Looking back, it's mad to think how it all started. A simple trip to see my good mate Alan Jones up in Aberystwyth turned into something much bigger than either of us could have imagined.
I've always loved Aberystwyth and have spent plenty of days and nights up there, out shooting with Alan. At the time, he was working in a caravan park, and to put it bluntly, he wasn't exactly loving life there. His fields and most of the surrounding farms”were full of moles. One day, I said to him, "You should start catching moles."
He looked at me a bit sceptically and said, "Show me"
So off we went, a few mole traps in hand. I showed him how to find the tunnel, set the trap, bed it in, and cover it with soil. Alan just laughed and said, "There's no way that's catching a mole" We joked about it and left the traps to do their thing.
That same evening, we checked back....boom! A couple of moles already caught. That was it, Alan was hooked. We started chatting about all the local farms full of moles and realised there might actually be a living to be made from trapping them.
I left a few traps with Alan, and like a duck to water, he took to it straight away. Before we knew it, farms were calling us in left, right, and centre. Back then, we couldn't afford quads, so if the Land Rover couldn't get close, we were lugging heavy rucksacks full of traps over miles of hills and these were big hills!
Matthew
Comments