Shooting Times & Country Magazine
The fox: friend or foe
While Charles James has the sense to exploit suburbia and befriend dogs, we should beware his cunning and ferocity, says Tower-bird
Some time ago, I read a letter in The Field concerning the daring of modern foxes. The correspondent related how, in a near-suburb of London, he had left his bedroom window open one night, when a fox had jumped onto the roof of a shed under it, leapt into the bedroom (while the writer was in bed there), seized a pair of rabbit-skin slippers and vanished out of the window.
Now I said to myself: “This could be a joke, and I have a good mind to send in a letter saying how I had left the front door of my house open while I went out to post a letter, and that, on returning, I found my pair of badger-skin slippers excavating a nest of wasp-grubs in the soft soil of the rockery.” On the other hand, I know that the story could indeed be true, for foxes, where they are not continually harassed, can become surprisingly daring.
The largest gathering of foxes I saw was under a full moon in a stackyard adjoining a house in which I then lived. The farmer had buried a sheep, or maybe a calf, and it seemed as though two large litters of full-grown cubs were doing a bit of bodysnatching and fighting hard about it.
It was when I lived at this place that I kept a fox cub, a vixen, in a shed. When she came into season, dog foxes gathered round and scratched up the lawn under my bedroom window.
On more than one occasion, when walking quietly down a village street at night, or standing still, I have seen a fox come pottering along, sniffing here and there, possibly where the scent of cat lingered. Those people who imagine that foxes live out in the wilds and do not come near human habitation are badly at fault in their knowledge of foxes. In and near suburbia, of course, foxes live and have their being, sometimes having cubs under a garden shed.
Followed by foxes
It is by no means unknown for foxes, and not always cubs, to become playfellows to dogs living in large country houses, and many an instance has been related of how countrymen taking out their dogs for a walk have been followed by a fox, the dog sometimes running off to have a game with it, and the fox following the pair home, right into the home grounds.
There are times when one comes face to face with a fox in, say, a wood, and instead of darting away, it stands still for a few seconds, and then turns off and quite unhurriedly makes its exit. At other times, a fox taken by surprise vanishes like a puff of smoke.
I do not at all like hearing of people making pets of foxes (or any wild animal, for that matter) for, despite all that has been said in favour of such pets, I do not believe that a fox ever becomes truly tame once it has lost its cub status. I know that otters have lived in captivity and have shown seeming happiness and contentment. I have heard the same about hares that have been brought up from infancy with human beings. Likewise, squirrels and other mammals. But be these creatures really happy under artificial conditions or not, a fox, like a cat, can never be tamed to complete trustworthiness. They have a slyness about them which rather compares with two breeds of dog I had better not mention.
That foxes have a high degree of reasoning power I have no doubt at
all. Any good huntsman will assure you of that. On the other hand, those who have trapped foxes in non-hunting country have not found the operation particularly difficult, except, perhaps, in the case of some individual old varmint who knows a thing or two.
I have said that Charles James has a sly character; he also has an underlying vicious one. He will kill for killing’s sake, apparently seeing red when among the inmates of a henhouse, or a run full of poultry. Most anyone who has had a lengthy experience of digging out foxes from earths and drains will have a better idea than most people of the fox’s character, even taking into consideration the fact that he has been hunted.
I have watched foxes both course and stalk their prey and can well admire the energy, stealth, patience and reasoning powers of the hunting fox. I saw one wonderful course in the snow once, with two foxes playing each its part and the hare beating the pair of them. I have watched a fox, which I had thought to be mole-heaps on a meadow, waiting for a covey of partridges to feed up to within springing range. I have studied many a hunted fox and can admire very many aspects of the breed. But, on the whole, I cannot say that I like the character of Reynard, for I have always felt, with the ‘tame’ ones I have kept and the many wild ones I have seen, that covered by one or two pleasant traits, is a deep cunning and viciousness that are of little good to man or beast. Let me add, however,