On the off chance!

[ianm 2,594]

Last night i went to a relatively new farm for me. I have been once before and shot a dog fox. The farmer said he has seen three foxes eating a dead lamb so could i have a look. I didn't get there till eleven because my mates wife was at the pictures till late on and he had to look after their daughter. When we arrived we parked up near the top of a big sloping field which gives you a really good area to scan over. At the bottom of the field there is a wood which is around seven hundred yards away. Well i tried all the favourite calls and more besides but nothing showed apart from hares. After forty five minutes it was decided upon to move to the next field to our right and try our luck there, a decision partly made due to the herd of bullocks that where aggravating us to some tune. The next forty five minutes proved to be as fruitless as the first so my mate wanted to call it a night as he had work today. As i was approaching home i thought i might try down the road from me as it was only twelve fifty am.

This piece of ground is the place i wrote about in "last nights effort" . I parked in virtually the same spot but this time there was no cut grass being dried for haylage it had all been baled and most had been carted back to the farm. I have been here once since i last wrote about it and spotted a fox that had snuck in following the old flood bank and was watching us from just across the gutter. It had been maybe sixty yards away when i saw it but it made off before i could get a shot off at it. It had seen us so there was no point trying to bring it back with a different call because all i would have done is educate it to another set of call sounds. I have found it is best to let them go on their way if i have been seen and deal with them another night. Well it is another night so i shall try again. There was virtually no wind to speak of last night after it had been windy all day, a phenomenon i always found frustrating in my lurcher lamping days. I set too with partridge distress because i had used pheasant distress the last time and any self respecting fox would associate that call with me being there. The call travelled a long way i could hear a faint echo back from the farm buildings eight hundred yards or so away. Twenty minutes had elapsed with nothing seen bar a dozen or so hares and a barn owl hunting, the latter nearly colliding with me as it hunted the old flood bank looking downwards for  field mice and voles. Whilst stood on the special platform i have on the back of the Jimny i scan round three hundred and sixty degrees and whilst doing so i saw a fox trotting in quickly in the next field behind me at an angle of about forty five degrees. Whilst i was readying myself for it's arrival i lost sight of it. I guessed it had reached the cover either side of the old flood bank across the gutter. It had indeed and upon exiting the cover it saw me because the cloud cover had that very moment dissapeared. and the near full moon lit me up. Off it trotted at a fair pace away from me across the field next to me on my left. This field is separated from the one it ran across by sheep wire and two strands of barbed wire on top. Along either side grows long grass which cannot be harvested due to it's close proximity to the wire, this provides what can only be described as a grass curtain. The fox had reached the far side of this curtain and was travelling behind it away from me towards the new flood bank and eventually the marsh. I positioned the rifle at the end of this fence line where it terminates at the new flood bank and watched with the thermal  for it to make an appearance. It did eventually show itself as it cleared the field and started to climb up the flood bank. I picked it up in the scope quickly and tracked it in case it paused. Well pause it did as they often do, i settled the reticule on the back of it's head and squeezed off a shot. I saw it drop instantly and a split second later heard that tell tale popping sound. I knew it was a fair distance so i marked my position on the phone app i have and set off to recover it. I found it with no difficulty at all and saw the bullet had hit it in the back of the neck just below it's head. Death had been instantaneous for this lad just how i like it to be. After clicking my current position on the app it told me the shot had been three hundred and one yards . It had been well worth trying on the off chance of a fox being about.

[BenBhoy 4,706]

Another great write up; you could get these published!! Great stuff, cheers.

[ianm 2,594]

14 minutes ago, BenBhoy said:

Another great write up; you could get these published!! Great stuff, cheers.

Thanks for that.

[Stavross 13,712]

That’s a cracking write up, I want to read memoirs of ianm ( a true fox smasher ), I’ll only take 2% for coming up with the title, but would like to be acknowledged in the book

Edited July 19, 2019 by Stavross

[Sausagedog 7,381]

Fox basher connoisseur. 

[David.evans 5,323]

Great shooting and one bang on write up

atb