Well, the rest of the heather burning season passed with nary a stick being burnt. If we'd been desperate we might have got a fire in on Friday afternoon but, by that stage, we were all geared up for other activities.
The grouse nesting season fast approaches. It's the time of year that hens are most vulnerable. To say nothing of eggs and chicks. So we've been putting our 'smoke break' to good use by getting all our stoat traps and crow cages set up. We also managed to get a few of our regular maintenance jobs out of the way which will free us up a bit more in the coming weeks.
Which is very good news for now our foxing season is upon us. And that means there just wont be enough hours in the day for the next few weeks.
We started today by walking a chunk of our lowest ground. It some areas, the ground is just riddled with rabbit holes- any of which could be scraped out and used by a fox.
So myself and 5 colleagues walked in a widely-spaced line with our shotguns and terrriers. We walked and we checked out sandholes and cairns as we went. We walked and we checked, we checked and we walked. We started walking at, say 0930 and we stopped at around 1600. That's a lot of holes.
By good fortune we didn't find anything. I say that because if we'd found a den, two of us would have been out all night on a stake-out for the dog fox. And the forecast is appalling.
But we've been there before and survived to tell the tale. Though not in language we could use in front of the children.
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