A nice afternoon spent in the company of mates

[toolebox 1,546]

I had been working to remove all rabbits from the long river grass & edge due to the present new higher flood banks, where any digging could result in the banks to fail and flood the town where 570 people live. Since retiring, I've been doing some short term contacting, on farms that have reported rabbit damage, it's a couple of days a week so it suits me, and I've got a few younger dogs I wish to give more time in the field too. In the 2 km section, we removed 22 adults, but it's all short term relief as the bridge across water leads from land that doesn't have any rabbit control so you aren't clearing them out. Even when I was working this block, if I didn't have time to check a known hot rabbit spot for a couple of years, there was always a build up of numbers. 

[toolebox 1,546]

The dogs chased a rabbit, that shot, under one of the two fishing huts. One hut is knackered after flood waters entered it several times in one year, this was the very one the rabbit was hiding under. After I slipped the ferret under the building, then after about five minutes the ferret had found the rabbit and began to hammer the rabbit at a place, where the dogs focused on the last photo, a tiny wee crack in the floor boards allowed the scent to be carried up towards the dogs. I managed to move some wood out of the area that then allowed me to kick a corner of iron off, just enough, after checking by poking a stick down to see if it had rabbit fur on the end. Then I simply reached down and pulled the dead rabbit out, the ferret followed. Then back down to the point the rabbit flushed out of, resulted in another carbon copy rabbit that ended under the other better hut, I popped in the other Jill ,after 10 minutes I decided to leave her to it. It's only a matter of leaving a yellow seesaw trap for her to enter, which she did later. I had a gravel pit that had several fresh rabbit holes to check out and didn't want to run out of daylight. It's mid-winter, where it's dark by 5.30 pm. The gravel pit held several more rabbits for my ferrets to enjoy. One rabbit bolted out and ran around the edge of the bank only to be run down by NIG the black greyhound x whippet, the reach, the catch resulted in him losing his footing then went into a several times roll-over one that was a tad unusual in that he rolled over sideways, tucking his legs in close to the body. I was pleased to see he was still attached to the rabbit. He's a dog that missed out on a lot of field work, given instead to his sister "Carla" who, along with "Jett" the wirehaired /greyhound, they covered all the speed work at the time. Jett is older now, still goes as well as he did when he was young, but he's not going to last for ever, so I will leave Jett out and get "NIG "up and running better.

I'm aware that this approach/method will not fit and be everybody's cup of tea, but these are the rules I have to play with given, I'm paid, and it's expected that I should know more about my trade  than the average Joe. The results are also expected to be better, if it's not the work will quickly dry up. 

How do you turn these damn pictures around, anyone ???

Edited July 7 by toolebox