I Want to use Ferrets or Minks to Trap Rodents on Private Property. Is this Legal in Ontario,Canada?

Like the title says, I Want to use Ferrets or Minks to Trap Rodents on Private Property. Is this Legal in Ontario, Canada and does anyone have experience with this? I would of course be looking to gain lots of experience on how to care for these animals and treat them humanely. I am just curious why we always resort to poisoning or spending tons of money on traps that don't actually work at taking out large populations of rodents. Joseph Carter is becoming a new hero of mine for raising awareness of these very misunderstood creatures, that usually get killed by farmers for attacking their chickens, but could weasels, minks, and ferrets actually be useful tools on a homestead? Should injured, or abandoned minks and weasels, be domesticated and trained to have a purpose in our free-market economy?  What do most people do when they trap a mink or weasel on their farm or in their house when it is against the law to relocate them? How is it not more practical to rescue these animals and use them for the greater good?

https://modernfarmer.com/2014/05/farm-confessional-minks-escape-farms-train-hunt/

In BC it is illegal to be in possession of ANY native wildlife - so likely you would only be able to use a domestic ferret.

I do wonder how you would control a wild mink or weasel - they are NOT compliant creatures, at all, in my experience. Somehow I can't see them wearing a harness/leash and dutifully going down holes to get rodents. Even handling them would be a challenge, in my experience.

BUT having a pack of small terrier type dogs that were trained for rodent patrol might be a workable twist on your idea.

Check with whatever passes as your provinces "Fish and Game" or "Conservation" department to see if Ontario regs are the same as BC.

Lorinne Anderson wrote:In BC it is illegal to be in possession of ANY native wildlife - so likely you would only be able to use a domestic ferret.

I do wonder how you would control a wild mink or weasel - they are NOT compliant creatures, at all, in my experience. Somehow I can't see them wearing a harness/leash and dutifully going down holes to get rodents. Even handling them would be a challenge, in my experience.

BUT having a pack of small terrier type dogs that were trained for rodent patrol might be a workable twist on your idea.

Check with whatever passes as your provinces "Fish and Game" or "Conservation" department to see if Ontario regs are the same as BC.

The guy that is doing it above raised them from a very young so I could see how they would be attached to him. Every animal including dogs has a level of intelligence that can be manipulated to serve humans, this is why a Ferrel dog would not make a good pet. But, if you had an animal rescue and you rescued a domesticated mink that didn't know how to hunt and training it to hunt was a part of teaching it to fend for itself, then using mink to hunt rats, could be legal, and to do this you would need a trained mink to show other mink how to hunt. There was a big issue with activists releasing mink from a fur farm and all those domestic mink died because they could not fend for themselves.  As long as the mink were not used as pets and were being taught to hunt as a means of reintroducing them to the wild. I don't see why it would be an issue.

Rehabbed mink/weasels tend to instinctively know what to do, in my experience, even the bottle raised babies...

Again, if they were "domestically bred" I don't know what the outcome would be. I suspect those "released" from fur farms die from lack of prey, rather than a lack of skill to hunt. Commonly they are mass, on site releases that would likely overwhelm the local food supply.

But again, my experience is with wild born, so I don't know if my experience would translate to a domestically bred and/or raised one. I suspect this would be your only option as wild caught would likely not be legal to keep, raise or use for this purpose, based on the regs, here in BC.