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The 1st fox of 2013


huddy44
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When I recieved a request by a local farmer to deal with a chicken theiving charlie I couldn't refuse.

 

Me and my regular lamping sidekick drove to the farm and spotted charlie on the way in 500 yards + up the side of the wood.

 

We killed the engine and began to call using my old faithful whistling kettle top, which I have used for 10 years.......I will tell you about that another time.

 

Charlie responded well to the call, and began making its way down the hedge row. She maintained a steady speed up the hedgerow and quickly travelled to 150yards.

 

At this point I flicked the safety, looked through the scope and the second she stopped sqeazed the trigger on my Savage heavy barrel .223

 

First fox of the year, and one happy farmer.

 

Happy days

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The story behind the kettle top fox call is quite a long one, but well worth telling.

 

I began my foxing career nearly 15 years ago. I am 28 now.

 

My first expeditions where with an old game keeper friend of mine who’s speciality was foxing and calling foxes. He was blessed in that he could call foxes using his hand, scrunched up in a fist, and inhaling through tightly pressed lips to make the most fantastic squealing noise.

 

Try as I might I could not, and still cannot replicate that magnificent call that he had perfected. Which led me to an obsession with finding the ultimate fox call, I hunted high and low and spent endless amounts of money on these so called “best ever” factory produced calls, with very limited success.

 

One cold afternoon I came in from the yard, filled the kettle, lit the hob and went about making a coffee. Somewhere in all of this I became distracted and the old farmhouse kettle was left boiling away on the gas ring. When I returned the whistle on top of the kettle was absolutely screaming, at this point I stood and listened to the screaming kettle and had my best ever light bulb above the head moment!!

 

That night on my way out lamping I put the kettle top in my pocket.

 

When we picked up those unmistakable orange eyes, I excitedly reached for the kettle top and began to blow through it, short sharp bursts 5-6 at a time, pause, count to 10, 5-6 short bursts and so, the result was astonishing, the big dog fox immediately came hurtling across the freshly swathed straw towards us.

 

I put this down to beginners luck.

 

Nearly 10 years later I still use the very same kettle top, and I have perfected a range of different calls using this one simple whistle.

 

I average around 35 foxes a year and have done for the last 8 years, and I would say that only 10% of these didn’t respond to this call in one way or another. I have called foxes that have travelled across 3 fields, running like greyhounds to the point that they have been too close to shoot, 10 yards from the land rover.

 

Farmers and fellow shooters that I have been lamping with in the past have been absolutely dumbfounded by the way that foxes respond to this call. Even the most timid foxes that run the second the lamp hits them have about turned and stalked towards us in search of the so called squealing rodent.

 

My lamping set up is not extravagant by any means, I use an out of the box Savage 112 heavy barrelled .223, Harris bi-pod, 8x56 Bushnell, a tracer lamp, 300tdi discovery (with a very scratched bonnet) and my ever faithful kettle top fox call.

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Edited by huddy44
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