In pursuit of your first fox
Everything is in place and you are good to go, but where to locate your quarry? Patrick Hook gives some pointers for the foxing first-timer
If you’ve been following my series on how to add rifle shooting to your skill list, with the specific intention of controlling foxes, you should be ready to hit the field by now. You would have selected a gun that is appropriate for your needs, the optics are all nicely set up and you’re confident that you can hit what you aim at. Now is the time to find and shoot the first of what will hopefully be many foxes.
There are lots of different ways to go about this, including using a caller, putting bait down or ambushing your quarry. The first step is to identify an area where there are foxes. The local population density will vary depending on the amount of food available. In suburban Surrey, for instance, where some inhabitants put out bowls of food “for the wildlife” every night, a particular fox group may only hold a few acres of territory. In the Lake District, however, where a decent meal might be hard to come by, it could be several square miles.
Follow the food
My shooting partner and I follow the mantra “go where the food is”. That is never truer than when there are young lambs about. Every year we find that if you aren’t close enough, you’ll be unlikely to see anything. This is not just because the lambs themselves
“If you aren’t close enough, you’ll be unlikely to see anything”
• Visit your ground in daylight and do what you can to make your life easy, such as trimming away any brambles around gate latches, lubricating the hinges and so on. • While you’re doing your daylight recce, take some binoculars and a rangefinder with you. The landscape can look very different at night and it helps to take away the guesswork if you know just how far away things are. If there was a fox on the opposite hillside, for instance, would it be in range? This information can be really useful as foxes vary in size and it’s only too easy to misjudge how far away they are. • Before you put bait down, find a spot that gives you a good viewing/shooting point. Make sure the wind isn’t likely to blow your scent across it. Some town foxes don’t care if humans are about, but most true country foxes are only too conscious of it. If you can sneak up easily for a look, you can put several baits down over a dispersed area and still keep an eye on all of them. • If you have one or more problem foxes, you know roughly where they are likely to be, so putting down some bait will help. Anything edible will do and the smellier, the better. Roadkill of almost any kind is ideal — it’s free and works well. Cheap dog or cat food is effective, as is a tin of sardines nailed to a fencepost and allowed to slowly leak its oily contents. • It’s always good to check on the age of the fox you’ve shot to understand more about the animals in your area. A boot back of the jaw will cause the mouth to open, allowing you to see the teeth. Very long canines and missing teeth indicate a veteran animal. • It’s also a good idea to check the animal’s sex. Again, a careful nudge with a boot will expose the relevant part of the anatomy. • I’m a stickler for finding any foxes I’ve shot. If they fall between some tall tussocks of culm grass, for example, it can make it exceptionally difficult to locate. Fortunately, the thermal spotter finds most of them easily enough — but if that doesn’t work, Rufus, my wonderful Korthals griffon, gets released from the truck and is usually on them in seconds. • Getting through gates quietly is one of the challenges for anyone shooting at night. The solution is to drive around in daylight armed with a pair of secateurs and prune away anything that is likely to snag you. A squirt of oil on the hinges doesn’t hurt either.