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Originally Posted by Dogghound  Yes a large male stoat and a small female polecat will have not a great deal of size between them. It depends on who lives there and who is passing through, or if they both have territorys there. I would have thought that there would be a certain degree of tolerance within an area if food is in good supply. |
Can't comment on wild polecats, but I do know that stoats will flee from a domestic polecat/ferret whenever they encounter them. If a rabbit is bolted from a warren and manages to make it to another warren, it's highly inadvisable to try to bolt it again as invariably the rabbit simply will not bolt, the ferret kills the rabbit and one often has to dig both ferret and dead rabbit out - a pain if the warren is 6ft deep! A stoat on the other hand, in similar circumstances, will bolt time and time again, preferring to flee rather than fight. Rabbits can injure ferrets by giving them a hefty kick with their back legs, and I've seen brown rats fight jill ferrets out of a warren on occasions, but I've never heard of a stoat prepared to do battle with a ferret - odd, as one would imagine a lightening-fast dog stoat would be more than a match for any jill polecat.
Jonathan