i6o GUNS 



Ferreting is a favourite method of rabbit-shooting. 

 Its chief drawback is that the ferret, instead of 

 making the rabbit bolt, may kill it in the burrow, 

 and *Mie up" there for an hour or more. This 

 probably occurs less often when one is shooting 

 ferreted rabbits than when one is netting the holes. 

 Moving about and setting the nets will cause a 

 certain amount of sound, especially where the ground 

 is honeycombed, and it is strange how averse from 

 bolting rabbits are when they scent some vague 

 danger without. They will sometimes push their 

 heads against the end of a blind tunnel, and suffer 

 the ferret to scrape them horribly ; or they will 

 perish in one of the main passages ; anything 

 rather than face the unknown foe above. How- 

 ever, on some days and from some burrows ^ — the 

 reasons for bolting and non-bolting days and bur- 

 rows are obscure — rabbits bolt briskly. Though 

 they seem so fearful of man's footfall and of the 

 nets, and will run back often if they catch sight of 

 the ferreter, the sound of the gun fired at one 

 bolting rabbit does not necessarily prevent other 

 rabbits in the burrow from coming out when 

 hustled about by the ferret. And when the rabbits 

 are bolting freely on a still day in the woods or 

 hedgerows and hedgerow banks, the sport is lively. 

 In ferreting burrows in covert, it is best when there 



^ The gamekeeper and the woodmen in the South of England speak 

 of a rabbit's " burry," or "bury," and of a fox's "earth." A rabbit's 

 "stop" is a single tunnel containing a doe rabbit's nest and young. 

 When the mother goes out, she stops up this hole with earth. 



