Excavating Errant Ferrets

If your ferret fails to reappear from the warren, do you bait and wait or start to dig? Simon Whitehead examines the options and their pros and cons.

- S. Whitehead

To the uninitiated, ferreting appears relatively simple. In an idealistic world, the ferret goes down, all the rabbits bolt and the ferret returns happy as Larry. But if it were this simple, we would have no rabbits. It is the rabbit that decides whether or not it is going to bolt freely, run around its warren or find a dead end and sit it out. This internal monologue passes through every ferreter’s head at some time or another. It is at this point we face the conundrum of how to retrieve the errant ferret.

Why are we in a hurry to get our ferret back? This dilemma is as old as ferreting itself. For me, time is valuable and I see no profit in sitting on a ferret box for an hour, drinking tea, when I know I could excavate my ferret and crack on. To the sportsman it could be the end of a hard day’s sport — then what? Good ferrets are hard to come by and the last thing a keeper or poultry farmer wants is a loose ferret keen to kill.

Do we need such driven individuals? Of course we do. I wouldn’t have a ferret that ignores rabbits; I couldn’t afford to. We breed driven animals, release them under the ground, out of sight and out of reach. While falconers have telemetry and GPS systems linked to Google Maps, and those who work dogs use collars with the same capabilities, neither require the ability to pinpoint to a few square inches through clay, rock or sand.

Of course, not all ferrets work in the same way. Some stay, others flirt and some will come off; others choose to wander the pipes, but all have their place and all owe their well-being to their owners. I use a Deben MK3M ferret-finder, collar up all my ferrets and deal with what gets thrown at me, but I do appreciate that not everyone can or will use collars. But what are the alternatives?