Chris Pleasance meets farmer Tony Maude who spends his spare time helping out land owners by catching moles

MAYBE it’s because of Wind in the Willows, or their twitchy little noses, or the fact that they’re covered in fur, but a lot of people have a soft spot in their hearts for moles.

Unless you’re Tony Maude.

While many of us may find the half-blind mammals cute, when Tony’s not tending to his farm in Lartington, near Barnard Castle, he’s killing the little animals on behalf of other farmers or homeowners.

“You can do it one of two ways,” he says. “You can do it with a 12-bore shotgun.

You see where they’re running underground, where the turf’s moving about, and you pull up your gun quick and bang. It’s much quicker that way.

“Or you can lay down traps.

You poke around the mole hill with a steel pole or something like that until you find the tunnel then you cut out a square of turf and lay it in there.”

While this may seem a cruel and unusual pastime, there is a very real need to keep the mole population down.

“People will campaign to save them but they don’t realise the damage that they do. They’re not seeing both sides of the argument.

“Lambs can get their leg caught down a hole and break it, animals can catch listeriosis and have to be put down, and they can ruin thousands of pounds’ worth of crops.

“They dig up stones in their mounds and if that gets caught in a cutting machine or baling machine they can explode, and then you’re talking big money.”

So it is not surprising that people will pay good money to have their mole problem seen to by an expert. For a set price per head, Tony will take his talents to work on a seek-and-destroy mission.

You’ll know he’s finished when a line of fuzzy bodies turns up strung along your fence.

“That way they can’t dispute the head count,” he says, “which is how I get paid.

When we used to use poison, people used to be paid by the acre, but we don’t do that now because if any poison gets left it can be dug up by dogs or other animals.”

While he is happy to share the tips of his trade, he is keeping the price of the bounty a secret. It varies from client to client and from city to country houses, but he assures me it is enough to make it worth his while; so he’s never tempted to make a little more on the side and make the moleskins into fancy waistcoats?

“I used to take them home and skin them and then sell the skins to fishing shops to make lures for flyfishing out of, but I don’t do that any more. You don’t get much skin off them and they stink as well.

“I’ve never thought about making a waistcoat, but you’d need a hell of a lot of moles. Probably about 50, if you had a silk back to it.”

Luckily for the moles, they’re not made into waistcoats anymore, which are made of densely woven cotton instead.

Not so lucky for them is that Tony has no intention of quitting any time soon. He has been practising for 30 years, having learnt the basics from an elderly farmer and then perfected them on his own land while taking the operation commercial.

Half farmer, half mole hunter, he is the watchful eye over the fields of the North- East, providing pest control from Darlington to Durham, Lartington to Loftus.

With a shotgun under one arm and a selection of traps under the other, he is ready to exterminate, no matter how adorable the prey.