RABBIT TRAPS
Snt,—Your correspondent in North Cornwall thinks that rabbit traps ought to be made illegal because of their cruelty. I don't know what his part of the country looks like, but round here all the hill slopes have been stripped naked of timber. As happened in 1919-25, so now : most owners have succeeded in replanting about one-tenth of what has been felled: the other nine-tenths has tumbled down to a jungle of brambles and every kind of weed. You cannot catch rabbits on this ground, even if you are willing to tear your nets and lose your ferrets. To rabbit-proof all fences is difficult to the point of impossibility, and the amount of damage which rabbits can do to a crop has to be seen to be believed. So the rabbits have to be killed.
Pigs would do the job ; they would clean the jungle, and then you could get at the rabbits: but with present scarcities large-scale pig-ranching is an expensive and doubtful gamble. Cats are good rabbit catchers ; but if bred for the purpose they make mischief in other ways, e.g., by going after poultry. Gas has been tried round here, but without results. The only known effective method is by trapping. Two sorts of trap are in use ; but the noose trap is difficult to set, and does not catch so many as the metal-tooth trap, which catches them by the leg. On all properties, of which I have any knowledge, traps set by owners and farmers are visited night and morning ; but not many owners can afford the cost of keeping poachers out, and with present prices for skins and meat there is no telling what they will do. Certainly the traps are cruel, and they catch a cat occasionally, a young hare rather frequently. You cannot exterminate any sort of wild animal without cruelty.—I am, Sir, yours
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