Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire grey fox........

I went up and set up a tree stand yesterday getting ready for bow season.....came around the corner and a grey fox was sitting in the middle of the road.......it ran in front of the quad till we stopped and sat and watched us 2 fat old men try to put up a stand.....they say these are the most common foxes in California but in all my years of hunting this is only the second one I've seen.......I put up a game cam so maybe I'll get a picture of it.....heres what they look like:

Ours down here have zero red in them, they are all grey/grey black. They are neat to watch in the moonlight if you don't happen to keep chickens!

They are gorgeous and I think more beautiful than the red. I've seen several in my area and have only shot one.

Qtip
Soli Deo Gloria!
To God Alone be The Glory!

My wife and I had a vacation home in the southern Sierra of Tulare County, for many years. We used to see them quite often up there. Beautiful animals, although they'll take a heavy toll on game birds.

L.W.

Lot of folks don't know it but a grey fox is pretty adept at climbing trees..No, not like a squirrel on a bare trunk.but when there are branches he can jump to or the trunk is sloping they can climb..
Pretty neat critters..coyotes kill lots of them...jim

The reason that most folks don't see them very often is that they are pretty determined "nocturnalists"--they don't move around much in the daytime unless they are disturbed. For the last twelve years I lived on an isolated ranch ten miles from the nearest "town" and we saw them regularly driving home after dark.

Most of the ones that I have seen during the day have been treed by the lion hounds while we were hunting. The young dogs will take off after them and occasionally will persuade the older dogs to join in. I have seen grey foxes twenty-five or thirty feet up in trees (mostly Arizona sycamores) and that is about as tall as trees grown here in the creek bottoms where they spend a lot of their time.

We also have kit foxes here--they look like toy versions of the grey fox, but are much more curious and less afraid. On several occasions while mist-netting bats with visiting scientists, we have had kit foxes come up and sit down within a few feet, hoping to get a handout if one of the bats is deemed surplus. They also come into our spike camps and try to take a few bites off of deer that are hanging. It's pretty difficult to find a tree that allows the deer to be hung out of jumping range and with the limbs arranged so that the foxes can't slip down the rope and help themselves,,,

TLEE

Have you had issues in FL. with rabies in foxes ? We've got certain counties that have a high rate of rabid foxes. They're remarkable animals. I've got a friend who has a full fox mount, with a quail in the foxes mouth.

Fox here are not the problem, Raccoons are the major carriers.

I am familiar with the Raccoons. The state, either health dept or wildlife, has been putting out this rabies vaccine for the Raccoons to eat, in certain areas of the state. We've been pretty well overcome by, both Foxes and Raccons in certain areas, mainly due to no one trapping anymore. The only thing keeping them in check is the cars and Coyotes.

Here, contact with a Raccoon is sufficient justification to be subjected to Rabies treatment, Bats as well.

We have a ton of the Red variety cruisin' for the chickens. Have seen only one all grey, a couple of years back...

Neat animals, very sly they are!

Pat

We call in and take quite a few down this way.......


Bob

Used to call in alot of grays in S. Central Okla. in the '70s but the yodel dogs have competed with them too heavily. Last one I called up was in S. Texas...Reds are very rare here but not nonexistant. What I haven't seen in many years is a ringtailed cat but do hear of a few sightings...