>Heather Moore writes:
>I thought I had seen on the FML that it was illegal to hunt with ferrets
 
There is not, to my knowledge, a federal law prohibiting hunting with
ferrets.  There may be state laws prohibiting hunting with ferrets.  If you
want to find such a law, I suggest you contact your local department of
wildlife.  For eaxmple, in Washington state, it's a grey area of the law.
Most Wa. State game wardens will let you go about your business, provided
you have a hunting license, are hunting in season, etc.
 
>Though they may retain the instinct to hunt, and though their wild cousins
>may hunt to survive, flushing out rabbits and attempting to avoid being
>killed by birds of prey is NOT WHAT FERRETS DO.
 
Heather, you're incorrect.  The domestic ferret is bred as a rodent (rats,
mice, rabbits) predator and is still used for flushing rabbits from burrows
in Scotland, Wales and England.  The ferret book I own (Ferrets and
Ferreting) was written by a Brit in the early 1980s and details how to use
ferrets in rabbit hunting.  The writer devotes several pages to falconry
over ferrets, and suggests that the falcon and ferrets be well trained and
introduced to each other lest accidents occur.  Obviously this was not the
case.  Until I hear more details about the case, I would have to chalk it up
as a tragic accident.  If you pursue the case against the fellow with the
falcon and ferret, I think that whatever authority you take it up with will
probably consider it a hunting accident and not actionable.  Fish and Game
departments have "bigger fish to fry" teaching hunter safety, enforcing
regulations, catching poachers I have heard estimates that up to half the
game taken in some states is taken by poachers.
 
Wendell Joost
[Posted in FML issue 1456]