Bog Myrtle & Peat

When I started to deal with foxes on the Chayne, I came up against a series of brick walls. The hill is a particularly awkward spot to keep on top of predators, and the fact that I’ve killed so few over the past three or four years says as much about the nature of the terrain as it does about my predator control skills. However, it seems that I’m starting to learn. I’m picking up a few tricks here and there, and I think that I’ve now stumbled on something that could be pretty good.

In the last week, I’ve seen three foxes. The first was flushed from a patch of rushes by the dog, where a closer inspection revealed that it had been lying up for the day. The second was flushed in precisely the same way, but it emerged three hundred yards away. It afterwards occurred to me that the wind was behind me, so it was probably already on the alert. This afternoon, I flushed another with the dog as I walked into the wind, and it would have made a lovely shot for the magnum. It says much about my slowness on the uptake that it’s taken me three missed opportunities to clock the pattern.

On a warm and dry day, foxes lie up in the rushes. It’s that simple. But what rushes offer basil brush in the way of shelter and camouflage, they take away with the fact that, as long as he’s lying down, he’s totally blind. Rushes are so thick that, at ground level, basil wouldn’t see a column of infantry if it marched ten feet away from him, provided it was downwind and kept quiet. The obvious tactic is to make use of Scoop‘s clear affection for foxes – she loves them, and longs to lick their faces (I’m afraid she has a similar fondness for their faeces), and it’s quite easy to work her close in. The advantage of the wind is that it guarantees that there are no telltale scents, and it also makes the rushes rustle quite loudly. With a good wind, a hidden fox is deaf and blind. That makes him hard to find, but in theory, all I need to do is work the dog close in and be ready for the shot.

The next dry, windy day we get, I will take her for a walk into the wind, and remember my number 3″ No.1s.