A quick shine out

With the rain having eased off for a few days and the fields looking as if they had started to drain I thought I’d have a quick shine out last night. The signs looked good late afternoon with a good breeze blowing and a clear sky; with my permission not far from a decent sized town low cloud causes a lot of light deflection, so a clear sky would be ideal so long as I was out before the moon started to come up at around midnight.

I left for my hunting grounds at just after 9.00pm, but when I got there I was not only disappointed to see that the low cloud had come in, but the breeze had dropped also. Still, I wasn’t going to head home so off I plodded around the fields. Apart from the stillness of the night the other thing to hit me was how warm it was; it was like lamping on a summers evening.

The first field didn’t yield a run, but as I entered the second I could see the familiar ruby shining in the night, although by the look of it the rabbit was a good way off. Freyja had seen it o I sent her on her way only for a rabbit to spring up less than 15 feet from me. Neither Freyja nor I had seen the rabbit, and if it had sat tight it would have remained unnoticed. However, run for it the rabbit did, a move which proved to be fatal as Freyja lifted it after only a short run. As is her way there was no messing around and she brought it straight back to me:

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However, I did notice that if the lamp was left on (in this case to take the photograph above) she was a little hesitant and went to put the rabbit at my feet. This is something I don’t like my lurchers to do so I vowed that if she caught again then I wouldn’t mess around with taking pictures but concentrate on her doing the job as I like it.

Two more runs followed which proved fruitless; one she didn’t see until too late, the other shot though a hedge and I was left trying to lamp it through the branches as she coursed it in the adjacent field. Of course it got away. So it was back towards the car, but I thought I’d try what I have nick-named the paddy field. Freyja had narrowly missed one there last week, and I’d seen several making it away in the process so I knew they were on that particular piece of land.

The field was still water-logged despite being somewhat higher than the surrounding land (hence the nick-name) but not as bad as it had been. On with the beam and I spotted two pairs of eyes; one a small pair of ruby-red about 40 yards out, the other great big green saucers just a few feet beyond. Freyja had seen them too, and as soon as the rabbit started to move she made her dash for it. She was soon up on it and she stuck to it well, eventually taking it after two turns along the hedge. I like to think it was the one that got away last week but maybe that’s just wishful thinking!

This time I kept the lamp off as she retrieved, save for a quick flick to remind her where I was. Unlike the first time this was a text-book retrieve and presentation of her catch. I might just be a ‘hobby hunter’ and my dog a dumb old saluki cross, but we do all right

With the rabbit in the bag I flicked the lamp to where I had seen the bigger eyes, and sure enough they were still there, although they quickly turned and I was treated to the site of a nice Roe making its way across the field. I’ve never seen as many deer as I have this year. Normally its foxes on this particular piece of land (in fact, they are still there in big numbers if the amount of noise they were making is an indication) but no it looks like deer are going to be the main culprit of upsetting my nights lamping.

And that was it. I was back at the car less than an hour after I left it:

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There were rabbits about but not in the numbers that would provide a night of hectic lamping, instead it was more like one run per field effort. I could really do with some more permission, but I truly do have more permission than I can walk around at the moment – maybe I’ll have to wait until next year to look further field.

Crow