RABBIT TRAPS
Sta,—I do not propose to discuss the ethics of using steel traps, but if R. M. Lockley is trying to tell as that their use leads to an increase in rabbits, then he is just talking nonsense. I live in the shadow of a hill that has been for years infested with rabbits to a degree that baffles description. The owner of the grazing there has constantly tried to reduce them with ferrets and nets, but I have never known him to kill more than half-a-dozen rabbits in a day's ferreting. Last year he employed a trapper who caught for him 350 rabbits in eight days. By a strange coincidence the same hill can boast some of the most extensive and populous fox-earths for miles around. Far from being exterminated by their natural enemies, rabbits in scores live in adjacent tunnels. The foxes for their part exhibit a marked preference for poultry, which they indulge by day as well as by night. If steel traps succeed in exterminating foxes, stoats and polecats, then I can think of no better recommendation for steel traps. Rabbits may be bad enough, but a fox can, and frequently does, do more damage in ten minutes than a rabbit could do in ten Years. While farmers are being coaxed incessantly to further efforts of meat and egg production, misguided naturalists are trying to breed up an army of vermin to ruin them.—Yours faithfully, Edgarley Manor, olastonbury, Somerset.
JULIAN MARSH.
Previous page
