Hmm! It might be the landowners resposibility to get rid of the bxxxxxs but how do you do it. I've got a mate with these vermin all over his land. The Council don't want to know. He can't find people who will "ferret" them out. He's not allowed to obtain the chemicals to gas them. Too close to Public highways to shoot them. Bearing in mind, I live in the New Forest, there should be hundreds of practical solutions, but there ain't. :flag: Rabbits rule:(
lol wulnut, theres a thought! i cant see any new damage today, so maybe the windchimes are doing the trick? no doubt their use will be limited and the rabbits will come over once used to the sound oh and i just want to give praise to my Willy (Will'o) he's the cat in my av and after me moaning to him last night about the rabbits, he brought me one home, bless him! k-l
Same problem here. Fortunately I've never received a complaint yet about the ones from my land, but it is always in the back of my mind. I met the game keeper that looks after next door's huge estate, and gave him permission to take his shooters onto my land. I also met the farmer from next door, he offered to come and shoot them all for me in return for letting his pheasant 'beaters' (they don't beat the pheasants, they simply chase them into the open) on my land. So far nobody has been on to shoot the rabbits. I went to the pub over the road once, and on their menu they had 'local wild rabbit pie', with 'out of stock' wrote next to it. I was so frustrated because I'd given their game keeper permission to take the rabbits from my land. I gave my dad's mate permission to go ferreting up there, again nothing. If I thought I'd be any good at it I'd buy myself a decent air rifle and bag them myself, but as much evidence of them I see, I rarely actually see the rabbits themselves, and when I do it is only for a few seconds, and rarely in a position where I'd get a clear shot, even if I was actually any good at that sort of thing. I don't want to pay anyone to do it as I'm anything but loaded, and even if I did I wouldn't want someone using cyanide up there just in case there was any residue afterwards that would be harmful to me and my people, or the more favourable wildlife.
Yeah, clueless, it's not as easy as it seems, is it To get an effective air rifle isn't easy, either. If someone knows of a good one with a decent killing range, I'd appreciate their advice. I've got a couple with a catapult but would prefer an air rifle, much more accurate:wink:
council says its a civil matter and that i have to speak to the neighbour and threaten him with a solicitor. considering i've just had the police round cos he complained about some blogs i wrote about him on the net (which were all true) i dont think thats an option
No need to go to a solicitor. Have a look at what DEFRA have to say on the matter: http://www.defra.gov.uk/farm/wildlife/other/
oh bum bum bum!!!! defra is out of date! natural england only offer advice now!! they said like the council, talk to the nob and if they wont sort it, take civil action. but thats expensive argh!! N.E gave me this info http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/regulation/wildlife/species/rabbits.aspx seems like i have to print out the leaflet telling him its legally his responsibility and give it to him. i shall write a polite letter and pop it in his letter box with the leaflet. dont have to see him them. and i can refer any contact thru my mum in law (2 doors away)
This year up here we are inundated with rabbits. On the school field near here there are hundreds. It looks like the herd of the Masai Mara, only in minature. At the farm where I keep my bees and caravan I found the farmer returning with his shot gun after rabbiting. I suggested a machine gun would be more appropriate. He felt like King Canute. He just could not make a dent in their population this year. At home for the first time we are getting rabbits coming into our gardens, right in the town. In the 24 years we have been here I have never seen that before. I think the only solution is rabbit netting dug into the ground. I am renting some land out of town and so far have been able to grow potatoes, marrows, pumpkins and squash but beofore I plant anything the rabbits eat I will have to fence it in. i have bought 100 metres of rabbit netting + posts. Expensive but i cannot see any other way. If you trap rabbits in a live trap then you have to kill them or keep them forever. The same applies if you rescue an injured rabbit. It is illegal to release a rabbit into the wild as it is a pest specie. I suggested that my farmer friend put up a sign in the lane "PYO wild rabbit"
pyo own rabbit lol my neighbour promised to do something about the rabbits later on in the year as he plans to sell them for meat (he'll be shooting, but after paying for the shotgun cartridges, i cant see him making much money). he's not doing it now because he cant bear the thought of baby bunnies being left motherless WTF? PMSL!!!!! what a townie!
Perhaps he will have a change of heart once he's had to donk a few on the head, and gut a few before selling on. I would hope he was going to use an air rifle and not a shot gun for the ones he sells on, as a butcher likes a clean 'head shot' which a shot gun wouldn't provide. I would love a PYO rabbit site! Just got nothing to shoot it with!
I actually caught a rabbit on my land the other day. It was grazing away and I managed to get close enough to pounce like a cat (must have looked quite comical I suppose as 14 stone of hobnail wearing beardy flies through the air), and trapped it under my hat (which of course I'd removed from head first ). Having caught it, my dad came running over to see, and bowing to his superior wisdom, I asked him how would be the quickest and least painful way for me to dispatch it, and asked "shall I snap its neck?". My dad must have more compassion than me because he couldn't bare for either of us to kill it with our bare hands, so he took it off me and let it go. I guess he was right in a way, if I'd killed it it would have made negligible difference to the local rabbit population. Next time I think I'll borrow the brother-in-law's air rifle and see if we can't bag a few early one morning.
he was shooting on friday night (before 11pm lol) so i dunno if he got any. shotgun by the sounds of it. i cant imagine him gutting them before selling, he'll probably sell them whole! :hehe:
The won't be worth eating...... Rabbits 'blow up' when they are killed. I'm not too sure why, but you have to gut a rabbit 'in the field'. Well we always did after an evening of rabbit shooting, which was hilarious to watch. I'll just say one of the chaps I was with was a typical country bloke, whos favorite phrase was FFS!
