I wish they would make ferreting legal here.
Ferrets were always kept to keep rats out of granaries.
My grandpa used to ferret cottontail rabbits that would take refuge in groundhog dens and pipes when pursued by dogs or when the weather was very cold. (Cottontails do not dig their own dens, and they do not kindle their young underground. In this aspect, they differ very much from European rabbits, which they so deceivingly resemble.)
In the old days, rabbit meat could be sold, and many a schoolboy made some spending money running a ferret after rabbits.
Ferreting is currently illegal in my state, although one can use terriers to work groundhog and fox dens. This makes very little sense to me.
I suppose that the prejudice that has always existed towards ferrets has been transposed onto their practical use.
The fact that most people who used them were small farmers and rural school boys may have also had something to do with it.
It’s very easy to demonize these people, even in a state in which the majority technically fits this demographic.
The fact that it was customary to remove the canine teeth from the ferrets may have also had something to do with it. The ferrets were notorious for going to ground and then killing a rabbit. They would then remain underground to eat their kill.
That is actually not very useful to someone who wants to kill more than a few rabbits, so they would either smoke out the ferret, which brings about a fire risk, or they would dig him out. Of course, after digging out the ferret, they destroyed the groundhog den, which would not be repaired all winter, and the rabbits would not hole up there during inclement weather.
So the solution was to de-fang the ferret to prevent him from making a kill.
He would go to ground and then flush the rabbits out, which can be caught by hand and easily dispatched. According to my grandpa, the rabbits were very unlikely to bite, although one did nail him in a very precarious spot (the upper part of the inside of his thigh.)
***
Of course, the winters now are nothing like they once were, and the rabbits are very unlikely to use groundhog dens as a shelter. After all, cottontails live very much like hares, and they have very little use for going into burrows.
Beagles are a better weapon of choice against them than ferrets. These rabbits tend to run in circles, usually from one thicket or brush pile to another. If beagles are on their trail, they can bolt them from hiding until they eventually run in front of the gun.
Of course, the local lines of beagle have had something very sad happen to them. A few years ago, deer hunters in the other Virginia were in need of some good “deer dogs.” In that other Virginia, it is legal and socially acceptable to run deer with hounds. In this Virginia, it is not only illegal, it is a major taboo. (The reason for such a difference goes back to the old Cohee/Tuckahoe division that always existed in Virginia. Hunting deer with dogs is a Tuckahoe custom, while Cohees living in the mountains frowned upon such behavior.)
Now, most beagles will run deer unless trained to leave them alone.
However, training takes work.
And if someone is coming up here and offering a decent sum of money for an untrained beagle that runs deer, you will gladly sell such an animal. You’re getting rid of a useless dog.
Many of the dogs in the local lines of beagle were sold to Virginia deer chasers, and as a result, finding working beagles of any quality is now much more difficult.
I am a long-time ferret afficiondo, and I too, wish it could be “legalized” to hunt with ferrets(even if we don’t have proper English bunnies who live in prairie dog-like warrens!)–the stuff I’ve read as to WHY it isn’t allowed is because Wildlife Officials are afraid escaped or unretrieved ferrets would establish wild populations and become another exotic pest–this blatantly ignores numerous facts about domestic ferrets in this country. One is that ferrets have been escaping into the “wild” anyway since colonial times, and no population has ever established–they are just too domesticated and have too many predators that can take them out here. I have a neat old book published back in 1900–apparently ferrets were raised in large numbers and sold to farmers and others to PURPOSFULLY release around their farms for rodent control–they were not expected to live overly long–you just ordered another batch when the first batch had all died out! If they were ever to establish a feral population, it should have occurred then! Obviously none of the anti-hunting laws were in effect yet, or releasing them on farms for rodent control was not considered “hunting”! I met an elderly neighbor many years ago who was very excited to see my pet ferrets, and told me how as a kid in Michigan, they used to hunt rabbits with them. Knowing cottontails do not live in warrens like European rabbits, I asked how he was able to do that effectively. Purty easy, as it turned out–they simply looked for cottontail tracks in the snow going into a groundhog/woodchuck or other burrow(which cottontails will use in inclinement weather, or to escape predators), and put the ferrets in! So it wasn’t just guess work, trying out holes at random. I have also heard of them used to bolt squirrels from leaning, hollow trees. It should certainly be allowed to hunt rats with them, if one dared! I take my ferrets out in the woods to “play”, but NOT to “hunt” of course(that would be illegal!)…….
How could ferrets go wild here?
I’ve always thought it was unfounded, simply because they wouldn’t be able to compete with native weasels or mink. New Zealand is a different place, where polecat/ferret hybrids did go wild. But I don’t think they would last long enough out here to found wild populations. A feral cat around these parts lasts all of about a month or two before coyote eats or a raccoon kills it.
People kept ferrets here for hundreds of years before they passed that law. We have no feral ferrets. For hundreds of years they were used to bolt the rabbits from groundhog holes, using exactly the same technique you describe. If ferrets ever could have gone feral, they would have already done so.
My grandpa used his ferret on squirrels on leaning trees. It worked for grays. It worked for reds.
It didn’t work for fox squirrels, because a fox squirrel is big enough and tough enough to run a ferret out of its den!
The fact that all of the ferrets used for work have their canine teeth removed also can explain why they won’t go feral. They can’t kill anything and would starve to death on their own.
The old fellow I spoke to did not mention breaking off canines; however, enough pets with all their teeth have escaped to have established if they were going to. Also, that book(basically one long published advertisement for selling ferrets to farms for rodent control) certainly did not advocate tooth breaking–they WANTED the ferrets to kill things! Whenever I take mine out for a romp, I watch them VERY CAREFULLY, because I know if they take off, they are doomed. I have large, natural outside habitats built for mine to live in when confined–they seem much healthier living outside, and are certainly not as much trouble as loose in the house! Boy! Ferrets will get into EVERYTHING! They come in to play–but back out to the “habitat” when I’m not around to watch them! Anyway, to reemphasize dangers to loose ferrets–I have often had Horned Owls perch above my ferret habitats, and look longingly at my liddle weezals as they play…….