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Beautiful fox


David Hancock

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I spent the morning on a farm permission which needs some love, chainsawing some fallen branches from across the fences and clearing a style on the bridle way - so the errant dog walkers can stay on the path !!! - and enjoying the skylarks and the sun before having a play with the Mauser M12 Impact.

 

I found it does not like Sako 123g so back to Sako 150g and Geco 170gn. A gorgeous morning with green woodpeckers, a lizard on a mound of earth obviously warming itself and five buzzards circling and grappling. I love my little paradise. Even a Brimstone butterfly was out.

 

I struggled though, having caught a faceful of sawdust earlier through my own stupidity by not putting my visor down after moving some branches so retreated back to the car. I have a first aid kit but no eye wash. Eye giving me gip I washed it out with water. 3pm. 6 miles to a Boots. Too early to go home so I sat in the car and had a doze, hoping the eye would ease.

 

I know last week was a bitch but I don't know where the hour went. I obviously needed the sleep. The eye felt better.

 

I put two rounds of the Geco into the M12, safety on - I love the three position safety on this rifle - took the Primos 2 sticks and made my way along the hedge overlooking the little vale. Another farmer has some ewes on the adjacent fields with six week old lambs where I don't have permission to shoot.

 

He's been losing lambs but won't let people shoot. It's God's way apparently - whether its foxes or badgers.

 

Walking to the little bluebell copse where I've recently seen three muntjac, I headed to a hollow oak which gives me a shelter, a clear view over a copse area and safe rising backstop. I just happened to look back over the sheep field to see one of the ewes stamping.

 

A flash of red which I thought was a munty along the hedge, but then a pheasant kicked off. I love the Bushnell DMR, as the pick up is immediate and it has a great field of view. Whether it is the 34mm tube of just the glass I don't know but it works. A fox was working along the hedge into the gorse and bramble clusters up towards a gap in the hedgerow onto my side of the farm into a clearing where I had previously seen scat on the grass tussocks.

 

If I squeaked I reckoned I would lose it as the clear ground was away from me with gorse and bramble directly in front. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. Rifle on the sticks focussed on the clearing. Then it popped back up where I had originally seen it. It had either circled or worked back, off my perm. Damn. It then turned and trotted away down a little path in the grass.

 

Maybe, just maybe.

 

Three minutes later out she popped. 93 yards right in my clearing. . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Probably just me but never feels right shooting foxes at this time of year with dependant cubs. Unless I have evidence they're taking lambs.

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It's not pleasurable to me to leave cubs to go hungry but sometimes has to be done.

 

Nice fox by the way

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It's not pleasurable to me to leave cubs to go hungry but sometimes has to be done.

 

Nice fox by the way

Change hungry to starve to death, which they will unless they were a early litter and now weaned, in which case the dog will continue to feed them.

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Change hungry to starve to death, which they will unless they were a early litter and now weaned, in which case the dog will continue to feed them.

 

True enough and not a pleasant thought but sometimes necessary and no crueller than nature herself can be. Always better to sort the den too if able but unfortunately wildlife doesn't respect the deeds.

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Probably just me but never feels right shooting foxes at this time of year with dependant cubs. Unless I have evidence they're taking lambs.

+1 I appreciate it has to be done, but i can't do it unless they're killing the lambs, or causing big problems.

Chaz

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Two cubs found early this morning in an earth which hasn't been used for a couple of years under brambles on our side. Dealt with. A legacy from when the place was a pig farm and we were losing 10 piglets a night from the arcs. As Trucraft and Rory, never feels good.

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