Both Foxes been eaten

[sako75]

This is weird, shot 2 foxes on Friday night and because I forgot to put some black plastic bags in the vehicle, I hung them both on a chain link fence about five feet up off the ground; to be picked up on Saturday morning. I won’t carry foxes in the vehicle unless bagged, because of fleas and ticks getting on to my dogs.

 

Anyway went back to collect them on Saturday morning, and both had been stripped, their ribs and spines were clean, fur and flesh all rolled back neatly!

 

The location is in a heavily built up area, and the ground is concrete so no footprints etc

 

I have only seen this sort of damage once before, and that was a Black backed Jackal that had been left hanging overnight in the open, of course that was when I was living in Africa. I don’t bother to carry a camera as no need for that in my line of work, or otherwise I would have taken a couple of pictures of the damage.

 

Anyone else experienced this sort of damage to dead foxes or even a deer carcass?

ATB Bob

[TonyH]

Are there any Chinese restaurants nearby?

TonyH

[stag1933]

I once found the bony remnants of a long dead pony in a FC plantation.

A local toerag had a few grazing there !

 

HWH.

[bluebell]

Well we cant leave phesants alone for a few minutes on a gate post or the Buzzards get them. Alternative would be badgers or local dogs?

[nemasis243]

I have in the past seen dead foxes being eaten , I too have hung foxes on barbed fences for the farmers to collect ,but they seem toforget after 5mins of being told about it, It seems that the good old buzzard will do a fair bit of damage by starting to eat from the ass end ,if hung upside down.

Then at night I have seen badgers and also other foxes getting stuck in if food is short,

Would have like to seen a piccy

[Orka Akinse]

I remember reading sometime back but I can't remember which animal it was that stripped its food of its top coat by peeling it back as you have described. I'm almost certain it had four legs but could be wrong.

[re'M'ington]

I would say that it sounds almost definitely the work of a badger or badgers,especially with the skin peeled back that is typical badger..........my thoughts for what it's worth...........Martin

[whoowhoop]

Does sound like the queer fella. There's not much else will eat a dead fox by choice. Last winter, them things were eating our frozen fox carcasses off the muck heap.Usually they drag them off a short way, in my experience.

(I used to feed them to my terriers,fox carcases, that is. They would leave the bottom jaw, and it really made the runs stink. I always felt that it gave them a little victory, as they got no other reward out of it - the hounds getting to break the carcase up normally.)

Don't do it now.

I can afford tripe!

[Alycidon]

I have a lot of badgers, i have left dead foxes close to earths and these have never been touched, by anything. I have never seen anything that resembles what you are saying happened but have heard of similar things.

 

A

[sako75]

Hi all many thanks for you’re comments, I have spoken to the manager of the premises where this happened and asked if he or his staff had even seen Badgers hanging around the place?

 

He said he’d never seen one expect on TV, but I suspect that they might well be the culprits, as I believe that there’s a big old set not more than a quarter of a mile from this place.

 

I have seen African Marshal Eagles strip an Antelope carcass in similar fashion, but thank god we don‘t have any feral Eagles in this neck of the woods!

 

It’s also possible that other foxes might have had a go, but I would have expected to see some scat marking on the left over carcasses; well I’m just going to try leaving another fox hung up there over the weekend, as this industrial unit is closed at weekends.

 

I will try sanding the ground around the fence, where I will hang the carcass

It should be interesting to see if there are any footprints etc.

 

ATB Bob

[sako75]

Re the above post, just spoke to a colleague of mine on the phone, and he has had a couple of stripped fox carcasses that had been left out overnight; in his case it was a big old Lurcher from the local Travelers site, so the plot thickens!!

