Mole man who dug himself out of a hole

Eighteen months ago Peter Dowsland was putting up farm buildings in Scotland – a job he has always loved. Over the past 20 years he has been responsible for hundreds of cattle sheds and other agricultural buildings throughout the UK. But this year has seen him make a dramatic career change.

Peter is now a professional mole catcher and has returned to his beloved Farndale, in the rugged North York Moors where he was born, to carry out his crusade to rid the countryside of these small yet highly industrious tunnelers.

"Putting up a new farm building has always been something that has given me a sense of satisfaction," says Peter. "It's something that you can see for all the effort you've put in and you can see just how much the buildings mean to the farmers too."

But all that came to a juddering halt as a result of a road accident in which he was a victim. He suffered a long-term spinal injury, not that he knew that at the time.

"We had called into Annan for something to eat, en route to Stranraer, and we were parked up in stationary traffic at some roadworks. All of a sudden we were hit from behind by a crewcab pickup." The jolt caused Peter intense pain in the middle of his neck which still gives him trouble today.

He tried physiotherapy, was advised by a doctor and nurses and was put onto mild antidepressants which act as a muscle relaxant.

It was an osteopath who discovered three vertebrae in Peter's neck were compressed to one side.

"'I found this out nine months after the accident. The pain I still feel today is because my muscles are trying to pull the bones back into the correct position."

Peter tried to work through the pain with lessening degrees of success. The restricted movement in his neck and the intensity of the pain defeated him.

"I got to the stage where I was able to work less and less, to the point where I could only cope with working one or two hours a day. That was no good for the people who I was meant to be putting a building up for. In the end I just had to pack it in. The manual labour side of the job was just too much for me.'

After resting up for six months he tried going back to manual work at the start of the year, but without success. It was time for going back to his roots.

"I caught moles on our family farm in Farndale when I was a kid. I had also recently helped a farmer out by catching moles when I was up in Scotland and I am a member of the Traditional British Molecatchers Association. I had never really thought of it as something I could do full time and earn a living out of it before. But I'd like to think I can make a go out of it now."

There seems to be a call for Peter's expertise as he has already taken on work from a number of farms on the Moors in his first five months of activity.

"Moles are a real problem at the moment, especially since the use of strychnine has been banned. Those who were using strychnine have not moved on to using traps and the mole population has grown as a result. You need a lot of patience and perseverance.

"They are crafty little beggars and they do try your patience at times. To move towards making a living out of it you've got to have a battle plan and mine is that I bombard an area with traps."

Peter's strategy also includes understanding how and when moles work. The where part is easy – just look out for molehills.

"Their tunnels are usually four-to-six inches underground. Moles always need to go to water because they don't get enough moisture from purely eating worms.

"You get hold of their main runs, take enough of a sod of soil out, place the trap and cover it over again.

"I've gone around in a morning and it seems to me they have shift patterns – you can see fresh molehills all appearing at the same time. The signs you are looking for when you open up a run are the fresh marks where their feet have been."

The trap bombardment approach is clearly working. On one farm in Rosedale Peter caught 300 moles in three weeks. At a charge of 2.50 per mole that looks highly productive. "That was fairly intense work. It takes about an hour to set 30 mole traps and I was setting 90 at a time. In all, I had about 230 mole traps on that job."

After over two decades of nearly continuous heavy manual work across the country Peter is on home turf again and he's happy to be back. His farm buildings career gave him immense personal satisfaction. But he's more than a few ups and downs. Peter was bankrupt at 25 years of age when his own farm buildings business collapsed. He has suffered from depression, chronic fatigue syndrome and admits to contemplating suicide at his lowest ebb. Twice married, he is currently single.

"You've just got to fight it, get through it. I've had absolute devastation in my life, but now I'm trying to make a go out of the mole catching.

"I'm very much involved in Farndale and back where I belong. I've gone back to helping with the Young Farmers club in Kirkbymoorside and the Ryedale District YFC. I play pool and a bit of cricket in the dale. These are my kind of people. They have a certain way about them and an attitude to life that's really good. I am happy now. I've been through a lot of difficulties but the experiences have taught me a lot."

CW 5/6/10