Bog Myrtle & Peat

Now that the ferrets are up and about, I got a little carried away with spending money on them. The first, and in my opinion, most important acquisition was a ferret detector. Deben seem to have cornered the market for manufacturing ferret locators, but since I bought a gunlight from then ten years ago and it is still working very well, I suppose that I trust them. New, the Mk.3 ferret locator can cost as much as £170, but I found one with two ferret collars for £120 from a man outside Dumfries, who also threw in all the “make your own purse nets” kit I could carry. A blog article on making nets will surely follow…

The Deben Mk. 3 is fantastic. I have become extremely attached to my ferrets, and although they are going through a phase of attacking me if I don’t play with them, I would hate to lose one. Not only would they probably die if lost in the wild at this age, but if they didn’t, the damage they could do to local birds and wildlife is potentially massive. Far better to take every precaution so that, at the end of each trip, you leave with as many ferrets as you started with.

Seeing the rabbit knocked over with a nasty old pump action twelve bore on Saturday, I can tell that ferreting is about far more than just netting. The first shotgun I ever fired was a .41o, and I have had a hankering for one ofmy own ever since. They are such delicate little guns; light and easy but more than big enough to deal with rabbits at close quarters. To my tremendous delight, I came across a little .410 at the weekend and snapped it up before I had had much of a chance to think about it.

The acciaio folding single barrelled .410 is not a pretty gun. It looks as if it was designed by some pretentious industrial artist from the 1980s, with hard edges, blank panels and simplified mechanisms. Famous for art, sculpture and architecture, you might expect Italian guns to be the most beautiful in the world, but as far as I am concerned, some of their firearms companies excell at producing the most hideous sporting guns on the market. As well as acciaio, falco have designed a double barrelled .410 without a rib between the barrels, making the gun look more like a tool for removing leaves from gutters than firing shot.

The trigger on the acciaio is very hard to pull and when broken, the entire barrel swings round and clatters your knuckles against the trigger guard. It is a nasty little thing, but it is absolutely perfect for what I plan to be doing. I don’t want to have to worry about putting a nice gun down in the wet grass while I fix a net, and, as a single barrel, it is light enough to carry along with lots of other ferret related kit. I was tempted by a double barrelled .410 at more than double the price, but I reason that if the rabbit can beat the ferret, the net and a single .41o cartridge, he has probably earned his stripes for the day.