at the bottom of our garden, he eventually drowned under the ice on the canel one winter hunting water rats (voles as there known know ) then ferrets. back then rats were my chosen querry with another russel bitch nicky, wykin tip (a landfill site) and the local sewerage works being the place of choice. how i didnt contract the plauge or something i never know ferrets never had a long working life back then some of the rats at these places were like cats and the holes were the size of rabbit holes. the ferrets either gave up the will to enter or else lost their battle bellow ground. next came the air rifle a german original mod 25 i shot eveything you could imagine and some stuff you couldnt, believe me with that gun use to walk around the local canel footpaths and shoot anything that had a heartbeat. by now i`d got a springer spaniel with hardly any teeth left roxy ex gundog off a mate of my dads . so yes i do think past experience has a bearing on who and what we become.

[Bosun11 537]

I was lucky as a kid, in that my parents let us have most animals as pets, i do think it brings kids on to the fundamentals of looking after things. The two dogs that were around were a mongrel collie called Trixy and a whippet, or rather a grew, (we knew her as a whippet) called Sandy. My dad worked on a huge landfill site (the tip) and from about 7 years old, I spent Sundays there (no bosses and got me out of mums hair) sitting next to him in the 'compactor', pushing and flattening rubbish. The place brought hunters and ratters from all over, men with weird accents and strange dogs. My old fella knew a few and as I was facinated would let me tag along. It's from that that I got the bug. I think my dad knew sommat all along, though he never encouraged me, nor spoke of it, he'd always let me follow the ratters and started letting me take the whippet but what I done with her would never be mentioned...

For pocket money, I bred rabbits, in multi stacked housing in the back yard, selling 'em for 50p each to local pet shops. Again, my dad knew all there was to know about it, from building the hutches to selecting the best for breeding good colours to sell better, BUT all done without a word of 'direct' encouragement, more of an 'I think you should'.... From rabbits came ferrets, he knew all about 'em but never said much.... Strange thinking about it now and looking back.

Later, when I was much older and had moved out, he'd still come round and help me build kennels etc, even took banged up dogs to the vets when I'd have to work but we never discussed my hunting, other than a 'could you get me a rabbit or hare for so an so'. He died before I ever asked him...

[Mooch. 177]

I'm not so sure, the only pets I had as a child were a goldfish and a hamster. I got my first dog when I was 28. My Dad has never really hunted either but we've always been a very outdoorsy family (Scouts, camping, hillwalking). I suppose hunting has come to me as a natural progression.

[J Darcy 5,871]

The Hunting instinct's sure seeped in our blood .....we've spent 200,000 years perfecting it, and the last hundred years denying it.....

[paulus 26]

  On 18/02/2012 at 08:22, J Darcy said:

The Hunting instinct's sure seeped in our blood .....we've spent 200,000 years perfecting it, and the last hundred years denying it.....

aint that the truth you only have to look in the local supermarket women hunting bargins, rooting through the shelves for the best use by dates supermarket car parks are the same they see a space and the preditory instint takes over, their having that space at any cost, even if it means fisticuffs :laugh:

[gnasher16 30,557]

Certainly wasnt much hunting to be done around the streets of east london and my parents detested dogs so wasnt till i got my own gaff that i got my own dog.....and then wasnt till later on and moved out to the open air and countryside i got an interest in hunting......i suppose i,ll always be behind other folk born into it......but its never too late to learn as they say.

Edited February 18, 2012 by gnasher16

[skycat 6,174]

Bosun: sounds like your dad would really have loved to hunt: wonder why he didn't, or did the think that maybe it was something he shouldn't do? Lucky you to have had such an understanding and perceptive parent.

 

I was lucky with my dad too: although I didn't grow up around running dogs, he loved hunting, though he was a shooter. A lone shooter: just him and his Lab crawling about on the moors getting rabbits for our pot. He'd been a sniper in the war (WW11), and he was also a bit of a bug hunter, and interested in anything that flew, walked or crawled. He would just make gentle suggestions when it came to looking after the animals: rabbits, guinea pigs. I killed my first myxie rabbit when I was about 10 because I felt sorry for it: got it by the hind legs and whacked its head against a stone gate post. My mother was not amused LOL She was a bit precious and didn't like to see things killed: never stopped me though. Yes I was very lucky: running loose on the Cornish moors with no one to tell me what to do: I was always bringing back lizards and snakes, even manage to catch an adder once, though it bit me on the ankle. My dad just said, 'oh that'll be alright'. I guess he reckoned that if I hadn't died within a few moments I'd be OK: leg swelled up to the knee like a balloon for a few days though.

[johnny boy68 11,726]

I was only chatting to my mate yesterday about this very subject..........I was born and bred in a Welsh mining village and there was always whippets/greys etc around and all the mongrel dogs were mostly laced with some kind of running dog in them. My earliest memory was of being at my Dads allotment where he kept chickens, quails, a pig and pigeons, which attracted rats. My old man had a whippety mongrel thing that lived on the allotments and ate whatever the chickens and pigs ate, used to watch this dog hunt rats and that got me started.

 

I was always outdoors, bird nesting, drey poking and generally doing anything rather than being sat in the house........as the years passed I progressed to ferrets, air rifle and then got my own lurcher at 14, the rest is history as they say.

