Hardy foxer Mark Ripley suggests plenty of foxing action in the winter months to prevent the spread of varmints in spring
With the colder weather and shorter days, the winter months can be a difficult time to be out foxing. Boggy fields and the prospect of long hours in freezing conditions can be enough to keep even the keenest of us in front of the fire, enjoying the TV with a stiff drink. Yet this time of year is one of the most productive times of the year to get out there.
With the lambing season only a couple of months away it’s important to get the numbers down if your permissions are on sheep farms.
The end of the year is also when the game shooting season is in full swing (usually) and foxes will be taking a toll on any reared pheasants they can sink their teeth into.
Late November through into January also marks the mating season for foxes. The first tell-tale signs are from foxes beginning to move away from their usual areas, as any of the last of the now fully-grown cubs still remaining are chased away from their homes by the vixen, where they will then seek out their own patch and potential mate.
Dog foxes will soon begin to follow a vixen around in the run up to mating season as they wait for the brief period when the vixen is actually in season. There will also be fights between the dog foxes over breeding rights and it’s not unusual to see one dog fox chasing another at speed off his territory, or fighting between them.
There will also be a lot more calling to one other. Although in actual fact foxes (both male and female) call throughout the year on occasion, the breeding season sees a distinct increase in calling. By mid-January the majority of the breeding will have been over and foxes will settle back down. This is followed by a period around March and April when foxes seem to disappear altogether, as vixens go to ground with cubs, making it more important to thin the population as much as possible in the winter months.
With so many foxes moving around during the mating season, there's a good opportunity to cull a few coming in from neighbouring ground – and with less foliage and crops in the fields it also makes shooting foxes easier.
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There are some areas that would usually see a fox every now and then, that may suddenly have several foxes moving around at the same time. I have one farm that always has a fox or two around and through September I’d shot a few here and there, rar
