Fox Really Vermin?

[shovel leaner 7,648]

Surely if they were surviving, they'd eat kills....instead they kill en mass and leave them.

They only kill like that when they encounter livestock in un-natural numbers , they go into a frenzy, killing, half burying the bodys , biting heads off . They are only acting out of an instinct to kill now and try to carry off and store for later . But all too often all that we see is the carnage thats left , and we compare a wild animal with our own morals and just see wanton destruction .

I used to take fox kills really personally and see to it that i got revenge . But the years have made me more philosophical , and while i do deal with problem foxes , its not personal,and i dont seek to destroy them all .

[Its_grim_up_norf 577]

That's a good explanation. Definitely food for thought. Perhaps I'm still a bit bitter from friends/permissions known to me and seeing the loss that people have when 10/20 chickens get killed, or two or 3 lambs get killed and only one gets half eaten.

 

Not quite been bought round to your way of thinking yet but I'm definitely seeing where your coming from. Perhaps as I age I will learn to love the little ginger menaces.

Edited September 2, 2013 by Its_grim_up_norf

[shovel leaner 7,648]

That's a good explanation. Definitely food for thought. Perhaps I'm still a bit bitter from friends/permissions known to me and seeing the loss that people have when 10/20 chickens get killed, or two or 3 lambs get killed and only one gets half eaten.

 

Not quite been bought round to your way of thinking yet but I'm definitely seeing where your coming from. Perhaps as I age I will learn to love the little ginger menaces.

Its hard to feel anything but anger and hatred when you see a lot of your lambs , pheasants or poultry dead , and strewn about , but its a wild animal just acting out of instinct , like i said its not personal , and prevention is always the best way . more secure pens ,poultry houses , and a few snares around the lambing fields .Atb

[bird 9,587]

good way to look at it that malt. Recently my mates mam bought some chickens (5 of them) because she had wanted to for a while, she bakes a lot so figured she could save a few quid on eggs, with the enjoyment of raising chickens too.

 

Fox got in after a few month, killed them all, never ate even one...that is a vermin to me, not an apex predator.

 

spot on, regards the foxes killing lambs, i think you the odd fox will kill lambs or sick sheep.But i i think they are more of prob regards killing birds (chickens+phessies), because birds are far easiser thing to kill, and as above will the lot once in the killing mode.Many a time ive been out lamping, and seen foxes not far from sheep+ lambs, and the foxes , and they didnt seem that botherd with them, ok they will take few lambs, but deff more of a threat to birds from what ive seen of foxes.!

[Blakloks 5]

 

I know foxes need to be controlled etc for various reasons but should an apex predator really be classed as vermin as all its doing it using its hunting skills and opportunism to get by and survive due to us laying it on a plate and providing that increase of variety to it

But there not an apex predator. In other countries wolves, eagles etc. thin them out.

 

 

I would say they are in this counter because nothing else predates them and they are top of the food chain.

[walshie 2,804]

Foxes are an apex predator in the U.K. Only thing that kills them is man.

 

IMO foxes in the countryside going about their business are a pleasure to watch, but when they are shitting in my garden they are vermin.

[Lab 10,979]

I can never get this view of the 'pitting your wits against old Charlie".... I can assure you lamping, snaring, trapping or sitting out for a fox I never thought of as some game.... It was nothing but a slog. A slog I could do without since I was up at the crack of dawn I didn't really want to be driving around fields in the middle of the night looking for the murderous little shits!

There's no one in the world that will convince me that a fox doesn't just kill for the pleasure of it.... I've had pens cleared on the rearing field, snares set for the return and it never did. Only to dig its way in to another pen and kill, kill and kill.

I sorry but my views on the fox will never change, I will never have respect for an animal that acts in such a fashion. Some say they are intelligent, and of course in some ways they are but if they were that clever they would try and leave there trail of destruction a little less visible!

As much as I hate them and same goes for any animal that you try and stop by taking its life in any form I do not wish them any suffering. I've fired at foxes all my life, some stone dead and some not and the ones I can't find I hope died as soon and as pain free as possible.

There vermin, there a pest but to them I suppose its natural.

[Wullz 408]

Hey Lab, told you before, I am only too happy to put my gas mask on and come across the bridge to help you!

Anytime you need a hand out blattering foxes....I will be there....just call it mate!

[Lab 10,979]

Hey Lab, told you before, I am only too happy to put my gas mask on and come across the bridge to help you!

Anytime you need a hand out blattering foxes....I will be there....just call it mate!

It was more when i had the shooting side of things that mate, which i dont anymore. I wish i was on this site when i did do a bit of keepering......might have got to my bed more often....

[Wullz 408]

I would have put money on it! I got a text from one of the Hopetoun keepers this morning at 5, he was still up and about.....fekk that for a life!!

[moonlighter 1,160]

With regards to a fox killing chickens and leaving them, in sure if you left the dead hens, the fox would return each night to collect them? They don't mind eating rotting stinking flesh

[moonlighter 1,160]

I've just read you post Lab, after I posted mine, regarding coming back for the dead ones. Obviously they don't then.

[Lab 10,979]

I've just read you post Lab, after I posted mine, regarding coming back for the dead ones. Obviously they don't then.

No mate your quite right they do if that's all that's available. But the intention to kill is just a desire they can't hold back.

Let's say when you see a fox catch a hen on s chicken farm it runs in, steals one and fucks off. It will do that everyday, maybe 2/3 times that day and that's everyday. Now it doesn't run about the place trying catch each and everyone because it knows fine well it can't catch then all.

Stick the same hens in a shed and they will all be dead as quick as it can.

I've had laying hens dug into and 200 killed in a night. A grands worth of birds gone on one swoop. That feeling off going around sticking dead birds in a bag is horrendous and until some of the public that sit on the fence on vermin control get to witness that they will never understand how the countryside works.

[Qbgrey 3,968]

apex,predadtor to complacated i just shoot on sight,end of.............to many of them.

[shovel leaner 7,648]

I can never get this view of the 'pitting your wits against old Charlie".... I can assure you lamping, snaring, trapping or sitting out for a fox I never thought of as some game.... It was nothing but a slog. A slog I could do without since I was up at the crack of dawn I didn't really want to be driving around fields in the middle of the night looking for the murderous little shits!

There's no one in the world that will convince me that a fox doesn't just kill for the pleasure of it.... I've had pens cleared on the rearing field, snares set for the return and it never did. Only to dig its way in to another pen and kill, kill and kill.

I sorry but my views on the fox will never change, I will never have respect for an animal that acts in such a fashion. Some say they are intelligent, and of course in some ways they are but if they were that clever they would try and leave there trail of destruction a little less visible!

As much as I hate them and same goes for any animal that you try and stop by taking its life in any form I do not wish them any suffering. I've fired at foxes all my life, some stone dead and some not and the ones I can't find I hope died as soon and as pain free as possible.

There vermin, there a pest but to them I suppose its natural.

A slog !!! You were in the wrong job mate . I call a slog , a 12 hour shift in a factory or a building site in winter . Try working down a pit or steel works . Sitting in a warm landrover shooting foxes is not a slog . There are young lads on this site who would give their right arm for a keepering job , but will probably never get a start .

I have suffered large losses of pheasants in pens and more often when young poults first get over the wire. I learned from each instance and more often than not the times a fox got in the pen and wreaked havoc it was preventable. I like you have felt sick when filling feed sacks with the bodys of healthy poults. Keepering is a challenge , you are up against weather , predators , dog walkers you name it , but on shoot day when it all goes well , its worth it !!!