[ryhope toma 42]

coming from a small colliery things must had been tough at certain times especially the miners strikes through out the 70s and 80s , so money and food was tight a remember me grandad breeding rabbits at the time , not as pets but to sell and eat , so it started from their for me , me mam bred whippets and cairn terriers and me uncles was always bring in good bags from rabbits to lobsters . from the age of 6 a was allowed out with them retrieving the pigeons and when a turned 10 me mam bought me me first air pistol a .177 westlake at the time a thought a couldnt miss . me and me mate got a ferret given from the age of 10 and the rest is history . atb ryhope toma

[Bosun11 537]

  On 18/02/2012 at 08:34, skycat said:

Bosun: sounds like your dad would really have loved to hunt: wonder why he didn't, or did the think that maybe it was something he shouldn't do? Lucky you to have had such an understanding and perceptive parent.

 

I was lucky with my dad too: although I didn't grow up around running dogs, he loved hunting, though he was a shooter. A lone shooter: just him and his Lab crawling about on the moors getting rabbits for our pot. He'd been a sniper in the war (WW11), and he was also a bit of a bug hunter, and interested in anything that flew, walked or crawled. He would just make gentle suggestions when it came to looking after the animals: rabbits, guinea pigs. I killed my first myxie rabbit when I was about 10 because I felt sorry for it: got it by the hind legs and whacked its head against a stone gate post. My mother was not amused LOL She was a bit precious and didn't like to see things killed: never stopped me though. Yes I was very lucky: running loose on the Cornish moors with no one to tell me what to do: I was always bringing back lizards and snakes, even manage to catch an adder once, though it bit me on the ankle. My dad just said, 'oh that'll be alright'. I guess he reckoned that if I hadn't died within a few moments I'd be OK: leg swelled up to the knee like a balloon for a few days though.

 

Penny, it's funny looking back, my dad and his family were evacuated to a farm in Ludlow for the war, he was just a kid but the family lived there about 15 years after. I do know that my grandfather (who I hardly knew) bred, trained and sold spainiels for extra cash and on the familys return to liverpoool brought back a 'big greyhound' (which he said was probably a lurcher) amongst other dogs. He said the greyhound couldn't cope with city life, he always felt sorry for it and was forever escaping, eventually getting killed on a road. His two younger brothers were born in Ludlow and were (still are!!) as wild as the hills, they did a bit of shooting etc. and its from them that the tales of Ludlow would be spoken of, sometimes in my dads company. My mum was a bit like yours, so maybe she suppressed my dad.. I'll never know, but like you, we brought home a multitude of critters, from sand lizards and natterjack toads to leverets to raise. Funny ain't it....!

[WILF 48,098]

Bosun a very touching reply mate.

My old man was one of those blokes who knew things, from the age of 9 him and his younger brother would have to drive a horse and cart from south London to chelmsford and this was a 3 day round trip.....no roadside cafe in them days and they had to eat.

He knew what mushrooms to pick and how to catch and prepare rabbits and what things to eat and not eat.....when I was a real little un we had a 6 acre small holding out in the middle of nowhere, always had a couple of JRTs kicking around for rats etc........my job at 5 was to find mouse and rat nests then let them have it with a club hammer!!! ( can you imagine that now days!?)

The obligatory air rifle and .410........thinking back, at the time we had f**k all really but we had everything!

Edited February 18, 2012 by WILF

[skycat 6,174]

The freedom that some of us who have hunted all their lives is so often denied youngsters these days. Part of the need to hunt must come from having that opportunity as a very young child, the formative age which is so important in our development: like in a puppy which finds it first mouse or fledgling down the garden. Mind you, my sister had the same upbringing as I did, but never went on to really hunt or become obsessed with wildlife, nature etc. There really is a hunting gene, of that I'm sure.

 

Take my OH: none of his family hunted. His dad did a bit of fishing, but that was all. From an early age Andy wanted to go out and catch stuff and couldn't wait to get his own ferrets and dogs.

 

Question: are true hunters ( those who would never stop for any reason) are they loners, solitary people, in their hearts? The fact that I get more pleasure from hunting in whatever form, than from just about anything else, and the fact that my enjoyment doesn't depend on having other people there to share it, says that I'm a loner. Just me and the dogs. Andy's the same: we'll often go out lamping separately, and we never exercise our dogs together either. We do ferret together, but that's only because I find the digging and crawling about in hedge bottoms etc too hard for my decrepit body LOL Yet we like hearing about the other one's 'adventures' when we get home.

[poacher3161 1,766]

  On 18/02/2012 at 08:32, gnasher16 said:

Certainly wasnt much hunting to be done around the streets of east london and my parents detested dogs so wasnt till i got my own gaff that i got my own dog.....and then wasnt till later on and moved out to the open air and countryside i got an interest in hunting......i suppose i,ll always be behind other folk born into it......but its never too late to learn as they say.

Thats wat always amazed me [bANNED TEXT] i spent time with hunting lads from the east end how they became intrested in hunting with dogs even at a young age despite them living in an urban envioroment reafirming my theory its some thing in your nature .