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Another chicken thief!


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The mate of mine that I generally shoot with departed to Cornwall for his annual jollies on Saturday. So I was quite surprised to get a call from him on Sunday night. He said “can you do me a favour “ and I said go on what’s up? He told me an old chap that we shoot at now and again has just had a visit from a fox and it has made off with most of his chickens. I said I would see what I could do so he sent me his number. I gave the chap a call and he told me what had happened. Apparently the fox had visited him between 7 and 8, killed 3 out of the 4 he had and took them all. I said I would come and have a look the day after. I turned up in the afternoon and had a look around and weighed up the best way to tackle the problem. The best way I could see was to park up at the gate to the field they were taken from which is just off the drive to his house. I told him what I intended to do and said I would be back later. He asked me if I knew where he could buy a magpie decoy. When I questioned him about it he wanted a call bird for his Larsen trap as he had not had any luck with using eggs. I told him to get his trap ready and I would be back in half an hour with one, which I did. It would be about 10.20pm when I arrived at his place and he had left the gate to the driveway open for me. He usually locks this at night to prevent anything being stolen from around his buildings.  I parked the Jimny up at the gate and walked forty yards out into the field with the foxpro. I set it up on a hide pole and switched it on. When I got back to the Jimny he was waiting for me. I just carried on setting up the rifle and having a scan around with the thermal. After a couple of minutes I set the caller off on rat distress. I suppose six or seven minutes had elapsed when I saw a heat source enter the field via a hedge in front of the chicken pen. It certainly looked foxy and so I switched the drone on. It was easy to find through the scope and light enough not to need any I/r. The fox was cautiously making its way to the caller so I muted it. That brought it to a halt and I put the reticule on the engine room and squeezed the trigger. It was only a distance of 70 yards so there was no gap between the shot and the sound of the bullet strike, just a bump and that was it. I turned to the farmer and said that’s it. Well he was made up. I told him I thought it may make an appearance tonight at dusk thinking there would be another meal for it but it was just good luck that it turned up so soon. We walked out to pick it up and it turned out to be a nice 15lb dog which surprised me, I thought it would be a vixen. I said I would go back this week and put some bait out and a trail cam just in case there is anything else about. He told me that not an hour after I dropped off the call bird he had caught his first maggie, so a good outcome all round.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 14/07/2022 at 12:52, BenBhoy said:

Is that legal???

Buffoon! ?

I could of shot my mate tonight the useless f****r.

It has taken me over two weeks to get a fox on the same place coming confidently to bait every night after the farmer shot at it with a 410.?

Anyway he is back from holiday and we went to shoot it tonight. Sixty yards and he missed it.?

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11 hours ago, ianm said:

Buffoon! ?

I could of shot my mate tonight the useless f****r.

It has taken me over two weeks to get a fox on the same place coming confidently to bait every night after the farmer shot at it with a 410.?

Anyway he is back from holiday and we went to shoot it tonight. Sixty yards and he missed it.?

Christ   it seems like this missing malarkey is contagious ?

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1 hour ago, FOXHUNTER said:

Christ   it seems like this missing malarkey is contagious ?

I’ll put my hands up to this one too, last outing shot two”badly” and missed a third?

not been out for about 3 weeks cos it pissed me off!

had an opp bout two months ago and me shoulders still a bit fcuked so I put it down to that?

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1 hour ago, si brown said:

I’ll put my hands up to this one too, last outing shot two”badly” and missed a third?

not been out for about 3 weeks cos it pissed me off!

had an opp bout two months ago and me shoulders still a bit fcuked so I put it down to that?

It's an epidemic ??

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