More misadventures in backyard varmint shooting

Reynard meets his demise

Sluiced the first fox of 2009 yesterday. My daughter Sophia had spotted him while she was doing her homework on the kitchen counter. This one was tricky because of the tough angle he initially presented through the swingset. I also had a tough time setting up into position on the back mudroom steps because of my gunshy lab getting in the way.

Finally he moved away from the swingset, and I put a bead on him and fired away. He flipped over, but incredibly came back to life, got up, and started walking away with our less than one year old camper directly behind him.

I waited for him to clear the trailer's tires, with the knowledge he had but five feet to crawl off into the bushes. I figured the bullet would go through him and end up in the ground under the camper somewhere. So then I shot him a second time, and he was down for good.

Unfortunately these Federal Nosler tips do a hell of a lot of damage at 60 yards (or 600 yards for that matter), and when I arrived at the scene of the crime there was fox blood, guts, and tissue sprayed all over the side of the camper. What a mess.

And of course, in the five minutes it took me to get the hoses connected to clean it off, the little bits and pieces of fox gore had all baked hard and dry on the camper walls in the late afternoon sun. I didn't have a scrub brush so I used my fingernails.

What's more, is that of course all of our garden hoses had decided to crack over the winter, leaving me with an intermittently but nicely watered lawn along the hose path and severely depleted water pressure at the hose's end 100 yards from the house. I can tell you now that cleaning dried guts with reduced water pressure is like using a squirt gun to wash three day old dirty dishes.

Twenty minutes later the camper was clean and I was resolved never to shoot a fox in front of the camper again.

kids don't try this at home

Varmints and other grousers . . .

Hadn't had a bloodthirsty day in a while, so pulled out the old varmint gun and went snipin' yesterday.

A Capstickian death in the tall grass . . .

The first photo is of a not-too-old male chuck who had moved into an old den under one of our sheds. I've been watching him for several weeks and had concluded he was likely a male when no younger chucks materialized. I did a sneak on him at first from around the house: he detected me and dove back into the ground for cover.

Twenty minutes later he wasn't as lucky. This time I did the full-blown military crawl out onto the turf and assassinated him at 62 yards. I then decided to put him on the woodpile as fox bait.

I eased into fox sniping position at approximately 7:45 pm. Two days earlier a guest had seen a fox in broad daylight between our two barns. I set up in our pole barn, hunkered down between our tiller, snow blower, and lawn tractor. nothing shoots like a Deere . . . .

the fox blind

At approximately 8:10 a woodchuck wandered out from the bushes that surround our big barn. I sat and watched him for five or so minutes, resolving to put him on the list for August.

At that point a fox sticks its head out from the exact runway the woodchuck had used, and it stood there craning its neck to survey the yard with the woodchuck just yards away.

Of course, I'm pointed in the wrong direction, having baited my brush pile out in the middle of the sheep pasture. Plus my small engine blind doesn't really do a good job of covering me up. Feeling exposed, I sat there watching the two critters for a minute, hoping the fox would move out and allow me to reposition to line up a shot.

A fox bait pile in the act of being ignored by foxes . . .

The woodchuck then lunged at the fox! startling it perhaps, but at any rate the fox ran out into the grass and behind a spruce on the lawn. I hurriedly repositioned, and then it came back toward the bushes by the barn (which are loaded with black raspberries at this time). I didn't have much time to line up, and he was just about to go back into the bushes when I touched off a shot--MISSED. Damn. I went over and looked at where he had been, and nothing. nada. zilch.

I went back to my seat in the pole barn, and decided I needed a better blind than a Troy-Bilt. Hastily I pulled four bales of straw down and placed them between me and the bushes the fox disappeared into. Back in action!

Fox-eye view of the blind:
note skill in straw camo placement

It didn't take long. About twenty minutes later this little boy appeared from around the back of the barn, nonchalantly walking over to the raspberries. He presented a perfect broadside shot standing still at forty-five yards, and I quickly dispatched him.

So peaceful in deathly repose . . .

I let him lie, thinking there might be yet another curious fox to come. Sure enough, around 9:30 another fox came slinking down along the pasture fence. This time the varmint was moving way too fast to even think about shooting, and he disappeared off into the darkness. I decided to call it a night.

