Patience pays off

The fox drought is over – all of a sudden, we’ve started to see foxes again. As soon as the crops came off we discovered we had a litter of cubs just next door, so we dealt with them, but there have been a few others popping up over the horizon, which I’ve been dealing with as soon as they appear.

The other night I had been out on a neighbour’s land, helping him out with his foxes. I’d seen nothing and came back but rather than go straight to bed, I decided to have a run round at home first. I looked over the best part of 2,000 acres of ground and saw nothing and decided to call it a night. As I arrived back at the house, I swung the light one last time into the 12-acre field in front and saw a flash of eye. All that running around and there was one on my doorstep! Could it be all the just-released partridges acting as bait?

I pulled into the field entrance and looked across with the thermal, and there was the fox. It was busy with something on the ground, a bit over 100 yards away, and wasn’t taking a lot