Why shoot the foxes?
- Thread starter AlexD
- Start date
I'm resisting the urge to respond to that, otherwise this discussion will go on forever....
I tried, I tried, but can't resist it any longer!
I was having a pleasant evening sitting here on the sofa drinking mead and playing Morris dance tunes on the squeezebox, but here goes:
We're talking foxes, not packs of wolves! If anyone's flock of sheep is made up of ewes with such poor maternal attributes that they can become separated from their lambs by a fox, then in all likelihood their lamb mortality rates are pretty high anyway, foxes or no foxes. It's really not difficult to breed sheep with improved maternal ability, and that's pretty much guaranteed to reduce lamb mortality, particularly among first-time lambers. Genetic improvement of the ewe flock will save the lives of more lambs than shooting foxes ever will. Absolute fact. No question about it.
I'm going back to my mead and my melodeon.
BenBhoy
Well-Known Member
I know you do mate (bloody have to with that bogpod!!) and I don't want me & @VSS to sound like stuck record - but if I was still lambing outside, I'd tell any fox shooter that the actual lambing field is out of bounds. I'd rather take chance with fox going around flock, fox they probably see every night, as opposed to strangers opening/closing gates & just generally being in their field.
What people don't realise that decades ago foxs and badgers were heavily controlled by the use of snares. Gamekeepers were common and when fox pelts were worth good money vast numbers were taken.
In RB book I think he says in Norfolk a fox was hung on a gate. Most of the locals had never seen a fox.! They were so rare.
When I first moved to Bristol the place was alive with foxs then mange took hold and there was the pathetic sight of badly infected dying foxs.
Not so much mange now but still shoot a few. In my area it's impossible to get on anywhere near 50% of the land so always a residual reservoir of foxs esp close to built up areas. On a farm close to a built up area I shoot in excess of 50 foxs a year. Recently 8 in a few weeks of 5 adjacent fields. All adults and clued up so I don't think dumped.
I find foxing a very challenging exercise and feel that I am giving the remaining wildlife a bit of a chance.
D
In RB book I think he says in Norfolk a fox was hung on a gate. Most of the locals had never seen a fox.! They were so rare.
When I first moved to Bristol the place was alive with foxs then mange took hold and there was the pathetic sight of badly infected dying foxs.
Not so much mange now but still shoot a few. In my area it's impossible to get on anywhere near 50% of the land so always a residual reservoir of foxs esp close to built up areas. On a farm close to a built up area I shoot in excess of 50 foxs a year. Recently 8 in a few weeks of 5 adjacent fields. All adults and clued up so I don't think dumped.
I find foxing a very challenging exercise and feel that I am giving the remaining wildlife a bit of a chance.
D
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
Regarding somebody shooting on land where they have no permission raise this with your FEO and give as best a description as possible. The licensing department has a pretty good idea of who has permission where etc etc.
The mainstream police need to catch the individual in the act. Licencing department can just revoke his FAC.
As for Foxes. If you shoot the dominant dog or vixens, all you do is create a vacuum for another three or four to come in and then fight over the territory.
Sounds like you have a good balance. Foxes keep the rabbits down, deer population provides a sustainable crop etc etc. trees can grow and provide timber, and there is sufficient other food that young trees can get established.
But the Greens and the rewilders will never understand this state of affairs.
The mainstream police need to catch the individual in the act. Licencing department can just revoke his FAC.
As for Foxes. If you shoot the dominant dog or vixens, all you do is create a vacuum for another three or four to come in and then fight over the territory.
Sounds like you have a good balance. Foxes keep the rabbits down, deer population provides a sustainable crop etc etc. trees can grow and provide timber, and there is sufficient other food that young trees can get established.
But the Greens and the rewilders will never understand this state of affairs.
Foxes tend to ,live in family groups with several daughters / nieces / sisters living together - for people to think a territory just holds a dog and a vixen is incorrect
Foxes are genetically programmed to be solo operators.
