The day was organised for a team of 5 guns a few who brought their own ferrets. The aim was to find them plenty of rabbits and to provide them with a good day's shooting. We also had two of our gamekeeper trainees, Kieran and James, there with their own ferrets to help find the game. We had a team of 5 handlers with their retrievers following along to help collect the rabbits but to also give their dogs some experience and training.
The young dogs stood near to the guns so that they could easily see and mark the flushed and shot rabbits. The older dogs experienced some challenging steep hill retrieves of over 250-300 yards. They had to negotiate dry stone walls, netted fences, running through shot scent and the occasional ferret that popped back out of the hole and got in their way.
A fantastic day was had by all and the guns achieved a final bag of 125 rabbits, some of which we collected by hand as the dogs had worked so hard. Although they did try, no ferrets where lost in the provision of a good day. The performances of the dogs were really good and the majority of them handled extremely well.
One of the handlers however did shine on the day; Jimmy Blair came along with 3 of his dogs and was more impressive at getting up the hills than some of the younger handlers and dogs. He did however think he had lost his wallet but, as helpful as ever, David came to the rescue and did try to help him find it!!!!
Photographs kindly provided by W. Hewitt
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