FOXES and their control.
- Thread starter reloader54
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I have had and lost livestock to foxes many times. I quite like foxes but not what they do so I shoot them regularly.
I think true countrymen and there arent many left, know when the balance needs adjustment but sadly can no longer maintain a balance because of the laws protecting certain species. Excesses of the past, driven more by landowners than keepers put paid to those absolute freedoms but ingenuity can still find a way legality aside.
I think true countrymen and there arent many left, know when the balance needs adjustment but sadly can no longer maintain a balance because of the laws protecting certain species. Excesses of the past, driven more by landowners than keepers put paid to those absolute freedoms but ingenuity can still find a way legality aside.
reloader54
Well-Known Member
somebody pointed this out to me the other week,
looking at the comments it would seem the heron is hated 'cos it eat goldfish, and little baby ducks, but these muppets don't seem to know what damage otters do to those same goldfish,koi, fish stocks, and waterfowl, and anything else they can get hold of.
looking at the comments it would seem the heron is hated 'cos it eat goldfish, and little baby ducks, but these muppets don't seem to know what damage otters do to those same goldfish,koi, fish stocks, and waterfowl, and anything else they can get hold of.
Couldn't agree more. They need control.
John Gryphon
Well-Known Member
Frankly, I admire foxes as a species. Over millennia, they are the only dog-like animal that has not only survived over a widespread area of the Earth but are able to constantly adapt and thrive in differing conditions. In most areas, they are doing much better than thriving. I have no problems with their numbers being controlled though for good reason, be that farming interests or for game. Indeed I've done a bit of that. But, as any gamekeeper will tell you, you don't permanently get rid of them from an area. Even if you do kill all the foxes on, say a pheasant shoot, it'll only be temporary and sure enough, that area will be fox free for not too long.
Correct but if you keep the excess numbers down then other things do have a chance. On two ares we are very hard on the foxs we have gone from almost zero hares to more hares than rabbits. Also quite a healthy population of wild pheasants which is nice, however we will need to do some significant corvid control.
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reloader54
Well-Known Member
with respect, any temporary control will result in a temporary cure, the problem will simply reoccur. you have to keep it up to obtain long term gains not just for game birds but all relevant species.
Being very hard on foxes is not essential on todays typical game shoots where only a tiny fraction of the bag is wild. One of the biggest game shoots in the north is very close to where I live and has lots of foxes, for his own reasons the head keeper dictates they are left alone by his team of underkeepers, no doubt some are killed when causing bother but certainly by February there are lots on the ground. I know of other good shoots where foxes could be seen come out of nearly every drive and bags were always achieved. There does seem to be a kill everything mentality among particularly the young keepers, often it just seems to be for bragging rights between old college mates.
Being one of the biggest shoots they probably put down lots more birds than required as it is a big commercial shoot.
On shoots like this they hardly have time to control vermin.
They are too busy doing all the other work.
A small private shoot requires vermin to be controlled because they can't afford to loose 100 birds if they only put down 1000 birds.
Regards Dan
reloader54
Well-Known Member
there is an estate near me that puts down a very large number of pheasant and partridge [keepers are told never to repeat the exact numbers, even after leaving] but as the old saying goes,,, "three can keep a secret only if two are dead", rumour has it excess of 10,000 partridge alone, wouldn't like to put a number on pheasants, 1000 bird days are common, 500 before 11.30 sometimes.
the losses down to road casualties alone are more than some shoots total of reared birds. they do have fox control although the "method" would only be a guess.
A secret is only secret if kept to yourself. That is not a big shoot, one near here killed nearly 3000 partridge in one day. IMHO it's far too many but then how many is too many. Road kills mean very little in terms of large numbers and do not reflect well on shooting as a whole, and neither does fox predation have much effect. It's nothing to see 40 or so squashed birds over a mile of road. Foxes hardly need to kill anything, just nip down to the B.... road for a McDonalds.
reloader54
Well-Known Member
yes agreed, In fairness I believe they try to offer quality these days as opposed to just big numbers, how many acres is the shoot you mentioned? the one I referred to is around 6000 acres. I often envied the amount of game cover they could provide, compared to the seemingly meagre offerings I could provide, but when speaking to the Game conservancy rep one day he reckoned I did bloody well with what I had to work with, and was way above the return average in some instances.
Freeforester
Well-Known Member
The point I was trying to make is that you will indeed get continuous churn of animals once the dominant one is removed, though of course they all eat every day; mostly I see them as opportunist, 75% of the time mousing or carrion collection, but of course if you are in the grouse or ground nesting bird protection line, the maybe a zero tolerance strategy will work, providing you have similarly inclined neighbours. A mate used to keeper in the Yorkshire moors, his place was completely surrounded by similarly-minded and very keen & able keepers, and in one spell he didn't see a whisker of a fox in over 18 months, so effective were the neighbours. But there are really very few areas of the country where one can be so fortunate. It may be the case that in some parts of the country the foxes don't assert themselves, and hold a territory to the exclusion of others, I can only say what I find here, and they are indeed territorial.
What gets me is that a very great deal of blame gets put on an animal which generally will hold a huge territory, yet within that same area there might be upward of 40-60 head of very well fed badgers...
For sure, cutting off the resupply of foxes is the best thing we can do, as no replacements to the population will soon bear dividends, but there is a limit that even the most voracious single fox can eat when compared with a couple score or more of his 'fellow' monochrome and avian ground nest robbers with whom he is obliged to share his territory, when it is looked at coolly and objectively. I would argue that if the place can stand no vermin whatsoever, then it is indeed a poor place, but readily accept the ultimate aim is to have zero losses to predation; however when faced with so many protected predator species both avian and ground based, I'd just ask that one might want to consider the 'rankings' of the various rascals in the scenario, both in terms of quantity of numbers and the full scale of harm to the interests seeking to be protected.
I'm sure there will be scientific studies made of wild foxes which have been captured, collared, tracked and their diets and habits examined, and for sure they are destructive all year round, and particularly in the nesting and fledging seasons, but there are so many other equally and indeed worse perpetrators.
On one wild bird shoot I used to go to we only ever dealt with the corvids, which we did mercilessly, and re-visited and dealt with the nest sites repeatedly in case of 'repeat custom'; we left the foxes unmolested, but were fortunate too, in that there were no badger setts in that district at that time. We enjoyed good sport there, but concede that it was mostly pheasants and few partridges. The habitat was an ideal mixture, with unsprayed smallish fields of swedes and pretty weedy grain, with useful margins and plenty of rough around and cover. Quite possibly there was too much cover for the fox to successfully hammer when compared to many cereal field margins found these days, which must be all too easy for the predator procession to promptly process.
Extensification, rather than intensification tends to help the game bag, coupled of course with minimal predation losses, by whatever means.
My first job as a keeper was on an English partridge beat and we trapped and killed every predator known to us. It was in an area where estate bordered estate for more than twenty miles in most directions. In three years I killed one fox and two more were killed on another beat. If a fox was seen or heard on any estate in the area a drive was organised for that or the next day. It was amazing to not see any foxes and I still ran the best part of 100 snares. The pheasant lads had to trickle Renardine 5 yds from and all around their release pens as our Head man took no chances or prisoners.
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