View from the blind: where foxes come to die

Why foxes are bad news in T'burg

This just in the local paper this morning:

Rabid fox bites child in T-burg

By Raymond Drumsta
Journal Staff

TRUMANSBURG — The Tompkins County Health Department issued stern warnings about rabies after a child was attacked by a fox Monday morning in Trumansburg.

“Rabies is here,” said Frank Chase, a public health sanitarian for the health department. There have been 11 confirmed cases of rabid raccoons and one confirmed case of a rabid bat in Tompkins County in 2008, he added.

“The fox caught rabies by being bitten by a raccoon,” he said, adding that this number of raccoon rabies cases is an epidemic.

In a statement released Tuesday the health department said rabies is a viral disease that can infect any mammal, including humans. It is usually transmitted by the rabid animal's saliva, often through a bite or a scratch.

Chase said the fox bit the child on the ankle, and when the child was holding the fox around the neck with her hands, it bit her wrists. A Trumansburg police officer separated the child and fox and then shot the fox, he added.

“The policeman had to knock it off the child before he could shoot it,” Chase said. The fox tested positive for rabies, the health department said.

“The child is receiving rabies post-exposure shots, as are three other people who also had contact with the fox,” health department officials said.

Chase stressed that different strains of rabies are epidemic in different animals.

“Rabid raccoons usually attack dogs, and are usually killed by the dog, or the dog's owner,” he said. “Rabid foxes usually go after people.”

There are cases of raccoon and bat rabies in New York state, but no cases of fox rabies except perhaps the state's northeast corner, near the Quebec border, Chase said.

“Otherwise, we'd be having a lot more of these fox attack incidents,” he said. “We're having rabid raccoon incidents all the time, but the raccoons are not attacking people.”

Pelt quality issues . . .

the new sniper's nest

Update: on Friday I lost a second fox due to crippling. The fox was moving away from me and I took a 100-yard quartering away deer shot at him from my bedroom sniper's position, but unfortunately I hit him in the hind left leg, and he ran off into the underbrush.

I did send my gun-shy labrador to find him. Aldo rousted him out, and I came eye to eye with Reynard at five yards down on the creek's edge--but alas, I did not take a gun so as not to freak out the dog, and the fox crossed the creek along a log and went down a hole on the other side.

I thereby resolved to shorten the distance and to set up a new position in the shed closest to the sheep pasture. This shed is conveniently missing a single pane in a window at gun rest level.

the view from the sniper's nest:
bait stump at far right

Last night I staked out my red fox bait pile (hey, the regs did say, at any time, in any manner) and sure enough, at the stroke of 9:00 pm two foxes came peeling out of the barn straight to the stump to which I have applied with wire staples various scraps of freezer-burned meat.

fox bait: ethical? sporting? discuss.

At thirty-five yards I missed a completely broadside shot at the first one; the only thing I can figure is that in my eagerness to get "two for one," I jerked the trigger on the first one. Moral of that story: don't count your chicken killers before they're killed.

Then, as both animals circled around the brush pile to figure out where the noise had come from, one poked her head above the grass about 45 yards away. This time I hit what I was aiming at--a clean head shot.

neck-shot fox kit

Here's another issue for you from the animal control world. The pelt of the adult I took the other day (see the picture previously posted) was in fairly poor condition--either the winter coat was giving way to a summer coat, or the pelt was in bad shape following her giving birth to a litter. But compare hers with the coat of the young fox shot last night--there's no comparison. I'm not even sure one could sell the pelt of the previous fox.

So (I'm asking Keith primarily, I suppose, although I'd love to hear from others), how would that factor in to your thinking about full utilization of the resource?

for the chickens' sake . . .

Reynard, slaughtered in conformance to the law:

http://law.onecle.com/new-york/environmental-conservation/ENV011-0523_11-0523.html

§ 11-0523. Destructive or menacing wildlife; taking without permit.
6. Raccoons, coyotes or fox injuring private property may be taken by
the owner, occupant or lessee thereof, or an employee or family member
of such owner, occupant or lessee, at any time in any manner.

in memory of our chickens and our neighbor's chickens. at 92 yards by range finder from the kids' upstairs bedroom window. sporting? ethical? discuss.

chicken-killing Reynard meets his demise