Today's domesticated pet ferrets, the lineage that you will find in todays pet stores, probably came from the Romans and later Europeans who used the ferret in hunting. The painting on the right is from a French book know as The Book of the Hunt written by Gaston Pheobus, around 1389 a.d. It demonstrates the hunting of rabbits with ferrets. The man in the green sleeves is placing a muzzled ferret into a rabbit hole. The rabbit's exits have been covered with nets.
Ferrets are most adept at tunnel-hunting but are susceptible to larger carnivores above ground.
They are knowm to kill game twice their size. They were also used by farmers to rid barns of rodents and mariners to control rodents on ships. What rodents weren't killed by ferrets were frightened from the barn for months due to the ferrets' scent. Rodents are deathly fearful of the ferret's scent. Queen Victoria had ferrets in 1875.