With Gun And Ferret In The Vineyards

Kent’s idyllic vineyards don’t just attract wine lovers but rabbits too, as Matt Limb discovers when he joins a pest controller doing things the old-fashioned way

- Matt Limb

It feels like a very long time ago, but it still sits firmly in the grey matter of my memory; it was one of my first times shooting with a shotgun. I was after rabbits with my late father and his single-barrel Webley & Scott .410 bolt action with four long cartridges, and I can remember his firm instruction – while sitting on the Rabbit Warren – to only shoot in ‘that’ direction, as he waved his finger. Then behind me, after putting out some purse nets, he put a couple of ferrets into one of the rabbit holes. I can’t remember if any rabbits were taken that day, by the gun or to the nets, but I remember it being a good day. The day often comes to mind nowadays as the Webley & Scott sits in my gun cabinet; but what I did not expect was several decades later to be sat in almost the same situation and equally enjoying it.

In recent years, there has been a massive increase in the volume of wine drunk in the British Isles and in turn an interest in homegrown varieties and English wines. I cannot claim to be anything of a wine buff but will confess to having enjoyed several English wines, especially the sparkling kind. On the back of this, a whole new industry has grown, especially in the south of the country, with Kent now seeing a growing number of vineyards producing wines that I am told can give the French a run for their money. While the vineyards attract a steady number of visitors in a year, they also attract rabbits. Think of the conditions where the vines grow: well managed, regularly weeded, the grass between the rows of vines mown to near lawn conditions and the vineyards often on a hillside – a rabbit’s paradise, especially when the vineyards are surrounded by farmland, which is habitually mature paddocks or grassland. Too many rabbits can be a big problem and soon cause damage to the young, vulnerable vines.