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Foxes creatures of Habit


Gerry78
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Ok lads looking a bit of advice I’m not a prolific fox shooter but got a call from a farmer who ask me to go up to farm and see if I can deal with a fox it (was taking he’s pheasants he let’s run round farm) Went up spoke to farmer he showed me were it trots along Line of hedges by a gully So went to top of hill on field was setting up 222 bipod etc I decided to use mouth call low and behold it came running across opposite field peaked head through hedges   I tried to lie down with rifle to get steady shot it seen me and vanished Now my Question is have I scared it off or when I go back to same field is there a chance I could call it in again Sorry for long rant I stayed for bout 4 hours using various calls and moved fields no joy it never appeared again Any Advice ????????

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They are certainly creatures of habit and walk the same route every night unless disturbed.  Give it a rest for a week. Set a trail cam if you have one. Leaving bait is also a winner. I recently shot six squirrels and left them infront of one of my cameras and low and behold I have a vixen coming and fetching them between 830pm and 10.30pm, she has taken all six but I am pretty confident she will be back tonight so I will be in my high seat at 8pm.  A rabbit , well tied down to a post where you can get a clear safe shot, open it up so it stinks.  Set yourself a shooting position, old garden chair against a fence or gate post with a bit of camo maybe.  The main thing is be patient and only use the caller as a last resort.... they never forget, believe me.

Best of luck...... but remember you make your own in preparation.

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Edited by Walker570
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Unless you have done something to really **** him off odds are he will be back.

Definitely creatures of habit, but they are also clever and learn.   They can usually be trained as well, so baiting to a good place can often work, maybe lay off the calls for a while.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

A good way to get Charlie to stand where you want him to is to peg down a bit of decent metal grid and put bait under that  occasionally. They get used to coming to feed but cannot pick up the food and run off with it. Having to stand and pull bits up through the mesh means he'll be just where you want him.

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  • 2 weeks later...

As if more proof of them being habitual and having a good memory of where a meal came from was needed ...

Called in at one of my permissions on Friday and was told that Charlie had managed to get into 'Fort Knox for Geese' and had killed a breeding pair of Blue Chinese Geese. Now, this enclosure has an 8 foot high chain-link fence around it topped with electrics, a double electric wire running at about 6" and 15" above the ground,  and an 'anti-dig' buffer of stainless mesh at the bottom that comes out about 2 feet from the chain-link.

I declared war and set out to find where the sod had got in ... Didn't take too long to find a whole bunch of feathers at small section where the anti-dig apron had not been fixed properly to the chain link and Charlie had discovered that due to a couple of ruddy great thistles growing up and shorting it out the electric fence was dead at that point. Repairs were undertaken with haste!

I back-tracked the trail of feathers and found the entry route to the property, loaded the .204 and stuck the caller out on a fence post.  9:55pm saw Charlie hammer down the hedge-line at a dead run, straight towards the goose pen. A quick burst of 'mouse squeak' on the caller and she leapt up to try knocking the caller off the post before realising something was amiss and belted through the hedge into the next field. A quick de-camp on my part back to the gate and I threw the rifle onto the quad sticks just in time to see her stop and look back to see exactly what was going on. This resulted in an easy 125-ish yarder and a very dead vixen.

Once they find a source of food they'll come back again and again until either all the food is gone or they develop a severe case of being dead.

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2 hours ago, Longstrider said:

As if more proof of them being habitual and having a good memory of where a meal came from was needed ...

Called in at one of my permissions on Friday and was told that Charlie had managed to get into 'Fort Knox for Geese' and had killed a breeding pair of Blue Chinese Geese. Now, this enclosure has an 8 foot high chain-link fence around it topped with electrics, a double electric wire running at about 6" and 15" above the ground,  and an 'anti-dig' buffer of stainless mesh at the bottom that comes out about 2 feet from the chain-link.

I declared war and set out to find where the sod had got in ... Didn't take too long to find a whole bunch of feathers at small section where the anti-dig apron had not been fixed properly to the chain link and Charlie had discovered that due to a couple of ruddy great thistles growing up and shorting it out the electric fence was dead at that point. Repairs were undertaken with haste!

I back-tracked the trail of feathers and found the entry route to the property, loaded the .204 and stuck the caller out on a fence post.  9:55pm saw Charlie hammer down the hedge-line at a dead run, straight towards the goose pen. A quick burst of 'mouse squeak' on the caller and she leapt up to try knocking the caller off the post before realising something was amiss and belted through the hedge into the next field. A quick de-camp on my part back to the gate and I threw the rifle onto the quad sticks just in time to see her stop and look back to see exactly what was going on. This resulted in an easy 125-ish yarder and a very dead vixen.

Once they find a source of food they'll come back again and again until either all the food is gone or they develop a severe case of being dead.

Good result and all very true. They are very bright and when they find an easy source of food they will exploit it and also train their cubs to do the same. The only fox that wont cause an issue is one thats dead. I love seeing them and think they are intelligent and resourceful....just not when they kill livestock and I am the one who gets the call to sort them out. 

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