ATB Bob

[deerman]

Chaps,

 

A few weeks back I shot a good dog fox and after the usual pictures I threw it in the hedge. After posting the pictures on the forum and reading some of the comments I decided to go back to the carcass to try and get the brush off if the carcase was not that smelly. I went back to the location a few days later and found that despite the cold-ish weather, the fox had decayed considerably and the brush was simply not worth having given its state. What surprised me, though, was that something had eaten parts of the fox. I found the ribcage stripped of any flesh about 3-4 meters from where the other remains were. I had always assumed that no animal would touch a dead fox, but that assumption no longer holds true. I have two trail cameras and now have them in the car so I can mount them around the next dead fox I throw in the hedge.

 

Best,

 

George

[eldon]

Pretty sure this would be badgers.

One night I shot a fox, a nice clean head shot with a 308 so it basically decapitated it. Except for the neck hole the body was intact. I left it in the field about 10' from some bracken. Took my son back in daylight to shift it and it was not there. A bit of tracing round and I found it in the bracken. Pulled it out and it was eaten clean to the top of the ribs. Next day went back same again. Back in the bracken eaten to the stomach. All cleanly done and skin pulled back as you said. A local confirmed it would be badgers and there was no local dogs around that area.

[baldie]

Pigs will eat anything. Old charlie usually gets the blame when a hen run has been decimated. When the wire has been bitten through, its usually the humbugs.

One of my farmer friends lost a load last year the same way. They bloody things even dug up his dead dog, that had been buried 6 months, and ate what was left.

[sako75]

Hi all, if Dave is correct then we might just have a feral pig on the lose; but it would need to be a bloody good climber to gain access to this unit

ATB Bob

[sako75]

Hi all well after checking the industrial site this morning, no sign of anything attempting to eat the fox that I hung up on Friday night. No marks in the soaking wet sand either, but I did see a large boar badger dead on the service road about half a mile from the unit.

 

So maybe he was the culprit, won’t know for sure now though.

ATB Bob

[whoowhoop]

Hi all, if Dave is correct then we might just have a feral pig on the lose; but it would need to be a bloody good climber to gain access to this unit

ATB Bob

 

Bob - "pig" is an old nickname for badger - so is humbug, geordie, grunter etc. Just thought I'd say it quietly.

 

Mark

[Elwood]

So badgers can climb chain link?

[bluebell]

So badgers can climb chain link?

 

Well they used to manage to rip the base out of my peanut feeder which was about 4 1/2 feet off of the ground with less to climb up. I think they are more agile than we give them credit for and more powerful - in the same garden they pushed over a 4 foot retaining wall. There really was no stopping them

[whoowhoop]

They can certainly climb badger fencing, trees, ivy covered walls.

(And Snowdon)

[valleyboy]

My mate and I have left foxes in the field (on his land) so that Crows/Magpies etc can be shot during the next few days, when they start eating the carcass. One night, after my mate shot two foxes, he left the close together until the next day. He went back to find that one had been dragged about 30 yards down the field and had started to have been eaten. There are no badgers in the area, and we can only assume that it was done by another fox.

 

Steve.

[sako75]

Hi all, I was driving past the industrial site the other day and decided to call in just to see if they had any further activity there?

 

Nothing as far as foxes were concerned, but one of the overnight lorry drivers mentioned that he had seen badgers almost every time he had stopped there.

 

I did another check on the fencing and where the fence has started to become a bit baggy I recon a badger (pig) could climb up it without too much difficulty. Whether they actually do climb it is something else though?

 

I have had foxes climb over a 2 meter high chain link fence to gain access to some enclosed Muntjak, that were kept in a children’s zoo; so anything is possible I suppose!

 

Now we have this cold spell I recon that both foxes and badgers are going to become very active, so everyone will be busy!

ATB Bob

[sako75]

Well seeing as this was the first lot of snow we have had down here, I had a quick check on the industrial site at 0.700 this morning and badger tracks all along the fence line, strange as there really is bugger all in the way of food for them.

 

Well now it’s almost certain that a badger was the original culprit, shows you that they will eat anything that can’t move out of their way.

 

ATB Bob