I don't think the dogs are going to read that either, Nick. ;-) To be
honest, I'm not thinking of either. We don't hunt with the dogs in any
shape or form. We open the doors in the morning and they go out on their
own. We don't take them, encourage them, do anything other than open the
door and get on with whatever needs doing on the nursery. On the rare
occasion a dog gets a rabbit it's usually solo from the others, chasing it
down one of the tunnels or through a hedge. Sometimes, they get a rat but
that's pretty rare because we use exterminators. The dogs aren't an
organised pack encouraged by humans or even followed by them. They're
just
dogs running around our own property doing what dogs do. Occasionally
they
surprise themselves!

I am sure what we used to do would be illegal now. We used to have a huge
rat problem in a large private estate where I was under gardener (Not a very
good one) We used to catch rats in a humane trap which leaves them alive
with the idea you let them go else where. We would catch 3 rats put them in
a 50 gallon drum with a cover on. Once there was just 1 left we would
release him back on to the estate. The idea was he would have eaten his
fellows in the drum and developed a taste for rat and would rush about
eating all his family and friends. we would normally have a couple of drums
on the go at any one time. Weather it worked or not I cant say but as the
population didn't seem to decrease a great deal I suspect not. We had
chickens running about the place at the time once they had all died off and
were not replaced the rat population seemed to diminish on its own, I
suspect they were getting a feed from the chicken bins. I better not mention
the moles and the mower exhaust pipe had I.
JOHN