Fox Troubles

      

Stretch is the tall boy at the back.

  Some years ago, a breeder near here bred different types of foxes for foxhunting, which is still a popular Virginia sport on horseback.   No one kills the foxes. They release them, the tri-color hounds chase them, and people on horseback chase the dogs. It all looks like a framed print on an English country home wall.   I have never done this, as I have never seen the point, but I know others who do.  The foxes are gathered afterward and no one gets hurt.   There was a flood in this area some years ago, and somehow this resulted in the freeing of a fairly large number of red and gray foxes.  These interbred fairly quickly and farms and forests in this area have a number of mixed red and gray foxes in large numbers.  We also have a few black foxes, which I have mentioned on another blog I write.
             Anytime nature is out of balance, problems occur.  Although we have never had problems with foxes at any of the homes we've had before, or any of the farms, a couple of years ago we began to have trouble with the foxes.   More than once a large fox challenged us, barking and growling as we left our home.  We spoke to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and found that a challenge from a fox either means that they consider that we are encroaching on their territory, or that they are rabid.  Rabies is endemic in this area, and there are attacks by rabid animals of many kinds.  We were told that we are to shoot to kill a fox who directly challenges us on our farm, especially near our residence.  We don't like killing anything, unless it is kill or be killed, but there were several close calls and they killed our large rooster, and some chickens despite solid chicken housing. We have actually been afraid that the foxes might target and kill our two farm cats.
             Last year we shot one large very aggressive red fox on our property, and we were lucky it died before reaching us.  The wrong caliber round can go right through such an animal, allowing it to attack you before it eventually dies. The trick is to select the correct round to end the life of any animal you must eliminate, without passing through it, and causing it to dump possibly rabies contaminated blood everywhere.  In addition, anytime you must eliminate an animal, you want it to suffer as little as possible and simply remove it from play.  We thought that taking out the "King of the Den" would cause the others to relocate, deeper into the thousands of acres of forest which we do not own and do not frequent.
             We were wrong. This year, quite a crop of young male foxes could be seen stalking our animals.   When one was menacing to one of our sons in the garden, we killed it.   We still felt badly when given no real choice.  We thought the ones remaining would move on, since we believe them to be close by when we had to shoot.  Last night one of them crawled into our duck pen, broke the neck of one of our large white Silky Swede male ducks (his name was Stretch) but could not carry it out of the pen.  He ate most of Stretches body right there in the pen.  This means others will be back tonight.
             Not only are we out Stretch the Silky Swede duck, but now we have to shoot other foxes who likely will be back tonight to get food for the remaining members of their den.  Foxes may be very beautiful, but they can be very vicious and quite dangerous.  The high numbers locally cause them to become more aggressive and more willing to take risks and to challenge human beings.
            My only relief in this is that foxes kill quickly usually breaking the neck of the subject animal, so Stretch likely didn't know what hit him, and likely did not suffer.  I will try to return the favor for the fox.
I will also double the dog guard outside the duck pens at night.


This is the link from my post on one of our other blogs regarding a black fox:

http://learnedfromdaniel.blogspot.com/2011/11/rare-black-fox.html