A gamekeeper on this Estate with a lifetime experience of raising stalking & shooting dogs - usually four or more at a time, shot a vixen that was bothering his chickens, then hand reared the orphan cub from a very early age, getting up all night with a milk bottle etc.
He looked after the cub until mature and then released it an hour away from here in an area that has no nearby chickens or pheasant shoots.
The contrast with dogs was extreme. The cub had absolutely no concept of a master. It would nip him at any opportunity, not accept any command, pretty well untrainable. It would not cooperate with any of his dogs. Wolves are easily trainable, because they have an Alpha and a ranking. They work in packs because of that.
Foxes have no Alpha, have zero ranking so are solo. They tolerate family but do not work as a family.
You might be seeing a lot of foxes, but they are still just a bunch of solo operators. If a group are together it is likely a vixen with near mature cubs teaching them how to hunt.
By the way, the fox had a tag on it when it was released, and a shepherd kindly phoned in when he found it shot a year later by a random someone.
Last edited:
And the result was a plague of rabbits so bad, despite lots of rabbits being shot during and after the war, that Myxomatosis was brought in to reduce them. Myxomatosis killed hundreds of millions of rabbits, painfully.
Just leave the foxes to do their job. They do eat the young rabbits as well as lots of mice, beetles etc.
You have no idea mate
So which fact do you disagree with? Are you suggesting:
1. That there was no plague of rabbits just before Myxomatosis was released in the UK in 1953?
2. That Myxomatosis did not kill hundreds of millions of rabbits, ending the plague?
3. That there was not very intensive fox culling before Myxomatosis?
4. That Myx is not painful to the rabbits?
5. That foxes don't eat mice, beetles and leverets?
By the way, as well as killing 99% of rabbits in the UK, Myx drove the specialised rabbit predators, such as the Imperial Eagle and the European lynx to the brink of extinction due the collapse of their food supply.
Last edited:
Just leaving foxes to do their job - is no option
Why? (Unless you are running a chicken farm, pheasant shoot or grouse moor, when you do need to see no foxes).
It works for VSS, BenBhoy and me, as well as lots of others not bold enough yet to stand up.
I know it goes against tradition. As time moves on, we begin to understand a little more, becoming more enlightened.
Ground nesters - heath land nesters - simple for me really
Foxes numbers are booming as all generalist predators are
Would you not cull crows too then ?
I actually think as we learn and see more ourselves with the equipment we have now that fox control is far more essential than was ever thought
Last edited:
Do you?
I admit it's very tempting at times.
No, but given that I left Bardsey 26 years ago, I don't think that's really relevant.
The fox is a very convenient scapegoat for their own inadequacies.
I don't shoot Corvids apart from magpies, and the latter only in a couple of locations where their excess causes a problem. A sheep farmer may kill every magpie he sees - as the damage they do to sheep is higher, but crows ...
I see a spectrum of corvids out in the fields every day looking for beetles and other grubs, perhaps the odd mouse, and they clean up my gralloch wonderfully. So in my case, they are not hurting me, in fact they are doing good, so I leave them alone.
There are situations where corvids need to be culled and I support the general licences for corvids, but not a blanket cull of them. I certainly don't want some random turning up and shooting them all.
If we want to hunt game that we eat, we might also find ourselves in a situation where it is commendable to regulate the others species eating this game. Take the first norse who went west and settled the islands in the North Sea. Like the Faer Islands in the 10th century. Some will call them vikings, but they weren't. Vikings were raiders, thees were settlers. And one of the things they found in abundance there was seabirds for the pot. Catching and eating seabirds was important food, and quite early they realized that with the amount the ate, they should do their part for this seabirds by also killing birds that preyed on the seabirds. So a law was implemented that demanded every landowner to bring to the annual "Thing" so and so many wings of specific birds of prey. The number according to the size of the land they owned. It is common sense to shoot fox , crows and other species that preys on our game. Wolves will kill foxes and dogs when they can. And they dont do it in nice way either.
Similar threads
