Run rabbit, run, run, run
A GREAT joy of fieldsports is that they have changed little in hundreds of years. In nothing is that more true than ferreting. ‘Some people look down on ferreting because it’s primitive,’ says leading ferreter and countryman Simon Whitehead, ‘but why change something that works so well?’
The valued tool of the gamekeeper, the easily concealed companion of the poacher and the means of obtaining meat and fur for exalted households—even the pest controller aboard the Rose—ferrets have been partners of Man for millennia. The Romans recorded ferret-like animals (the name comes from the Latin , little thief) and there are tales of Genghis Khan’s hordes using them in Afghanistan in the 13th century. In Britain, we have the Norman instigation of rabbit warrens to thank. Warreners, exalted figures in noble households, would raise their own ferrets,
