Sunderland 1 Liverpool 5
HOWAY THE SCOUSERS
No ,not the football results, the outcome of an afternoons rabbiting when Richie Shepard and myself (two thirds of the West Coast Working Ferreters operating out of Liverpool) visited Yorkshire at the invitation of Geordie ferreting friends for our own match of the day.
Having endured the unspeakable (three and a half hours for a car journey from Liverpool to the other side of York which should have taken no more than two hours), we arrived at the away ground to size up our opposition, Bev and Keith Redden, a husband and wife ferreting partnership from County Durham, almost as famous in showing circles as their 15 year old disabled son, Keith, "the main man".
Forget the trophies and rosettes, the best things you get from shows if you go to the right ones are new acquaintances, different outlooks and opinions, and most of all knowledge - you occasionally get ferreting invitations too and this was one we had been looking forward to for some time.
Our first impression of the ferreting ground as we turned into the farm gate was not at all favourable. The road was bordered on each side by a field o close ranked tree stumps, with the earth between the stumps bare and devastated - it looked like a nuclear waste-lands or a TV Ground Force team's nightmare. But lo.... around the bend and behind the farm buildings a rolling expanse of undulating fields and woods opened out in front of us. This was more like it. The farmer, Keith explained, had simply harvested his lumber at the front of his property and would be replanting to begin the cycle again.
We quickly togged up, and to our hosts' amusement slipped into something more comfortable, which in our case was wellies, wax leggings and tight-fitting waxed hats, as well as the usual combat jackets and trousers. They wore trainers and jeans and were quite amused by our fancy-dress! We explained that we often operated knee-deep in ditch water and head-first in hawthorn and holly hedges. That day, on the comparatively dry hills with many open buries we were going to have a relaxing time, but just in case we came across any bolt holes in sodden, impenetrable thickets, we had come prepared - my idea of a soak and massage ain't kneeling in mud setting nets with a crown of brambles tickling my baldy bits.
We compared equipment. Keith had made Bev and himself comfortable bow backed single and double boxes which I thought were wonderful; Richie had a quarter inch ply two jill/one compartment box which was light and easy to handle, and I used my heavier two compartment double hob carrier.
We preferred our adapted harness style locator collars, the home team used locators on basic collars. They had 15 foot locators; we rarely needed more that 8 foot for our Merseyside flatlands. Our nets were two ring, mainly hemp nets; theirs were one ring hemp, but we both had additional nylon nets. We preferred a short-handled heart shaped spade, ideal in the middle of hedges. They preferred the long-handled narrow graft spade.
The match was on.
Keith pointed us in the direction of the first bury, and we thought he had sold up a pup when we saw the leaf-clogged holes. But no, we drew first blood when a rabbit in our unpromising bury tired of us digging for it between roots that would have taken a J.C.B. to shift, and bolted into our waiting net a few feet away. The only other noteworthy incident from the first bury occurred when I delved into a tunnel from the access hole I had dug to retrieve a cornered rabbit which we had glimpsed. A flurry of action down below with the adversaries changing positions resulted in my pulling out my large brown ferret by the neck rather than the rabbit which I thought I had in my grasp. Luckily the ferret had not struggled and had been handled gently enough by me not to have come to any harm. A salutary lesson though as to how things might go wrong and a case again for using an albino for easier recognition in deep, dark recesses. The rabbit by the way, made his escape in the confusion.
We moved on, with our final fruitful activity of the afternoon taking place in a large open mounded area sloping down sharply to a dry stream bed. "Pop" Redden quickly equalized with a fine rabbit into the net from a small side bury before Richie and I hit form, taking one in the net and digging three out from the larger bury netted up with Bev's help.
Richie was thrilled by the performance of his two albino jill kits, hand reared by Betty Shepard from 3 weeks old when their mother had died, doing instinctively what their genetic make-up had programmed them for ... bolting and harrying rabbits mercilessly. The only problems we had encountered were the obvious depth of the bury sometimes taking the ferrets out of our locator range, and two awkward rabbits which seemed to hole up right against large tees making digging laborious and back-breaking work, but I was glad to be in my position rather than the rabbits.
We finished the day in the failing light with a shared provisions picnic atop a tree stump about six feet in diameter and four feet high with the farmer had obviously placed considerately in the centre of a field near to our parked cars.
A small bag of healthy rabbits after a very late start, but what a cracking day out!
Richie and I are still considering whether or not to accept the Geordies' rematch challenge or to retire as champions. We'll have to discuss it with our agent!
David Jones