Lamping with lurchers

There is something special about lamping with a lurcher. On dark nights the click of the lamp echoes, the pencil-thin beam of the lamp reflects the eyes of the rabbit, and your senses go into overdrive. You sense the dog, the beam, the twist and turns of the course and the catch and retrieve. The contorted athleticism of hunter and hunted get tested to the limit where the rabbit has one advantage — its low centre of gravity. Legal pest control Since the passing of the 2004 Hunting Act, legitimate lurcher work has run the gauntlet of ignorance surrounding its many legal practices, especially after dark. If permission to take rabbits has been granted, it is simply another legal form of pest control. I thought long and hard about when and where I would take Tawny. The land can be on the fast side when the going is good under foot. After walking the haylage fields to spy out any hidden ploughs or electric fencing, I had to instil into Tawny the understanding that every time that lamp went on and stayed on, the